CONTEXT RAPHOE DIOCESE COVERED UP FOR CLERICAL SEX ABUSE
BY FR GREENE:
FROM MARTIN RIDGE'S BOOK, BREAKING THE SILENCE
Seeing the BBC Spotlight special on Eugene Greene in October 2002 prompted one
Donegal priest, Columba Nee, to put pen to paper. In a letter headlined
‘Response to Sexual Abuse Allegations Woefully Inadequate’, published in the
Donegal News on 8 November 2002, Nee wrote about the effect that revelations
about clerical sexual abuse cases had on the Church and on him personally. ‘I
grew up in the 1970s before the issue of child sexual abuse emerged out into the
open. I remember my parents warning me about strangers offering sweets or
enticing me into cars. I never considered for a second that one day I might
belong to a profession that, in the eyes of many, is a haven for paedophiles’,
Nee’s letter began. He wrote about the snide comments he and colleagues had to
face because of the Greene and other cases, but observed that the crisis the
Church faced was largely self-inflicted and ‘often made worse by coverups, lame
excuses and, worst of all, silence from Church leaders’. Most priests were good
men, and only a small minority has carried out ‘ferocious crimes against
children’, including Greene, ‘a serial rapist who wrecked and destroyed the
lives of scores of young boys over roughly twenty-five years’. Greene’s crimes,
Nee wrote, were ‘sickening and revolting and cannot be excused in any way’. What
upset Nee most though was the ‘woeful’ response of the Church to questions posed
by the Spotlight programme. In particular the lack of diocesan files, which
could explain for example why Greene was brought out of semi-retirement,
troubled him. Nee noted that the Hussey Commission into clerical abuse, chaired
by retired District Court Judge Gillian Hussey, would not have to spend much
time in Donegal, since it relied on paper files to get to the truth. ‘Have files
been destroyed or were complaints never recorded?’ he asked. He described how
his faith in Church leaders had been shaken by the way paedophile priests were
handled. The Church needed to learn from the disaster, bring it out in the open
and deal with it honestly. Those who covered up or ignored crimes shared in the
guilt, as did those who ‘passed the buck and made pathetic excuses in the face
of sheer evil’. Nee’s words burned with passion. He spoke on behalf of many
ordinary Catholics who felt shocked and betrayed by the Church, and many
ordinary priests who shared their feelings. He compared their outrage to the
righteous anger Jesus felt when he entered the temple in Jerusalem and found it
violated by traders and money-changers. ‘People need to know that many ordinary
priests share their outrage and disappointment,’ he concluded. ‘I wonder will
anything really ever change in our Church? Time will tell.’ Not every priest I
spoke to saw things with Nee’s piercing clarity. One said to me of McGinley:
‘Cha n-ólann Denis bocht is cha gcaitheann sé.’ (Sure poor Denis doesn’t drink
or smoke.) I couldn’t see how this was a point in his favour after what he had
done, but clearly the speaker felt that it excused or lessened his guilt in some
way. Several people afterwards made a big thing of Greene’s drink problem, but
the strange argument was made that as McGinley was a Pioneer, he must in some
way have been a good person because he didn’t drink or smoke. It made no sense.
When I spoke to another priest about my dismay at the glowing character
references that two priests, John McGlynn and Michael Sweeney, had given for
McGinley, his answer was ‘Sure is cara mór le Fr Michael, Denis.’ (Michael is a
great friend of Denis.) I was even told that in one parochial house in a parish
where Greene had worked as a curate, his photograph still hung prominently.
Quite what the parishioner who saw the photograph of the convicted serial rapist
hanging proudly on the wall thought of it, I’m not sure. The message it must
send to any of Greene’s victims who might see it doesn’t bear thinking about.
Police work is all about gathering evidence, whether a tin of paint and some
brushes or a witness statement or the paperwork from a report to a health board
official or a diocesan office of suspected wrongdoing to support a criminal
complaint. Yet in investigating Greene we were hampered by the lack of evidence.
