THE VICTIMS:"THE CHURCH failed us. They failed us as Catholics. They failed me as a human being. They took my soul."
These are the words of one of the complainants who gave evidence to the Dublin Commission more than three decades after he was abused.
As the report notes, his sentiments were “echoed and re-echoed” by other victims who had come forward to tell their stories. Chapter 58 of the report outlines the devastation wrought on the victims and their families. It also details the deep sense of betrayal felt by the victims, and their distress at how their complaints of abuse had been handled.
“One unifying strand in all of the complainants evidence . . . was the sense of dismay and anger felt by them that their Church, in which they had placed the utmost faith and trust, had in their view, duped and manipulated them over the years and that it had done so in order to preserve its reputation and its assets,” the report states.
A common refrain was that the nature of apologies issued by the archdiocese had been general rather than specific. Some complainants acknowledged, however, that Archbishop Diarmuid Martin had met them personally and apologised to them.
Asked what he wished for from the investigation, Andrew Madden said it was important to “expose the spinning and mistruths”.
Another complainant said: “I’d like them to take responsibility for things they did. I want them to realise that these abuses, people carry them through their whole life and even their own families can be victims afterwards. It’s a cycle that has to be broken and these people have to realise the damage they’re causing.”
Another complainant said he wanted a victims’ helpline set up which would be independent of church control for “the silent ones” who are “living this horrible, horrible life”.
Chapter 58 also details how angered Marie Collins was by the use of church of “mental reservation” in dealing with complaints.
Referring to the post-1995 period, the report says that while the Dublin archdiocese may have appeared to have been striving to meet its responsibilities in relation to clerical abuse, those who came forward after 1995 were “treated in much the same way as complainants had earlier been treated.”
It notes that the archdiocese did not establish any support service for complainants until 2003 and then “only after agitation from people like Mrs Collins”.
Some complainants told the commission that they brought civil proceedings out of frustration with the way in which they were being dealt with.
In the final paragraph of this the report notes that Marie Collins told the commission that she no longer trusts the church. “After years spent trying to get her church to deal openly and truthfully with the challenge posed to it by the scandal of child sexual abuse she has concluded that within the institutional church there has been no change of heart, only a change of strategy. Is she right? Time will tell.”