Europe

Europe

Ireland plans new laws for child protection in wake of new abuse report

13 July 2011 23:30 (UTC +04:00)

Baku-APA. Irish Justice Minister Alan Shatter on Wednesday announced plans to introduce laws requiring all suspected sexual abuses of children to be reported, after investigators unveiled a new probe into the cover-up of child abuses,APA reports quoting Xinhua.

According to the new rule, withholding information of sexual abuses of a child or vulnerable adult would be seen as a criminal offense, Shatter told a press conference with Minister for Children Frances Fitzgerald.

The government hoped the bill would be enacted into law in the coming fall, he said.

The minister’s remarks came as the Cloyne Report, which investigated how the Catholic Church and Irish authorities handled abuse allegations against 19 priests in southern Ireland’s Cloyne diocese (church administrative region), was published on Wednesday.

The nearly 400-page report found senior clerics, including former Cloyne Bishop John Magee, withheld information in investigations of most abuse allegations. It accused the bishop of having "little or no interest" in the management of clerical sex abuse.

"The failure to report cases of child sexual abuse to the Garda (Irish police) is the central difficulty identified in the Cloyne report. The state, for its part, is determined to have legislation in place which ensures that such failure to cooperate in the future will have consequences," Shatter said in the press conference.

The Irish minister added the laws would apply to professions such as doctors and priests.

Shatter also spoke of pursuing the perpetrators identified in the report.

"When the (Cloyne) report was received, it was referred to the Garda (police) Commissioner and the Director of Public Prosecutions. The Garda Commissioner has appointed an Assistant Commissioner to examine the report to see whether, in addition to action already taken, any further action can be taken against the abusers referred to in it," he said.

The Cloyne Report follows the Ferns, Ryan and Murphy reports, which also detailed widespread child sexual abuse and subsequent cover-ups within the Irish Catholic Church.

Commenting on Shatter’s new legislation plan, Maeve Lewis, executive director of One in Four, a support group that helps men and women who have experienced sexual violence, said in a statement that it was time for the government to shoulder its duty in protecting Irish children.

"The state must stop procrastinating and finally assume its proper responsibility for protecting Irish children," Lewis said.

"At the very least we need to put our child protection guidelines on a statutory footing, creating a responsibility for every adult to report concerns to child protection services that are well resourced and consistent in their responses across the country," she said.