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Reply from Judge Yvonne Murphy's Office and My Further Letter

 

Re: Allegations Against Bishop Magee - and Other Bishops
From Contact <Contact@D
To:

Terms of reference.doc (24KB)

Mon, 19 January, 2009 12:51:14

Dear Mr O'Connor,

Thank you for your recent emails to the Judge Yvonne Murphy, Chairperson of the Dublin Archdiocese Commission of Investigation. Judge Murphy has asked me to acknowledge receipt and to thank you for your assistance to the Commission.

As you may be aware, the Commission is obliged to investigate how complaints or allegations of child sexual abuse by priests were handled by various Church and State authorities. It is not charged with investigating the truth or otherwise of those complaints. I am attaching a copy of the Commission's terms of reference for your information.

The Commission has not yet started its investigation into the Diocese of Cloyne. If we require any further information at that stage, I will be in touch with you again.

With best wishes,

Yours sincerely,

MAEVE DOHERTY
SOLICITOR TO THE COMMISSION


Re: The Nature of Bishop Magee's Response to Allegations of Child Abuse
From: Rory Connor
To: Contact <Contact@D

Thu, 29 January, 2009 0:48:30


Maeve Doherty
Solicitor to the Commission of Investigation into Child Abuse

Dear Ms Doherty

Thank you for your reply to my Emails to Judge Vyonne Murphy dated 15 January.

I realise that your brief is to examine how complaints of allegations were handled by Bishops and others - rather than to investigate the truth or otherwise of the allegations. However the two false allegations made against Bishop Magee (one of them claiming that he was a member of a paedophile ring) must have influenced his attitude to similar allegations made against his priests. It is simply inconceivable that Bishop Magee could have banished those allegations from his mind and acted as if they did not exist, when he was dealing with similar complaints.

The first complaint against Fr B was received by Bishop John Magee in early 1995 when a woman and her father alleged that Fr B had sexually abused her. This was less than a year after the UK Guardian had claimed that an un-named Bishop - actually Bishop Magee - was a member of a paedophile ring. (It was also shortly after the Government of Albert Reynolds had fallen due to false claims of a conspiracy by Cardinal Cahal Daly and the AG to protect Fr Brendan Smyth.)

The first complaint against Fr A was made in December 2004 by another priest of the diocese. He identified his alleged abuser as Fr A in May 2005 and said he had been abused as a young boy by Fr A, a parish priest. Bishop Magee can hardly have failed to recollect the fact that the person behind the UK Guardian's obscene lie in 1994 was a renegade priest!

Items (a) and (b) of your Commission's Terms of Reference require you to examine and report on the nature of the response by the authorities to complains of child abuse. It is my contention that the nature of Bishop Magee's response must have been affected by the fact that he himself had been the target of two obscene slanders by the media, one of which bore a remarkable ressemblance to the complaint against Father A.

It is also my contention that Bishop Magee must have affected by his knowledge the vicious lies directed at another six of his episcopal colleagues. If the Chief Rabbi of Ireland was investigating sexual allegations against other Rabbis AND he knew that a series of anti-Semitic slanders had been published in the media, should he be expected to behave as if the latter did not exist? Suppose that two of the anti-Semitic slanders had been directed against against the Chief Rabbi himself, would we really expect him to ignore this when considering complaints against other rabbis?

Of the seven Bishops who were targetted, six are now either deceased or retired. Bishop Magee is the only serving member of the hierarchy who has been the target of sexual slanders and he was targetted twice. This may well explain why he declined to accept the allegations against Fathers A and B on face value.

The Guidelines on child abuse only require that a credible allegation be reported to the Gardai and the HSE. Bishop Magee had every reason to question the credibility of allegations made many years after the alleged events and at a time when numerous false allegations were being made against Catholic clergy.

Accordingly it is my opinion that Judge Murphy should consider the allegations made against Bishop Magee especially in the context of items (a) and (b) of the Commission's Terms of Reference. I would be obliged if you would forward this communication to her.

Finally I am enclosing an Appendix that relates to other false allegations made against Catholic clergy/religious. In this case the targets were Christian Brothers and a nun who were accused of murdering children. The general point I am making is to illustrate the connection between anti-Clericalism and anti-Semitism that I have referred to above. There is also one specific connection with Bishop Magee i.e. a month after TV3 apologised in him in September 1999, they broadcast false allegations of child killing against the Christian Brothers! I suspect that this kind of thing also had its affect on Bishop Magee's attitude to complaints against his priests!

Yours sincerely,

Rory Connor
11 Lohunda Grove
Dublin 15

Phone 01 .......
Mobile 087 .........