Trying hard to avoid my usual slurp, I politely sip my tea from a delicate china cup. Baroness Cumberlege sits across from me, her armchair dwarfing her slight frame and Tory-blue suit. She speaks with a soft yet resolute conviction about her time chairing the Cumberlege Commission. This was set up in 2006 to review the efforts of the Catholic Church of England and Wales in stamping out child abuse by members of the clergy – an issue which has plagued the Church for decades. I am keen to find out what has been achieved, and why such measures were necessary in the first place – one might have expected a holy Church to be free of such horrendous actions.
The stereotype of the paedophile Catholic priest is well known and frequently depicted in the media. A case of a sexual abuse cover-up by the clergy, particularly if the scandal reaches the higher echelons of the Church, is always going to make a good headline. Of course the impression of priests this stereotype gives is highly exaggerated; not every priest is a child abuser any more than every Muslim is a terrorist. Yet the concept of the paedophile priest is not entirely fabricated by a deceitful media. There were twenty-one convictions between 1995-2001. Clearly there is at least a small fire amid all this smoke, and I begin by asking the Baroness why she thinks these problems were not dealt with as soon as they occurred.
‘Well I think in the Catholic Church there’s been something of a dilemma between the issues of forgiveness and how that relates to the consequences of what’s happened. There was a feeling that if you forgave somebody that was the end of the story, without really considering what the consequences were for the individuals who had been abused. Over time there was a realisation that that this is not right, and therefore with great courage the Church said we’ve really got to address this issue. We need training, and indeed now bishops get training in this field, and it needs to be addressed in a comprehensive way.’
The Church has been heavily criticised for the actions of some bishops who simply moved an abusive priest to another parish rather than report them to the police. Such behaviour often resulted in more young victims. Perhaps this permeating tradition of Catholic forgiveness can explain why these bishops acted in this way. Personally I find this hard to accept. Bishops are intelligent men who know that forgiveness is not a substitute for justified criminal prosecution. It seems that the desire to avoid further scandal was the over-riding factor in not reporting priests, and for this a small minority of bishops have a lot to answer for.
A common theory as to why it should be the Catholic Church, as opposed to any other faith, which seems so susceptible to these problems puts the cause down to the required celibacy of Catholic clergy. Does the Baroness think this approach holds the answer?
‘No I don’t. I don’t know about the Jewish or Muslim faith, and whether it’s going on or not, whether they’ve sought to detect it or sought to address it. However I’m afraid it does go on in the Anglican Church. They’ve been confronting these same issues as well but just haven’t been receiving the same degree of publicity.’
The Cumberlege Commission was a follow-up to the 2001 Nolan Report, which suggested a range of reforms to improve the methods by which cases of abuse are detected and prevented. The Baroness’ Commission found that while progress had been made since Nolan, there needed to be a more united, ‘one Church’ approach. Why had this not happened already?
‘Well the Catholic Church has not only diocese (administrative areas) with bishops in charge but it also has a number of religious orders. The last time we counted there were four hundred and twenty different religious orders, and all of them do their own thing to some extent. This presents a challenge in implementing the real consistency that we felt was necessary in policies, strategies and practice when dealing with child abuse.’
Achieving consistency ultimately requires a centralization of the structures used to protect children. Whereas Nolan’s recommendations had often been implemented or not depending on the activism of individual bishops, the Cumberlege Commission wanted comprehensive reform across every diocese. What does this mean in practice?
‘Since we felt that child protection should be at the very heart of the Catholic Church, all that it does and thinks about, we recommended a new organisation – the National Catholic Safeguarding Commission, which would be at the heart of the Church. Sitting on this Commission would be bishops and leaders of religious congregations, but with a lay majority and a highly respected independent chairman. They would set the strategy for protecting children and have a say in disciplinary procedures. In addition to that we suggested that the existing organisation, which is the Council for the Protection of Children and Vulnerable Adults, needed renaming and rebalancing. This wouldn’t do the discipline but it would do a lot of the teaching of people in this area. It would work with the parishes, it’s in the parishes that these problems arise, and we wanted to make sure that there was a real outreach – a spreading of good practice. All the good teaching that needed to happen would be done by this other organisation.’
A very real issue in this whole situation is what to do with priests that have been accused of abuse, but not yet proven guilty. There has been a strong feeling amongst some clergymen that priests have been treated unfairly. Quite rightly they are often removed from their parish after allegations are made, but may then be left in limbo for an indefinite period. Even if the charges are false, the priest’s career may be ruined, forever humiliating him for a crime he did not commit. Naturally the safety of children is paramount, but the Baroness tells me how this should not mean an utter disregard for the lives of (possibly innocent) priests.
‘The last thing we were very determined to do was to ensure that while we respected the needs of those who’d been abused, whose lives had been wrecked, where the trust had been broken, we wanted to ensure that there was fairness to those who’d been accused. We felt that some of the procedures that were different in different diocese were not being fair to priests and indeed the bishops were very worried about that. And so we introduced a review mechanism, openness, transparency, fairness, respecting human rights, a new process, and that has been adopted by the Church. A review has already been called by one of the bishops who just wants to make sure that the priest has had a fair hearing.’
As damaging as the issue of child abuse has been for the Catholic Church of England and Wales, it has been worse for the Church in the United States. The diocese of LA recently paid out $660 million to around five hundred victims of abuse dating back to the 1940s. I wonder if the Baroness thinks a similar gesture would be appropriate in the UK.
‘Well the Catholic Church is working with its insurers to see whether that is necessary. Up to now no compensation has been paid in terms of a monetary settlement.
‘I think one has to think through the consequences very carefully. When we talk to those who’ve been abused they aren’t after money. They’re after recognition of what had happened. They wanted the perpetrators to be sorry for what had happened. They wanted to ensure that it wouldn’t happen to other people.’
Under the watchful eyes of a dozen portraits of old Popes and Cardinals that adorn the walls of the Oxford Catholic Chaplaincy, Baroness Cumberlege speaks of the victims of abuse with boundless compassion. She tells me of a sobering two days on the Commission, when her sole task was to meet these people who still carried the mental scars of their ordeal.
In a thoughtful silence I place my empty china cup on the coffee table. For everyone’s sake, I sincerely hope that the Baroness’ reforms will be effective, and that the Catholic Church can finally close the book on this dark period of its history.