There were reports raising concerns in 1971, again in 1976 and twice in 1995
that I knew about, either from our own investigation or what Spotlight had
uncovered. In November 1995 Bishop Boyce was told about the concerns over
Greene’s conduct, yet there was nothing in the diocesan files. Nee hit the nail
on the head when he asked, ‘Have files been destroyed or were complaints never
recorded?’ Why was nothing ever written down? Over the years I had been given
tantalising pieces of information which suggested that there was an awareness at
senior levels in the diocese of the problem, even if there were no written
records. One priest told me he was present when a colleague approached a senior
Church official expressing some concern about what Greene might have done, only
to be rebuffed with the words, ‘He couldn’t have. He’s cured.’ Greene told us
himself he was in Stroud in the early nineties. He gave us written permission to
access his files there. Yet Stroud later refused to release the files on medical
grounds, after consulting with the priest and his lawyers, saying he was treated
for alcohol dependency, not psychosexual problems. When Greene gave us
permission to get his medical records, he was under no illusion and neither were
we about which files we were talking about, and he had nodded to us accordingly.
We understood, as any criminal investigator would, that we were dealing with
child sexual abuse.
In 1982 a new bishop, Seamus Hegarty, succeeded McFeely in the Raphoe diocese.
Meanwhile Greene continued to prey on young boys in Glenties, then in Gaoth
Dobhair, then moving on to Cill Mhic Réanáin where he was promoted to parish
priest. ‘Most unusually’, the Spotlight documentary noted, ‘Greene’s new job was
subject to a review after three years.’ In 1994 Greene moved to live in
semi-retirement in Loch an Iúir. When Hegarty was moved to Derry in 1994, the
diocesan vicar general Fr Dan Carr acted for a while as temporary administrator
to the diocese of Raphoe, and he brought Greene out of semi-retirement as an
assistant priest. Spotlight discovered two more complaints from this period.
‘One was in a letter sent to the diocesan headquarters outlining a specific
allegation’, it reported. ‘The priest who sent it received no reply. The other
complaint was made verbally by a curate to his parish priest. The senior priest
in question denies he received any complaint. Fr Dan Carr denies he received any
complaints. And this diocese says it has no complaints on file about Fr Greene.’
Spotlight went on to report that ‘serious worries’ were circulating the
following summer when Philip Boyce was appointed as bishop of Raphoe. The new
bishop was told of ‘grave concerns’ about the priest at a special meeting in
Anagaire parochial house in November 1995 called by the principal of the local
primary school and the parish priest Fr Michael Herrity. In a statement to
Spotlight the headmaster explained that ‘allegations and rumours about Fr Greene
and children were sweeping the parish’.
COMMENTS
The religious orders tend to be the worst offenders and do the most obvious covering up. In the case of Letterfrack in Co Galway Ireland the order denied knowing that one of its brothers was sexually abusing inmates though they had got many complaints over his fifteen year reign. The orders in Ireland are still not releasing documents that incriminate their members and many of these documents have been destroyed. It is not hard to see that this must have happened in the Raphoe Diocese where records relating to notorious paedophiles like Fr Eugene Greene have conveniently disappeared in the time of three bishops and a parish priest who ran the diocese in 1995-1996. Read the article by Raphoe Priest Fr Columba Nee here http://www.donegaltimes.com/2002/11_1/other.html.
There were letters sent by the victims to diocese leaders and the recipients denied that they ever got these letters. This was reported in the Donegal News in 2000. Bishop Hegarty currently bishop of Derry and formerly bishop of Raphoe was exposed as a protector of wicked priests particularly in a BBC1 current affairs programme Spotlight. His attitude in the programme came across as uncaring and arrogant and defensive. Spotlight exposed the manoeuvrings of the Raphoe diocese to prevent paedophile priests being brought to justice and especially how the clerics of the diocese gave no support or compassion and not even a visit to the families of the victims.
The blame is really with the parents who get their children baptised into the Catholic system and form them as priests.
From Breaking the Silence, One Garda's Quest to Find the Truth, Martin Ridge, Gill & Macmillan, Dublin, 2008 order from Gill & Macmillan, Hume Avenue, Park West, Dublin 12
Donegal Times - November 13th 2002
DONEGAL TIMES
Response to Sexual Abuse Allegations Woefully Inadequate
Church authorities many questions to answer
By Fr. Columba Nee
I grew up in the 1970s before the issue of child sexual abuse emerged out into the open. I remember my parents warning me about strangers offering sweets or enticing me into cars. I never considered for a second that one day I might belong to a profession that, in the eyes of many, is a haven for paedophiles. During the last nine years I worked in three schools in our diocese, including the Abbey Vocational School in Donegal Town. During those years it was hard at times to show your face publicly. I, and many of my colleagues, have been called child-abusers, have received snide comments and dirty looks from people on the street. Some blame the mediafor promoting an anti-Catholic agenda - however the saddest thing about the current crisis is that it is self inflicted and is often made worse by cover-ups, lame excuses and, worst of all silence from church leaders.
