The rape and the torture of children were downplayed and managed to uphold instead the primacy of the institution, its power, its standing and its reputation. Enda Kenny, Irish prime minister, July 2011
I should have been removed and attended to. Father Oliver O’Grady
He was very supportive. Father Oliver O’Grady, re Bishop Mahony
I called him [Oliver Grady] in and told him he was to decease contact. Bishop Roger Mahony
I am angry at [Bishop] Mahony for claiming that he had absolutely no knowledge at this paedophile who had a file. Nancy Sloan, victim
More accuse Lode priest of sex crimes. Metro front page
The Number One goal of every Bishop, and a part of the vows they take when they become Bishop, is to protect the Church from scandal. Protecting the church from scandal means documents, witnesses and victims are kept quiet and shuffled away. Jewell Casticks, SNAP, survivors’ network for victims of abuse
Case and Jane DeGroot: Before leaving the priesthood Case was pastor of St Anne’s Parish [Lodi, California] where Oliver O’Grady was a priest. Deliver Us from Evil ***** director Amy Berg
1976: Bishop Guilfoyle promises Nancy Sloan’s family Oliver O’Grady will be sent to a monastery. In exchange the family does not press charges. ibid.
1980: Bishop Guilfoyle passes away; he is replaced by Roger Mahony. ibid.
The Howard’s evidence: October 10 1980 letter: ‘I spoke to you once before about Father Oliver O’Grady.’ ibid.
1982: Roger Mahony moves Oiver O’Grady to another parish 52 miles away. ibid.
1983: Oliver O’Grady continues to abuse children in Stockton, Turlock and Lodi. ibid.
1984: Roger Mahony moves Oliver O’Grady to another parish 47 miles away. ibid.
2000: Oliver O’Grady is released from prison and deported to Ireland. ibid.
Pope Benedict XVI was accused of conspiracy to cover up sexual abuse in the United States. At the Vatican’s request, President Bush granted the Pope immunity from prosecution. ibid.
Over 100,000 victims of clergy sexual abuse have come forward in the United States alone. ibid.
There’s no policy to help the victims ... And there’s an unwritten policy to lie about the existence of the problem ... This is all over the world. Father Tom Doyle
This is Father Oliver O’Grady, a former Catholic priest. The Church knew he was a child abuser. Instead of reporting O’Grady, the Church hid him from the authorities. No mistake but part of a secret Church directive. The man responsible for enforcing it was Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI. Panorama: Sex Crimes and the Vatican, BBC 2006
Four years ago this priest – Father Sean Fortune – was at the centre of Ireland’s biggest child abuse inquiry. The scandal exposed details of a secret Vatican decree which seemed to shelter the perpetrators and silence the victims of abuse. ibid.
An oath of silence was part of the secret Church decree called Crimen Sollicitationis. The Directive was written in 1962. ibid.
In 2001 he [Ratzinger] created the successor to the Decree: in spirit it was the same – overarching secrecy with a threat of excommunication. He sent a copy to every Bishop in the world. ibid.
Almost 4,500 US priests have been accused of raping or sexually abusing children. ibid.
There are over seven US priests who face allegations of child sexual abuse living with the support of the Church here in and around the Vatican. ibid.
O’Grady does not appear on the Irish sex offenders’ register. ibid.
Diagnoses of mental disorders in children and adolescents are increasing at an alarming rate, particularly in the USA where the number of manic depressive children has gone up by 4000% over the past ten years. The most widely used treatments are psychotropic drugs. Panorama: Kids on Pills, BBC 2000
In Europe different medical terms are applied to psychiatric irregularities in children ... The bipolar profile fitted a mere 7% of patients. ibid.
ADHD is currently the most frequent mental illness in children. ibid.
Using psychotropic drugs to treat children is a very recent science. ibid.
The tendency to reach out for pills is increasing in Europe too. ibid.
These parents have all lost their children because they’ve been condemned as child abusers, but they say they’re innocent. Their babies were taken after tiny fractures were spotted on X-Rays. Doctors say they're evidence of abuse ... Are they now going too far? Panorama: I Want My Baby Back, John Sweeney, BBC 2014
Our children are facing a mental health crisis. At least one in ten kids is struggling to cope. Overstretched health services are turning kids away leaving families desperate. Just how sick do our children have to be to get treatment? Panorama: Kids in Crisis, BBC 2018
Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services, or CAMS, which currently treats around 400,000 children in England alone. ibid.
Growing numbers of your people are carrying knives. And some even take knives to school thinking it will make them safer. The consequences can be devastating. My own brother was stabbed to death when I was 11 in a feud that I think could have been stopped without violence. Panorama: Knives in the Classroom, BBC 2019
This is East London. Here at this youth club children are being taught what to do if they see a stabbing … These kids are 12 to 15: I’m finding it hard to watch. ibid.
I want to understand why so many young people carry knives. ibid.
Children as young as four have been found with knives at schools according to new police figures, and it’s estimated that over seventeen thousand children between the ages of ten and fifteen have carried a knife in the last year. ibid.
People are just normalised by this sort of lifestyle. ibid.
How social workers make life-changing decisions about children’s lives. And what can happen if things go wrong … Are social workers properly supported to decide who is at risk and who isn’t? Panorama: Protecting Our Children: A Balancing Act, BBC 2022
A mother says goodnight to her child not knowing it’s the last time. By morning the little body has died. Here in the UK a child a week dies unexpectedly and without explanation. So why are there no answers when their child dies without warning? Panorama: Sudden Child Deaths: The Search for Answers, BBC 2024
Ireland’s attachment to the Catholic Church is straining to breaking point. The secret crimes of Irish priests against children have collapsed the Church’s moral authority. This World: The Shame of the Catholic Church, BBC 2012
The cleric abuse scandal is far from ended. It goes to the very top of the Catholic Church in Ireland. ibid.
The police investigation which ended with Father Eugene Green being jailed in 2000 found evidence the priest’s crime were covered up. ibid.
What the Church knew was never explained. ibid.
It involved Cardinal Sean Brady, primate of all Ireland, and the country’s most notorious paedophile priest Father Brendan Smyth. At its centre a boy who in 1975 reported Smith’s abuse to the Cardinal. ibid.
Their families were not warned in any way about the paedophile. ibid.
So far the abuse scandals have cost the Church about three billion pounds and counting. ibid.
St John’s School for the Deaf: ‘He told me to pull down my pants and do it right there.’ Storyville: Silence in the House of God: Mea Maxima Culpa, deaf resident re masturbation in confessional, BBC 2013
‘They know that celibacy is not practised’. ibid. Richard Sipe, former Benedictine monk, Catholic sex therapist for priests
‘This kind of perversion of power that can be twisted in this way. The system of the Catholic clergy ... selects, cultivates, protects, defends and produces sexual abusers.’ ibid. Sipe
Offending priests were allowed to stay in the ministry. ibid.
Bob Bolger was another student who was abused at St John’s by Father Murphy. ibid.
They began collecting sworn affidavits from Murphy’s victims. ibid.
The Vatican had known about Murphy for almost twenty years. ibid.
Identified as a key figure who covered up sex abuse in Boston, Cardinal Law cost the Church tens of millions of dollars in settlements. ibid.
Inside the cloistered walls of the Vatican lay voluminous records of world-wide sexual abuse in the priesthood, centralised in the secret archives of the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith. ibid.