Abuse survivors to seek guarantee of co-operation on inquiry from cardinal

The Northern Ireland Survivors and Victims of Institutional Abuse (Savia) group is to meet Catholic primate Cardinal Seán Brady this morning to seek guarantees of his total co-operation with the forthcoming abuse inquiry in Northern Ireland.

They will also seek, through him, “the unconditional co-operation from the orders who ran institutions where children were placed”. They expect the meeting will be attended by officials of the religious congregation which managed the institutions against whom claims of physical, sexual and psychological abuse and neglect were made.

The group has described meetings so far with the Catholic Bishops Conference in Dublin and with individual Catholic Church leaders in the North as “unsatisfactory”.They note Savia campaigned for the Northern Ireland Executive to hold an inquiry into historical institutional abuse, final preparations for which are being undertaken by the Office of the First and Deputy First Minister. “This has been a long and tortuous route for some survivors and victims, reawakening and reliving memories that were nightmares for some. We believe that the Cardinal holds a key position that will allow that nightmare to end. As the leader of the Catholic Church in Ireland he must now not just quote the Gospel, but is morally bound in his position to have the courage to live up to it,” they said.