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Tom Doorley's avatar

Good point, Declan. We don’t know what is in the Marmion file but I have feeling that certain items have gone missing. Indeed, the Jesuits have admitted as much. I have no doubt that some of the community knew what he was up to well before 1977. I have been told by two OBs that they were questioned about Marmion in 1972 or 1973 by Noel Barber but NB doesn’t recall this. I wonder if the complaints you mention were on paper. I suspect they may have been verbal.

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Alan O'Neill's avatar

I had to laugh at "we're not made of money"! 😂 Says it all really!

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Tom Doorley's avatar

It does rather!

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Donal Ballance's avatar

Tom, I think it’s mainly true to say that the abuses may have mainly happened in ‘another time’….chronologically, as it were. But the concealment of the abuses and the clerical abusers has been consistent across every cycle of clerical leadership in more contemporary history and right up to the present day. While the crimes and criminals themselves are awful, who is to say the deliberate concealment of those crimes and criminals is not of equal and heinous offence?

The clerical paedophiles at least had the excuse, unforgivable as it is, of a psychiatric condition that manifested itself as a compulsive sexual perversion. The Provincials and leadership of the relevant Orders over the past four decades had no such excuse. The children simply were of little or no importance in comparison to the reputation of the Order. That is the icy coldness that has been so at odds with the moral compass and compassion claimed by these Orders. The impacted children are now all in their 60’s and 70’s, so they matter even less, hence the begrudging nod to redress.

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Tom Doorley's avatar

Donal, this is the absolute truth. In other words, the offences have continued to virtually the present day in that the Order refused to acknowledge the crimes of which they had knowledge. I am going to amend my initial post accordingly and thank you so much for this observation. It is critical.

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Declan Moloney's avatar

Tom, the jesuits in belvedere knew about the abuses long before I left Belvedere in 1977. You will recall the "spiritual father" one to one mentoring program for boys in the years 1-3 of secondry education. There must have been reports submitted by the priests involved in this scheme to their superiors. I dont believe for one moment these reports were mot made. There is a file somewhere in the jesuitical world containing this information.I raised this with the current provincial and he played a game with me and attemped to avoid dealing with the issue. He then referred me onto the organisation responsible for managing this issue for them.

My initial concern was Finbar Lynch's name on the list of 15 which Ill be honest I had serious concetns about as I never saw any evidence of abuse capacity from that man.But when I advised that committee member about the spiritual father mentoring program she basically ignored it.

I have no doubt that those reports submitted by individual spiritual father mentors form the basis of the quick settlement scheme the jesuits have taken. So can you please raise the issue of these paper complaints raised when you and I attended belvedere from 1971 to 77. We need these to be released.

Declan Moloney

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Sheila Dillon's avatar

That's powerful, Tom. The Christian spirit..........

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Tom Doorley's avatar

Thank you so much, Sheila. Yes, the Christian spirit seems to be at a premium amongst these men of the cloth!

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Frank's avatar

Probably getting tips from the Christian Brothers Tom.

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Tom Doorley's avatar

A similar playbook, Frank

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