Sexual abuse of children by priests was known ‘at all levels’ in Catholic Church, says Archbishop of Dublin

There was ‘no effort made to deal with perpetrators’, Dermot Farrell tells US Catholic TV network

Archbishop Dermot Farrell: church had 'a culture of denial, a culture of covering up, a culture of silencing, ignoring'. Photograph: Alan Betson

The archbishop made his remarks on clerical abuse in an interview with a US conservative Catholic TV network.

Of the perpetrators of the abuse, he said: “Sometimes they were left in situ, sometimes they were moved around, because there was maybe a thinking the problem was the person they were involved with rather than with the actual perpetrators,” he said.

“So if you moved them somewhere else that’ll deal with the problem. They were putting the blame on the survivor,” he said.

“We know different now but then, because there was a sexual element in it, they [church authorities] didn’t want to deal with that. That was part of the, maybe, the shame that they wouldn’t actually deal with it or make it known. They kept it secret and it was very secretive.”

He said there was “a culture of denial, a culture of covering up, a culture of silencing, ignoring. Nobody would accept it. The other thing, it was endemic in society”.