VOTF Ireland’s statement on donations to child rapist Eugene Greene

The scale of donations to the self-admitted child rapist Eugene Greene indicate a most serious state of denial of the most horrific crimes in Donegal.  Leaders of church and state have totally failed in their duty to ensure a climate of abhorrence of such behavior, and of solidarity with the survivors of that abuse and their families. 

We see no solution to this appalling situation other than a state inquiry into the diocese of Raphoe that would enable the survivors to tell their story and bring home to all in Donegal the atrocities that have happened there in recent decades.

While Jesus said that any one who scandalized a child should be tied to a millstone and flung into the sea, those who have contributed to this fund are blatantly contradicting that.  They are insisting that a perpetrator of the most shocking crimes against children should be rewarded instead, and his many victims insulted.  They are compounding the original abuse and betraying their neighbors. 

They show a truly shocking inability to put themselves in the shoes of children who were tortured by this man over many years.

 We can only suppose those who have contributed to this fund are motivated by a misguided compassion for a disgraced priest who may have served in their own parishes.   It is clear they have failed to read the Catholic church document ‘Towards Healing’ which calls upon the entire church community to show solidarity with the victims of abuse, not with their abusers.

We therefore call upon Bishop Philip Boyce to issue a pastoral letter which would put right this wrong and bring home to all the people of his diocese our church’s abhorrence of these crimes.  It should point out that these donations suggest our church is in solidarity with child abusers rather than their victims – and that this brings our church into disrepute.  It should emphasize that while most priests serve their people faithfully, the Catholic church does not teach that the sacrament of ordination makes a priest incapable of crime.  It should acknowledge that dreadful crimes have indeed been committed by a priest in this instance.  It should make a clear distinction between Catholic belief and those distorted and superstitious beliefs that attribute some kind of immunity from sin, and from crime, to clergy.

Donegal's politicians, especially those in ministerial office, have also been disgracefully silent over these atrocities, and should have been calling long ago for a state inquiry into what happened in Raphoe, and into why there are no diocesan records of Greene's behavior when there is now compelling evidence that it was known to some senior clergy as early as the 1970s.  The scale of what happened in Raphoe was comparable to what happened in Ferns, where a state inquiry helped to educate people to this appalling evil.

In Ferns those who had also suffered severe sexual abuse as children benefitted greatly from being able to put their stories on the record as adults, and from being believed at the highest state level.  Raphoe’s many victims deserve no less.  Their political leaders have let them down by not calling for such an inquiry in Donegal, and by remaining entirely mute during this catastrophe.  It is high time they made amends.