Madam, - While it is heartening to see The Bishop of Limerick confirm that the numbers of priests convicted of the rape and sexual abuse of children in Ireland is "hideously large", (The Irish Times, August 26th), I am frustrated to see that in the same sentence Dr Donal Murray seems to make a rather clumsy attempt at minimising that fact.
He asserts that "just" 3 per cent of all abusers are priests; it is difficult to comprehend how he could use the word "just" in the face of such a statistic.
According to the census figures for 2002 the adult (over-20) male population of the Republic of Ireland is 1,361,707. Figures from the website of the Catholic Communications Office give the total number of priests and male religious, including those who are on administrative leave, ill or retired, as 6,672. This includes clergy serving in dioceses in Northern Ireland and thus not in the census figures for the Republic.
Nevertheless, if we include all priests and male religious as listed by the CCO we can see that, despite reflecting less than 0.5 per cent of the entire adult male population, priests and male religious make up 3 per cent of the total number of offenders as defined by Dr Murray. This figure is a staggering indication of the unique prevalence of clerical child sexual abuse in Ireland. This prevalence does not seem to be reflected anywhere else internationally. If we are to get to grips with it we need to acknowledge and examine it in some detail - not manipulate or spin it to minimise the scale of the problem.
It is of course true that the majority of sexual offenders are non-clerical: 70 per cent of the clients that this charity supports were not abused by members of the clergy. However, there is no escape from the fact that the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland has a disproportionate number of child sexual offenders among its ranks.
It is of course also true that that Church has among its clergy many thousands of men and women who abhor such crimes and who work with dedication and determination to make this a more just and compassionate society. It is a shame that such tireless and invaluable work is undermined time and time again by the abject failure of many Irish bishops to name and acknowledge the true nature of clerical sexual abuse and to face the truth of their responsibility for the culture of denial and cover-up that they perpetuated - a cover-up whose reality is now accepted by most citizens of this State. - Yours, etc.,
COLM O'GORMAN, Director, One In Four, Holles Street, Dublin 2.