An expert commission says the Roman Catholic Church in Dublin covered up decades of priests’ sexual abuse of children because its bishops were determined to protect the church’s reputation at the expense of victims.
Abuse victims have welcomed Thursday’s publication of a government-ordered investigation into how scores of priests were permitted to molest and rape boys and girls with impunity for decades.
The 720-page report analyzes the cases of 46 priests from 1975 to 2004 against whom 320 complaints were filed. The report names 11 priests who were convicted of child abuse but the others, either dead or yet to face trial, have their names omitted or replaced with aliases.
Investigators spent three years poring over 60,000 previously secret Dublin church files.
The NYTimes indicates that the text above is a breaking news update. A more complete story will follow.
Update: The NYTimes published a longer, updated story filed at 10:52 a.m. ET. Read the entire article here.
Turning Left will follow this story as it make its way through the Irish legal system. No further comment right now.