This blog provides information about the actions and inaction of the Diocese of Salford in cases where their priests have been convicted of criminal offences involving the abuse of children. It highlights cases such as that of William Green, former parish priest of Holy Family, Wigan who was sentenced to 6 years imprisonment for 27 offences against children aged between eight and 16 years, in 2008, but who had not been laicised (dismissed from the clerical state)two years later.
“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.”
Salford Diocesan priests convicted of criminal offences against children and sentenced to serve term of imprisonment of 12 months or more.
I refer to
1) the Statement by the Catholic Bishops of England and Wales (22 April 2010) distributed at Mass, in my parish, this morning (25 April 2010)
and
2) my several letters to you, since 1 October 2008, regarding both Thomas Doherty, former parish priest of St Joseph's, Todmorden, sentenced to 6 years imprisonment in 1998 for five offences of indecency against a boy under 16 and William Green, former parish priest of the Holy Family Roman Catholic Church, Wigan, sentenced to 6 years imprisonment in 2008 for twenty-seven criminal offences against children (copies of these unanswered letters are available at http://caads.blogspot.com/ ).
I note that the Statement by the Catholic Bishops of England and Wales (22 April 2010) recognises "the failings of some bishops and religious leaders in handling these matters" and asserts that "The procedures now in place in our countries highlight what should have been done straightaway in the past" (I assume that this is a reference to the procedures which followed the commitment by the Catholic Bishops of England and Wales, in 2001, to implement the recommendations of Lord Nolan's report, A programme for action. Final report of the independent review on child protection in the Catholic Church in England and Wales). I also note that the statement asserts that the Bishops "are determined to maintain openness and transparency".
In light of this, I trust that you will now be willing to answer the questions which I have been asking you, for more than 12 months;
Will you be initiating the process of laicisation in the case of Father Green?
What is Father Doherty’s current Canonical status?
Whether and how the policies which you have publicly announced that you will follow in relation to the protection and
safeguarding of children and vulnerable adults have been and are, in fact, being followed in the Diocese of Salford?
Whether you have acted on your commitment, made in November 2001, to fully implement the recommendations of Lord
Nolan’s 2001 report, A programme for action. Final report of the independent review on child protection in the Catholic Church
in England and Wales?
Whetheryou have acted and/or will act in accordance with Recommendation 78 of A programme for action, in relation to
Father Thomas Doherty and Father William Green?
Whether any of the financial contributions which I have made to the Diocese of Salford have been and / or are being used
directly or indirectly to support Father Thomas Doherty?
To view transcripts of contemorary (1998) reports from the Todmorden News regarding the case of Thomas Doherty, sentenced to 6 years imprisonment in 1998 for five offences of indecency against a boy under 16, please visit http://caads.blogspot.com/search?updated-min=2008-01-01T00%3A00%3A00-08%3A00&updated-max=2009-01-01T00%3A00%3A00-08%3A00&max-results=2
Re. Thomas Doherty – priest and tenant of the Diocese of Salford, sentenced to 6 years imprisonment in February 1998 for five offences of indecency against a boy under-16.
I refer to your letter dated 22 July 2009.
I note that you have finally confirmed that Doherty retains his canonical status as a priest and has not been laicised, despite having been convicted of a criminal offence against children and being sentenced to serve a term of imprisonment of 12 months or more.
I also note your attempt to close “correspondence on this matter”. I write to say that I cannot consider the matter closed for several reasons:
1.Regarding the recommendations of the Nolan Report, you advise me to “read the relevant sections of the report again.” I have, now, done so and note many grounds for questioning the stance taken in your letter of 22 July 2009.
·In paragraph 2.10.19 Lord Nolan states that “in our recommendation 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. We did not mean to imply by this, however, that laicisation was never appropriate for a lesser sentence. For example, an abuser may have a number of shorter sentences or cautions and laicisation may be appropriate in such cases. The judgement about initiating laicisation must turn on the facts of particular cases.” (Emphases added)
·In paragraph 2.10.20, Lord Nolan states that in view of the fact “that laicisation (except by consent) is the decision of a tribunal at the end of a legal process … what we recommend is that the process should be initiated”. (Emphases added)
·Recommendation 78 states that “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.” (Emphases added)
Thus, while, you are correct in saying that “The report does not and indeed cannot make laicisation of a priest mandatory”, you cannot ignore the fact that the recommendations to which our Bishop declared that he was fully committed in November 2001 clearly require that decisions not to follow the course of action normally recommended “need to be justified”. Thus, the very least that I would expect from the Commission is that you ensure that the decision not to initiate the process of laicisation is, in fact, justified in the case of Doherty. This could be done, for example, in a letter to be read out in churches at Mass, as is suggested in Recommendation 77 for cases where a bishop or religious superior decides not to follow the “general rule” regarding clergy and lay workers cautioned or convicted of an offence against children.
