Cardinal admits failure to support abuse survivor

Screenshot ICN/JS

Source: IICSA

During the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA) last week, Cardinal Vincent Nichols said he had failed to support a survivor of abuse.

Cardinal Nichols was questioned on Wednesday by the lead counsel for the inquiry, Brian Altman QC. Mr Altman asked the Cardinal about the treatment of one survivor who had approached him for help two years ago. Identified as A711, she was abused as a teenager by a priest in the Servite Order, and raped when she was 24. She was not pursuing a criminal case or seeking compensation. In May 2017, she went to Cardinal Nichols in his capacity as Archbishop of the Westminster Diocese, to complain.

Altman said: "She wrote to him again repeatedly. She was directed by Cardinal Nichols' private secretary to the National Catholic Safeguarding Commission, but the NCSC told her it had no jurisdiction over individual dioceses, effectively leaving her with nowhere to go."

"So she ended up in a pointless back and forth with Westminster that made her feel like she was being kicked from pillar to post."

Altman described her demeanour during her testimony as "calm, dignified and considered," and said all her written exchanges with the church, were "polite.. to a fault." He went on: "Following her efforts with Westminster, A711 was still so frustrated by its lack of any proper response to her concerns, that 11 months ago she made a subject access request, and discovered she was being described by the church behind the scenes as 'deeply manipulative' and 'a needy victim,' who was generating a passive-aggressive threat that, 'If we don't do what she wants, she will cause trouble,' such that the Westminster Diocese should 'keep playing the good practice card if we are to contain this person's manipulative behaviour.' That last comment came from Peter Houghton, the chair of the Westminster Safeguarding Commission, a man who remains in that post today. So not only was A711 being given the run-around by the Westminster Diocese, she was also being insulted by its safeguarding team behind the scenes at the same time," Altman said.

He pointed out that at the same time as the diocese was failing this person, it was also announcing that it was to launch an independent review into safeguarding practices.

Mr Altman asked the Cardinal: "Do you not see a disconnect between the presentation of the public face of the Church, announcing a new review on all aspects of safeguarding, and the reality on the ground? At the very time you're saying all of this publicly, privately you're refusing to engage with this woman?"

Cardinal Nichols responded: "Yes, that's true. I'm afraid there are not many areas of my life in which there is total integrity. I failed in this. I failed to sustain this person in a difficult period in their life."

Mr Altman also questioned Cardinal Nichols about the summit Pope Francis held in February to discuss the sexual abuse crisis in the Church.

Cardinal Nichols agreed that there was still much to be done. He referred to the example of a bishop in Puerto Rico at the summit, who encouraged the topic of safeguarding children to be discussed in every single parish in his diocese.

The Cardinal said that the culture of safeguarding in UK churches was "radically different" from 12 years ago, but also accepted: "There's much, much more we have to achieve."

He said that the summit had been a "revelation" to him as he listened to the experiences of survivors from around the world, though he had already heard testimonies from survivors in the UK.

"The voices I heard in the meeting in Rome were far more explicit in the physical details in which they spoke about their abuse than I'd heard when sitting face to face while I was at Birmingham," he said.

On the second day of giving evidence to IICSA, Cardinal Nichols was questioned about the Seal of the Confession.

He said: "I would defend the seal of confession absolutely. The history of the Catholic Church has a number of people who've been put to death in defence of the seal of confession. It might come to that."

Cardinal Nichols said, if IICSA recommended breaking the seal, as the Royal Commission has done in Australia, it would be "rejected" by the Bishops' Conference of England and Wales.

"It would put every priest in this country in a position of great liability, because he would not be able to defend himself if someone went forward and said: 'I told Father X I am an abuser.' Anybody could do that, and no priest could defend himself."

He said that no one had ever declared to him during confession that they were an abuser or had been abused. He said he believed child-abusers convinced themselves they were not doing anything wrong, so were "very unlikely to confess to it as a sin."

LINKS

IICSA
www.iicsa.org.uk/

Public Hearing Transcript
www.iicsa.org.uk/key-documents/15661/view/Public-hearing-transcript-fri-8-Nov-2019.pdf