Brady under pressure as sex abuse victims talk of cover-up, The Parental Alienation Debate Belongs in the Courtroom, Not in DSM-5

articles
- Brady under pressure as sex abuse victims talk of cover-up
- Fresh claims put pressure on Cardinal Brady
- The Parental Alienation Debate Belongs in the Courtroom, Not in DSM-5

Brady under pressure as sex abuse victims talk of cover-up
By Greg Harkin
Tuesday May 01 2012

CHURCH leaders will come under renewed pressure when a BBC documentary is screened tonight outlining the widespread cover-up of clerical sex abuse here.

‘This World: The Shame of the Catholic Church’ is said to focus on Cardinal Sean Brady’s role in an ecclesiastical investigation that led to the silencing of two victims of Fr Brendan Smyth.

Victims of paedophile priests in Co Donegal will also tell how the church failed to deal with complaints which allowed one cleric to  continue to abuse more victims.

The broadcaster has refused to comment on the investigation by reporter Darragh Mac Intyre but BBC sources say the documentary has “powerful
testimony” from abuse victims. http://www.independent.ie/national-news/brady-under-pressure-as-sex-abuse-victims-talk-of-coverup-3096117.html

Fresh claims put pressure on Cardinal Brady
By Andy Martin BBC News
1 May 2012

Cardinal Brady became the Catholic Primate of all-Ireland in 1996, but the appointment that may define his career was made 21 years earlier.

As a Bishop’s secretary in 1975, he was tasked with investigating a complaint of sexual abuse made against a fellow priest, the man who would later be exposed as Ireland’s most prolific paedophile, Fr Brendan Smyth….

Following two major and damning reports into the handling of clerical abuse in Ireland, it emerged that Ireland’s most senior Catholic Priest had himself been involved in a process in which sex abuse was kept from the civil authorities….

However, McIntyre’s BBC investigation reveals that the teenage victim, Brendan Boland, had also told the then Father Brady and his colleagues, about other children who were being abused by Smyth.

He even furnished the investigating priest and his colleagues with their names and addresses.

Father Brady interviewed one of those boys, who corroborated each of Brendan Boland’s claims before being sworn to secrecy.

Father Brady however, failed to inform any parent of the children in the group that they had been abused. Nor were the police told of Smyth’s crimes against them. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-17853126

The Parental Alienation Debate Belongs in the Courtroom, Not in DSM-5
Timothy M. Houchin, MD, John Ranseen, PhD, Phillip A. K. Hash, DO, PhD and Daniel J. Bartnicki, JD
J Am Acad Psychiatry Law 40:1:127-131 (January 2012) – the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law.

The DSM-5 Task Force is presently considering whether to adopt parental alienation disorder (PAD) as a mental illness. Although controversy has surrounded PAD since its inception in 1985, pro-PAD groups and individuals have breathed new life into the push to establish it as a mental health diagnosis. In this analysis, we argue that it would be a serious mistake to adopt parental alienation disorder as a formal mental illness in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition (DSM-5)….

The Origin of PAS

Richard Gardner, formerly a psychoanalyst and child psychiatrist on the clinical faculty at Columbia University, introduced the term parental alienation syndrome in his 1985 debut article on the subject….he openly supported abolishing child abuse reporting laws and controversially declared that sexual abuse cases are “turn-ons” for those involved in the court process, including lawyers and judges. Despite these unusual claims, Gardner was highly sought as an expert witness, testifying in over 400 child custody cases before the end of his career….

Controversial since its inception, PAS has compelled many scholars to write articles critical of Gardner’s theory. Kelly and Johnston have been noteworthy critics of PAS, writing in their 2001 article, “The Alienated Child, A Reformulation of Parental Alienation Syndrome, ” that “PAS terminology has led to widespread confusion and misunderstanding in judicial, legal, and psychological circles” (Ref. 9, p 250). They also highlighted the lack of empirical support for PAS as a psychiatric diagnosis and the barring of PAS testimony in many courtrooms….