Despite your assertion that neither “the issue of laicisation of Father Doherty” nor financial arrangements between him and the diocese are “matters over which the Salford Diocesan Safe Guarding Commission has any authority or responsibility”, recommendation 51 is extremely clear in stating that the tasks of the Child Protection Management Team “include advising and supporting the CPC, assisting with decision making, hearing what action has been taken in response to disclosures or suspicions, ensuring that the statutory agencies are involved with appropriate speed, receiving information on steps taken to remove paid or lay workers, or a priest, from post while enquiries are made, and satisfying themselves that arrangements are made to safeguard the interests of children.” (Emphasis added) I would suggest that matters such as the accommodation arrangements for and the canonical status of convicted perpetrators of child sexual abuse fall well within “arrangements made to safeguard the interests of children” in our Diocese and are, thus, matters about which the Commission as the successor organisation to the CPMT should be “satisfying themselves”. Equally, I would suggest that the need to justify the decision not to take the normal course of action recommended by Nolan in relation to individuals such as Doherty is also a key part of any such arrangements. Will the Commission be satisfying itself that such action is finally taken?
You make several assertions in your letter about the supposed role of “the Child Protection Adviser at the time”.I have, consequently, shown your letter to my wife, Patricia Gilligan, who was “the Child Protection Adviser at the time”. She advises me that you have significantly misrepresented her role and opinions in relation to Doherty. In view of this, and in the absence of supporting evidence for most of them, it is impossible for me to know which of your assertions are accurate. Do you still insist, for example, that “The members of the Commission, the Child Protection Co-ordinator and the Child Protection Adviser in post at the time were all part of a group which very carefully discussed and analysed the arrangements which had been made in respect of Father Doherty at the time of his release from prison.”?
There appears to be a clear contradiction between the use of the clerical title “Father” in your letter and the statement made by Father O’Sullivan (as reported to me by the home news editor of The Tablet, Isabel de Bertodano in January 2009), that Doherty is “banned ... from using his clerical title”.Can you please clarify the arrangement as regards use of the term ‘Father’ by and in relation to Doherty?
Re. Thomas Doherty – priest and tenant of the Diocese of Salford, sentenced to 6 years imprisonment in February 1998 for five offences of indecency against a boy under-16.
I refer to your letter of 5 June 2009, which you indicate has been sent in response to my letter to Uschi Műller dated 16 May 2009.
In my letter to Uschi Műller , I raised a number of questions regarding actions taken or not taken by the Diocese of Salford in relation to the former parish priest of St Joseph’s in Todmorden, Thomas Doherty (please seehttp://caads.blogspot.com/for contemporary reports from the Todmorden News about this case).
In particular, I asked
What trust can you or the people of the Diocese have in its Safeguarding Commission when almost 8 years after our Bishop committed himself to fully implementing Lord Nolan’s recommendations, it appears that Doherty has still not been laicised and is, now, living in a house owned by the Diocese?
In your ‘reply’ to this, you state “I believe that Mr Bill Kilgallon, Chair of the National Catholic Safeguarding Commission, has already dealt with these matters in previous correspondence.” You, also, add that you have no further comment that you “wish to make”.
However, my previous correspondence with Mr Kilgallon has very little, if any, direct relevance to the particular matters I raised in my letter of 16 May 2009.
Firstly, the correspondence you refer to ended with a letter from Mr Kilgallon dated 26 November 2008, while the matters raised in my letter to Uschi Műller arise from disclosures made about Doherty’s case by Father O’Sullivan to Isabel de Bertodano of The Tablet more than a month later, on 6 January 2009. (These were, most notably, Father O’Sullivan’sconfirmation that Doherty has not, in fact, been laicised as would have been expected, if Bishop Brain had acted on his November 2001 commitment to fully implement the recommendations made by Lord Nolan in A programme for action: Final report of the independent review on child protection in the Catholic Church in England and Walesand his shocking revelation that Doherty is “renting a house from the diocese”.)
