Letter to Baroness Scotland, new chair of the National Catholic Safeguarding Commission

FOR THE ATTENTION OF:

Baroness Scotland of Asthal
House of Lords

Saturday 19 March 2011

I understand that you have recently taken-up the role of chair of the National Catholic Safeguarding Commission and that the NCSC is the body responsible both for monitoring compliance with policies and for ensuring that the Church does all it can to respond to the Safeguarding needs of the community, including those who have been victims of abuse.

In light of this, I am hoping that you will be able to help me with an issue that I have been researching with growing concern for the past three years and which I believe demonstrates very clearly that the Church has failed to comply with policies the Bishops committed to in 2001; a failure which is likely to be to the detriment of those who have been victims of abuse. I am referring to the mismatch between the outcomes that would be expected, if Bishops were following Recommendation 78 of the Nolan Report (2001) and the actual outcomes in cases where Catholic clergy have been convicted of a criminal offence against children and sentenced to serve a term of imprisonment of 12 months or more.

In September 2001, the Nolan Committee recommended,

"If a bishop, priest or deacon is convicted of a criminal offence against children and is sentenced to serve a term of imprisonment of 12 months or more, then it would normally be right to initiate the process of laicisation. Failure to do so would need to be justified. Initiation of the process of laicisation may also be appropriate in other circumstances."

They also made it very clear that,

1. “…we were concerned to make plain that there is a level of seriousness, as demonstrated by the criminal courts, at which we would expect the process of laicisation always to be begun.”

2. “…laicisation does not mean that the Church has no further part to play in relation to the abuser. As with lay worker abusers who are no longer employed by the Church, the Church may nonetheless be able to assist with the rehabilitation and pastoral needs of the individual.”

3. By ‘laicisation’ they mean “…the consequence of a priest either successfully applying to be relieved from their priestly obligations, or the result of their dismissal from the clerical state by due process.”

In November 2001, the Bishops committed the Church to implementing the recommendations of the Nolan Report and in 2007, the Cumberlege Commission noted that “The duty of the Bishop or Congregational Leader, following a conviction or caution for a criminal offence, is straightforward and documented in national policies” and that “The Church is under a clear obligation to accept the consequences of a criminal conviction or a caution”; commenting also that “there can be no going back to a pre Nolan mindset; no relinquishing of the values implicit in Nolan; no reversing of the thrust of the work in this challenging area.”

However, it is increasingly clear that almost two-thirds of priests relevantly convicted and sentenced have been allowed by the Church to retain their clerical status as priests. Thus third parties, including victims of abuse are required by the Church to see these men as ongoing recipients of the sacred power which the Church teaches is communicated by the sacrament of Holy Orders and to accept that they will remain potential beneficiaries of Diocesan funds, under canon 384.

Indeed, COPCA / NCSC / CSAS sources suggest that only six clergy were laicised because of offences against children between 2001 and 2009, while, in September 2010, Antony Barnett from Channel 4 News reported that only eight (36%) of 22 priests identified in England and Wales as having been convicted of sexual offences against children, sentenced to serve sentences of 12 months or more and as serving all or part of their prison sentences, since November 2001, had actually been laicised.

Two of the 14 priests who had been relevantly convicted and sentenced, but not laicised, were priests from the Diocese of Salford. Both had been sentenced to prison sentences of six years and their cases provide illustrative examples of how Recommendation 78 appears to have been implemented or rather not implemented in real cases.

Thomas Doherty, the former parish priest of St Joseph’s, Todmorden, was convicted at Bradford Crown Court of five offences against a boy under 16 (indecent assault x 2, attempted buggery and buggery x 2) and sentenced on 19 February 1998 (Case No: T19971395), while William Green the former parish priest of Holy Family Roman Catholic Church, Wigan was convicted at Manchester Crown Court of 26 offences of indecent assault and sentenced on 1 October 2008 (Case No: T20080502).

In the absence of any public announcement that an exception had been made or was being “justified”, parishioners in the Diocese of Salford (including those such as myself who live in the neighbouring parish) assumed that Doherty had been laicised in accordance with Recommendation 78. However, during the autumn of 2010, around the time of his death, it emerged in the local press that Doherty had never been laicised, had been living in a house owned by the Diocese and that “the church paid towards it”.

Meanwhile, in September 2010, the local newspaper in Wigan highlighted the case of Green, saying that “church chiefs vowed that (Green) would never minister to the public again. But two years later he has still not been defrocked or “laicised”” and quoting one of Green’s former parishioners as saying, “It is an absolute disgrace that this man should still be part of the Roman Catholic clergy”. The newspaper returned to the story three months later, and reported that a spokesperson for the Diocese was, now, saying that “the laicisation was on-going and was out of their hands.”

I trust that the information I have provided demonstrates to you, why there is ongoing concern about what appears to have been widespread non-compliance with Recommendation 78 during the past decade.

I trust that you will give this matter your urgent attention and I look forward to receiving your comments on the issues I have raised.

Thank you.

Yours sincerely,

Philip Gilligan