Criticisms of PAS have not been limited to mental health professionals, as legal scholars have also been loath to accept the premise that parental alienation should be formally classified as a mental illness. For example, in her 2002 article, “Parental Alienation Syndrome and Alienation: Getting it Wrong in Child Custody Cases,”12 Carol S. Bruch, JD, voiced concern with Gardner’s tendency to cite his own, non-peer-reviewed books and publications on PAS. She noted that in one typical article, Gardner cited 10 sources: 9 writings of his own and 1 by Sigmund Freud. She further refuted Gardner’s suggestion that PAS was a generally accepted psychiatric phenomenon by pointing out that, when the validity of PAS was challenged in court, his testimony was often excluded.

In our opinion, Gardner’s approach of self-publishing books and then citing himself as an authoritative reference in the scholarly literature went beyond simple self-aggrandizement; it was frankly misleading. We agree with Ms. Bruch that the inaccurate portrayal of PAS as an accepted and credible diagnosis gets it wrong on many levels. http://www.jaapl.org/content/40/1/127.full

The Archbishop of Dublin challenges the Church – 60 Minutes – CBS News

The Archbishop of Dublin challenges the Church – 60 Minutes – CBS News
March 4, 2012
The Dublin archdiocese refused to turn over records on priests who abused children, that is until Diarmuid Martin became archbishop. Bob Simon reports.
http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=7400874n

The Archbishop of Dublin challenges the Church – CBS News
March 4, 2012
(CBS News) An Irishman named Diarmuid Martin says the Catholic Church in Ireland has reached a breaking point, a crisis that he says results from the sexual abuse of children by priests and the cover-up by the Church. Martin has provided tens of thousands of pages of evidence against specific priests, and his words and actions carry extraordinary weight. That’s because Diarmuid Martin is the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Dublin. Bob Simon reports….

For decades, the outrage was covered up and the priests were largely protected. An Irishman named Diarmuid Martin would not disagree with any of this. He has dared to publicly criticize the Church, and his words carry a lot of clout because Diarmuid Martin is the archbishop of Dublin….

Archbishop Martin:….There’s overwhelming evidence that the Church hierarchy was not only aware of the sexual abuse, but did little about it. The Dublin Archdiocese knew who the predator priests were, even wrote reports about them but then locked up the files. Investigators on a state panel, the Murphy Commission, asked for the files, but the Church refused until Diarmuid Martin became archbishop.

Martin: I provided the Murphy Commission investigation into Dublin Diocese over 65,000 documents. And the material was there. It was in my archives.

The documents revealed that one priest admitted abusing over a hundred children. Another said he abused children twice a month for 25 years. Archbishop Martin believes thousands of children suffered similar fates.

Martin: Abuse isn’t– it isn’t– it isn’t just the, you know, the actual sexual acts, which are horrendous, but sexual abuse of a child is– it’s a total abuse of power. It’s actually saying to a child, “I control you.” And that is saying to the child, “You’re worthless.”….

Patsy McGarry is the religious affairs correspondent for the Irish Times. He says other high-ranking figures in the church have been directly tied to the cover-up….

Including Archbishop Martin’s superior, Cardinal Sean Brady. When he was a young priest, Brady interviewed two teenagers who’d been abused by a priest. Twenty years later, when one of them sued the Church, it was revealed that Brady had ordered him to remain silent.

McGarry: He met those young people, he believed those young people, he swore them to secrecy as part of the canon law investigation process. He never informed the police, he never informed the health authorities. He informed nobody in civil society.

Just last November, the church agreed to a secret financial settlement in Dublin High Court. Cardinal Brady has apologized for his actions and said he was ashamed he did not uphold the values he believes in. The priest he helped protect went on to abuse 20 more children….

The Vatican, says Patsy McGarry, also overruled Archbishop Martin’s suggestion that two bishops associated with the scandal step down….

Martin: There’s a real danger today of people saying– “The child abuse scandal is over. Let’s bury it. Let’s move on.” It isn’t over. Child protection and the protection of children is something will go on– for– for– you know, for the rest of our lives and into the future. Because the problems are there.

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-18560_162-57390125/