Secondly, the correspondence you refer to was, in fact, focused on a different set of concerns relating to the actions of some members of the Safeguarding Commission regarding the review of posts within the Commission, the timing of such decisions, who was and was not involved in making these and the subsequent very limited advertising of the posts which emerged. (I had suggested to Mr Kilgallon that the actions taken by some members of the Safeguarding Commission may not have been within the spirit of recommendation 22 of Safeguarding with Confidence, particularly as regards transparency and local decision making.)
Thus, in my view, you have not provided any relevant response to the major question I raised in my letter of 16 May 2009, i.e.
What trust can you or the people of the Diocese have in its Safeguarding Commission when almost 8 years after our Bishop committed himself to fully implementing Lord Nolan’s recommendations, it appears that Doherty has still not been laicised and is, now, living in a house owned by the Diocese?
Meanwhile, I would suggest that, if the people of Salford Diocese are to have any confidence in the way which the Church responds to incidents where priests have abused children or vulnerable adults, they need to know that they can trust statements from their Bishop and Safeguarding Commission, and they need to know what these statements mean in concrete terms. They need to know whether a priest who is convicted of a criminal offence against children and is sentenced to serve a term of imprisonment of 12 months or more will in fact be laicised or will, as in the case of Doherty, be housed by the Diocese and allowed to retain his canonical status as a priest, without any justification being offered for the failure to follow recommendation 78 of A programme for action. They need to know, if (and, if so, when) Bishop Brain abandoned his November 2001 commitment to fully implement the recommendations made by Lord Nolan (please see http://www.indcatholicnews.com/news.php?viewStory=13606). They need to know,when Uschi Műller writes that the Safeguarding Commission will “follow the national policies and procedures”, whether or not these policies and procedures include those such as Lord Nolan’s recommendations which have previously been announced to them and which are still offered as links on the Salford Safeguarding Commission webpage (please see http://www.salforddiocese.org.uk/safeguarding/index.html).
In light of this, I hope that you, as chair of the Diocesan Safeguarding Commission will, now, accept the need to comment more fully on these matters and I look forward to receiving a more relevant response to my letter of 16 May 2009.
Firstly, I should like to congratulate you on your appointment as the new Archbishop of Westminster.
Secondly, I should say that I, particularly, welcomed the news of your appointment, in the context of a) reports that you have been a serious and thoughtful proponent of effective child protection procedures within the Church and b) the very serious concerns I have about the actions of the Bishop and his representatives in my own Diocese of Salford with regard to both a Diocesan priest convicted of offences against children and sentenced to a substantial period of imprisonment and a more than 70% reduction in the hours of the only post requiring a social worker qualification in the Salford Safeguarding Commission.
Immediately below, you will find a copy of a letter sent recently to the Apostolic Nuncio, Archbishop Muňoz about these matters. (I also include the relevant attachments.) I send these to you, in the hope that you will be taking an early opportunity to ensure that the people of Dioceses throughout England and Wales (and in Salford Diocese, in particular) can, once again, have confidence that their Bishops' apparent commitment to fully implementing the recommendations of A programme for action (Nolan, 2001) was, in fact, sincere, and is one which is still ongoing.
The Apostolic Nuncio has, meanwhile, again, advised me that such issues are "the responsibility of the local Bishops", and I am, therefore, hoping that you, as their new leader in England and Wales, will be able to take some action to address the ongoing problems which I alerted him to.
Many thanks
Yours sincerely,
Philip Gilligan
18 Dean Head
Todmorden Road
Littleborough
OL15 9LZ
18 Dean Head
Todmorden Road
Littleborough
OL15 9LZ
21 March 2009
Dear Archbishop Muňoz,
Re. Right Reverend Terence Brain, Bishop of Salford: continued failure to respond to letters
In July 2007, you kindly wrote to me (Your ref. N.6824/08) regarding my concerns about child protection in the Diocese of Salford. You advised me that “this issue is the responsibility of the local Bishops”. Following your advice, I have continued my attempts to address both ongoing and new concerns regarding child protection in the Diocese of Salford by writing directly to my local Bishop, the Right Reverend Terence Brain and without writing to you. (For your information, I attach copies of all the letters / e-mails sent to Bishop Brain since receiving your letter.)