Most priests are good men. In the current climate, that needs to be
remembered. A small minority have carried out some ferocious crimes
against children. The B.B.C. Spotlight programme recently dealt with
the
crimes of Eugene Greene, a priest of the Raphoe Diocese. It is hard
to be
rational about the activities of this man. Bluntly put, he was a
serial
rapist who wrecked and destroyed the lives of scores of young boys
over
roughly 25 years, mainly in west Donegal. His crimes are sickening
and
revolting and cannot be excused in any way.
The response of church authorities to questions posed on the programme was woeful. Serious questions remain unanswered. Why was Eugene Greene brought out of retirement and given a position in his home parish after many complaints in previous parishes? Who arranged this? Why do we have no files on this case in the diocesan archives?
The on-going Church sponsored Hussey enquiry is relying on paper
files to
get at the truth. Her future visit to Donegal won’t take very long
it
seems. Have files been destroyed or were complaints never recorded?
Bishop Boyce then dropped a bombshell by announcing on Highland
Radio that
three new cases of alleged abuse were being investigated by the
Gardai.
All priests are now viewed as possible suspects. This has caused
great
confusion and anger among many priests. This issue must be resolved
as
quickly as possible to restore some degree of confidence. Leadership
on
this issue is needed now.
Personally my faith in church leaders has never been so low. There are a few glimmers of hope however on the horizon. Darragh McIntyre deserves our thanks for making this programme. The victims, or survivors, have emerged into the light. We heard real people, real pain. They are people of immense dignity and courage who have a right to the truth. I sometimes hear that programmes like this are an attack on the Church. Every baptised Christian is a member of the Church. When those children were abused and raped, the Church of God was being abused and violated. The abusers are the people who really hate the church and attack it. In doing so they provide ample ammunition for amateur critics of the church. Eugene Greene’s victims deserve a full apology, an honest explanation and full compensation. Their innocence and childhood was murdered. It is the least we can give them.
Child abuse is not simply a clerical problem. Well over 95% of
abuse isn’t
carried out by men in Roman collars. The tabloid press seem quite
happy at
times to create the impression that to be a paedophile you have to
have
the title ‘Father’. This is deeply alarming. Societies often blame
small
groups for unpleasant problems. Pointing fingers exclusively at the
priest
gets others off the hook. Abuse occurs in our towns, villages and in
the
countryside. It affects all social groups. Abusers are married,
often
respectable figures. Teenagers abuse as do a small minority of
women. The
local media have, by and large, been very responsible in dealing
with this
issue but they have a role in reminding people how this evil is not
simply
restricted to priests. Exposing this problem in our community is a
positive sign. Victims can now receive a hearing, justice and
hopefully
healing.
The Church needs to learn from this disaster. We need to get the
issue out
in the open and deal with it honestly. I believe future problems lie
around the corner when Judge Hussey comes to investigate how we
dealt with
this issue. Those who covered up have damaged the credibility of the
church and may have to step aside. The Irish Church has to face the
issue
of whether we should forcibly laicise convicted offenders. Christ
had a
very harsh attitude to those who led little children astray; ‘It
would be
better for that man if a stone was tied around his neck and he was
thrown
into the sea.’ Those who cover up or ignore crime share in the
guilt.
Those terrible words also apply to those who passed the buck and
made
pathetic excuses in the face of sheer evil.
In the aftermath of the Fr. Brendan Smyth affair, which shocked a nation and brought down a government, the Bishops promised that there would be no more cover-ups. We were promised everything that needed to be done would be. It appears to me we in Donegal have learned little. The recent revelations showed that we as a church handle these issues very poorly. It is hard to imagine how we could have handled this whole affair in a worse way. We can learn from this disaster and reform our church. If the Church is to speak to people in today’s Donegal with conviction and with the voice of Christ, we can’t simply continue doing the same old things the same old way.
What I say will annoy many. Popularity, or rather the lack of it,
has
never bothered me. Christ flew into a rage when the temple in
Jerusalem
was violated and had hard things to say about those who oppressed
the
innocent. There is a time for blunt direct talk. People need to know
that
many ordinary priests share their outrage and disappointment. I
wonder
will anything really ever change in our church? Time will tell.
Columba Nee, Nov. 8th 2002