In the UK, Catholic bishops for years have been congratulating themselves on their strong policies to deal with problems of sexual abuse by clergy, policies which they believed were shielding the country from the worst excesses that have plagued the US, Ireland and other countries. That belief has been shattered this week, with reports that the Vatican has launched an investigation into allegations of abuse at Ealing Abbey, and the news that the church official who was supposed to be heading the church’s own internal investigation, has himself been convicted on charges of possessing thousands of images of child pornography.
The fundamental problem with the church’s attempts at self-regulation have been it’s attempts to place greater importance on canon law than on secular law, and the tendency of the regulators, guided by the regulations prepared by the CDF, to operate as a clerical old boys’ club, placing great emphasis on the rights of the accused to procedural fairness and sympathy, but little attention to the rights of the victims. This English case shows, as the examples of Ireland, Belgium, Philadelphia and Kansas City have all done before it, that the only really satisfactory investigations are conducted by outside authorities.
Church inquiry after official convicted of paedophilia
The Catholic Church is to launch a review of child protection across the South West of England after a religious official investigating child sex abuse allegations was convicted of paedophilia.
Christopher Jarvis, a former social worker, is due to be sentenced later today for the possession of 4,000 indecent images of children.
Jarvis, 49, worked as the child safeguarding officer for the Diocese of Plymouth, where he had been responsible for child protection matters at 120 churches and community groups for nine years.
Before his arrest, he was leading an investigation into allegations of historic sexual abuse at Buckfast Abbey in Devon.
The review has been ordered by the Rt Rev Christopher Budd, the Bishop of Plymouth, after concerns were raised over the church’s handling of clerical sex abuse allegations.
-full report at The Telegraph
(based on the orginial story at the Times, behind a paywall)
Related articles
- Church inquiry after official convicted of paedophilia (telegraph.co.uk)
- Vatican Investigating Claims of Sex Abuse at Uk Abbey (maboulette.wordpress.com)
- Vatican sexual abuse inquiry into Ealing Abbey given short shrift (guardian.co.uk)
- Benedict’s ‘Legion’: Smaller, not much purer? (commonwealmagazine.org)
I think you might just have conflated two stories by mistake here. The Plymouth Diocese official who appeared in court this week was the Safeguarding Officer for that Diocese, not the person in charge of the investigation into Ealing Abbey.
The Apostolic Visitation into Ealing Abbey matters, ordered by the Vatican took place a little whole ago and was headed by Bishop John Arnold, Auxiliary Bishop of Westminster, and Abbot Richard Yeo, Abbot President of the English Benedictine Confederation.
With regard to this, I think their appointment raises problems. Unlike the Apostolic Visitation into the Irish Catholic Church handling of sexual abuse which was composed of senior Cardinals and others from outside the Church in Ireland, this ‘team’ is hardly independent. Although under the current national safeguarding procedures a Diocese is not responsible for matters occurring in the context of an ‘exempt’ religious order such as the Benedictines, it would have been far more independently appropriate for a Bishop from another Diocese to be appointed to take the leadership. Likewise, if it was felt that a religious superior, Benedictine or not, should be involved why was it not considered that a present or former major religious superior from elsewhere might be more suitable, such as Fr. Timothy Radcliffe OP, former Master General of the Dominicans, or Fr. Joseph Chalmers O.Carm., former Carmelite Prior General, both now resident in the UK?