Unfortunately, this approach has proved to be completely fruitless. As had been my consistent experience previously, Bishop Brain has not acknowledged or replied to any of my letters or e-mails. Thus, none of my questions have been answered and my concerns about child protection in the Diocese of Salford have been greatly increased, as a result.
To cite just one of many worrying examples: - I wrote to Bishop Brain, on 8 January 2009, raising a number of issues and questions.
These included,
“2. I note that Doherty has not, in fact, been laicised and, therefore, retains his canonical status as a priest. Have his former parishioners been made aware of this? Since Doherty’s conviction in 1998, has the vicar general or anyone else ever asked him to apply for laicisation?
3. I note that in Doherty’s case, at least, the diocese appears not to have followed recommendation 78 of A programme for action. Final report of the independent review on child protection in the Catholic Church in England and Wales, despite the announcements made in 2001 and since. Are you, in fact, committed to implementing the recommendations of A programme for action?
4. I note that Doherty is reported by Fr O’Sullivan to be “renting a house from the diocese”. In light of this, as a parishioner making financial contributions to the Diocese of Salford, I need to ask, whether Doherty is paying a ‘market’ rent set according to the value of this property or a ‘nominal’ rent with the result that his housing costs are being effectively subsidised by the diocese and by the voluntary contributions made to it by parishioners such as myself?”
(To put these issues and questions in context, it is necessary to know that Thomas Doherty is the former parish priest of St Joseph’s in Todmorden. He was sentenced to 6 years imprisonment in February 1998 for five offences of indecency against a boy under-16 (see http://caads.blogspot.com/ for contemporary reports from the Todmorden News).
As with all my letters to him, Bishop Brain has not acknowledged my letter of 8 January 2009 and has not answered any of the questions posed, either directly or through a representative. As a result, I am left with no alternative but to conclude that parishioners in St Joseph’s, Todmorden have not been made aware of the fact that Doherty has never been laicised; that Doherty has never been asked to apply for laicisation; that, therefore, despite his past public statements, Bishop Brain has not been committed to fully implementing the recommendations of A programme for action; and that the housing costs of someone who has been shown, in a criminal court, to have betrayed his position of trust within the Diocese, are being
effectively subsidised from the voluntary contributions made by the people of the Diocese.
Meanwhile, in your letter of 1 July 2007, you also noted that I had copied my correspondence to COPCA and stated that you had “no doubt that they,
together with the Diocesan Bishop, are doing all that is possible to handle your concerns appropriately.”
Unfortunately, I must report that, although they have (unlike Bishop Brain) at least had the courtesy to reply to my letters / e-mails, the response from COPCA and its successor organisation regarding a number of matters has also greatly increased my concerns regarding the apparent abandonment of the policies announced by the Church to the public in 2001. Indeed you will see from the attached copies of my correspondence with Mr Adrian Child, Director of the Catholic Safeguarding Advisory Service that he largely failed to address any of the concerns which I had raised. At the same time, whilst declaring his apparently direct involvement in a number of the very worrying developments in the Diocese of Salford, he suggests that CSAS had already abandoned the organisational structure and national standards which arose from the Nolan report, before the review of these had been completed.
I remain extremely concerned about the actions of Bishop Brain in relation to Thomas Doherty, about the massive reduction in the hours of the only post in the Salford Safeguarding Commission which requires the holder to have a social work qualification, and about Bishop Brain’s failure to respond to my letters / e-mails to him regarding these and other matters related to child protection in the Diocese of Salford.
I have noted Pope Benedict’s very clear statements with regard to child protection during the past few months. In relation to the Doherty case I was struck, in particular, by his statement in July 2008 that “It must be clear, it was always clear from the first centuries that priesthood, to be a priest, is incompatible with this behaviour…” (see http://www.catholicculture.org/library/view.cfm?recnum=8303 ). I sincerely pray that such statements are not just empty rhetoric, and that I can, in fact, trust you, as the Holy Father’s representative in England, to intervene to ensure that appropriate actions are finally taken with regard to Doherty and about other child protection matters in the Diocese of Salford.
