Reporting from London — Leaders of the Roman Catholic Church in Dublin engaged in a widespread cover-up of abuses by clergy members for decades, a "scandal on an astonishing scale" that even saw officials taking out insurance policies to protect dioceses against future claims by the victims, a commission reported Thursday after a three-year investigation.
The commission, which investigated how the church and state agencies handled three decades of endemic child abuse by priests in the Irish capital, also criticized police and social and health authorities who, with a few exceptions, it said, ignored complaints or simply referred allegations back to the church hierarchy.
Presenting the government-commissioned report at a news conference in Dublin, Justice Minister Dermot Ahern spoke of his "revulsion" on reading the findings and called them a "scandal on an astonishing scale."
Ahern promised legislation on child-protection systems in institutions by the end of the year.
"These dreadful crimes no matter when they were committed will be pursued," he said. "There will be no hiding place."
Archbishop of Dublin Diarmuid Martin, who took office in 2004, presented an abject apology on behalf of the church for the inaction of his predecessors. The report, which covers the period from 1975 to 2004, focuses on 46 priests in particular and 102 in general, all working in the archdiocese of Dublin.
"I offer each and every survivor my apology, my sorrow and my shame," Martin said.
At another news conference, victims of abuse said the devastating report was not enough.
"This is not meant to be the full picture . . . 102 priests is the number that they settled on even though there are allegations against 172 . . . this is only a representative sample," said Andrew Madden, a member of One in Four, a nonprofit group for sexual abuse victims that campaigned for the inquiry. "There appears to be no appetite to ascertain the full extent of this problem within the Catholic Church in this country."
It's taken so long, Madden said, because there was no interest by successive governments in investigating the Catholic Church.
The report, written by a four-member commission led by Judge Yvonne Murphy, reveals a policy of systemic clerical cover-up:
