Official Report: Minutes of Evidence

The Chairperson (Ms Bradshaw): I welcome to the meeting Mr Patrick Corrigan, who is head of nations and regions and the Northern Ireland programme director at Amnesty International; Ms Nikella Holmes, who is a representative from the interfaith clerical abuse survivors group; and Mr Anthony, who goes by "Tony", Gribben, who is a representative from the Dromore Group. Thank you all for coming to the Committee, and thank you for your written submissions. They came in in good time. All members will have had a chance to read them and will have some questions for you. Would you like to make some opening remarks?

Ms Nikella Holmes (Interfaith Clerical Abuse Survivors): I will go first. Thank you all so much for inviting us today and giving us the chance to speak to you. As Paula said, my name is Nikella Holmes, and I am a survivor of clerical abuse. I am also representing the Interfaith Clerical Abuse Survivors group, which has been involved with the TEO-commissioned historical clerical abuse research. I am also a founder member of the Northern Ireland Survivor Council, which looks to bring the voices of survivors to the forefront. That is really important.

My message today is this: listen to survivors. We really want to make use of the research that has been done and the recommendations that are being put forward. I want to highlight how important and necessary that is.

I will pass over to Tony.

Mr Anthony Gribben (Dromore Group): I share my special thanks, particularly to Paula, who has been able to get us to the Committee today, and to each of you for taking the time — I know that it is part of your portfolio — to speak to survivors. That is critical for us. I represent the Dromore Group, and we are survivors from the Catholic diocese of Dromore, which is in the south Down area and leads into south Armagh as well. That diocese is particularly known for a number of schools and parishes in which children were abused over a number of years.

I was an active member of the reference group and engaged in putting together and helping to write the terms of reference and advising on the reports. Have you received the reports or the recommendations?

The Chairperson (Ms Bradshaw): No. We have received a written briefing from TEO officials, some of whom are behind you at the back of the room, but we have not received the reports. I can assure you of that.

Mr Gribben: OK. The reports are quite dense, so, when you get them, it will take a bit of time to get through them. The recommendations are clear and simple. There is one key recommendation, which is for an independent public inquiry, and I will spend a bit of time on that. I do not want to overtake what is happening in TEO, but, given that this is perhaps the only opportunity that I will have to speak to you, I want to share what, I think, a public inquiry would entail for us. Is that OK?

The Chairperson (Ms Bradshaw): Yes. I have questions on that. We can leave your opening remarks there and bring Patrick in, because that will be a key feature of the discussion. Thank you, Tony.

Go ahead, please, Patrick.

Mr Patrick Corrigan (Amnesty International UK): Chair and Committee members, thanks very much for giving us the opportunity to give evidence today. Amnesty International has worked with victims and survivors of clerical child abuse for 15 or 16 years and has been through the processes that led to the historical institutional abuse (HIA) inquiry and the subsequent work done on mother-and-baby homes etc that is still advancing.

Clerical abuse in faith settings is the unfinished business from the Executive's three-stranded approach. Our core message is that the abuse and harm suffered by the victims of clerical abuse outside institutional settings is no less severe and that their right to truth, justice and accountability is no less important. They have waited long enough — too long. It has been a case of justice being delayed, but it is getting into the realms of justice being denied. Having spoken to many survivors over the years, it has become increasingly clear to us that the hardest part for many is not simply the abuse but the many years of denial and delay that have followed when it has come to getting their voices heard and getting a response from government.

From a human rights perspective, which is one of the things that I am trying to bring to the discussion, when the state knows that abuse has happened, it cannot turn away. Even when abuse is carried out by private individuals, the state has legal obligations to protect people from harm, investigate allegations and ensure effective remedies. I regret that Committee members have not had the opportunity to access the research —

The Chairperson (Ms Bradshaw): We tried.

Mr Corrigan: — but the research commissioned by the Executive is the most comprehensive work done yet. It is the most comprehensive review of clerical child abuse in this jurisdiction. Its recommendations, which we touched on in our written submissions, have been widely supported by the victims, researchers and officials involved in the process. We now want to see the implementation of the recommendations. The research is not the end point; it should be the starting point for the work ahead.

There are three key actions. First, we want to see the research published. We want not only you but the public to have access to it. It is important that there is public discourse around it that is informed by the evidence gathered to date. Secondly, victims need access to dedicated trauma-informed support services. Finally, the Executive should establish a properly resourced statutory independent inquiry to establish the truth, to examine failures by faith institutions and the state, to ensure accountability and, crucially, to ensure non-repetition. As we will, no doubt, discuss, the recent revelations about the Presbyterian Church in Ireland and its catastrophic safeguarding failures should be a call to us that this is not simply a matter of historical abuse but very much a present-day reality. We want to focus on that.

The Committee has a really important role. Your scrutiny role can help ensure the transparency, urgency and accountability that we need to see in the Executive's response. This is about ensuring that victims and survivors are heard, that systemic failures are addressed and, ultimately, that children are better protected in Northern Ireland in the future than they have been in the past.

I am happy to get into any of those issues.

The Chairperson (Ms Bradshaw): Thank you. Nikella, I will start with you. I will pick up on what Patrick was saying about how the issue is not only historical — there are historical cases, obviously — but, unfortunately, still ongoing today. If you feel comfortable speaking about it, will you comment on your experience and that of members of your group when it comes to the process for reporting the abuse? Were you taken seriously? What about the investigatory processes? What about the interaction with the PSNI?

Ms Holmes: Absolutely. As you will be aware, one of the research pieces is survivor testimonies. I think that 37 was the final number, but it goes a lot wider than that. The campaign to gather survivor testimonies was short, because we had only so much time to include that in the research. The number would be significantly higher were we to do that research again. How long is a piece of string? That is really the answer to your question. There is a range of testimonies about people having reported the abuse and not being believed; that it was reported and kept quiet; or that papers and records were not kept to assist a report to the police and enable convictions. That comes down to personalities in a Church and what structures are set up. In Northern Ireland, we do not have mandatory reporting laws, contrary to the Republic of Ireland, which now does, and it includes clerical professionals.

For me, this piece and some of the recommendations look at safeguarding, and, as we have said, our Churches need to be held accountable. There also needs to be support, because the Churches are in the voluntary sector and are not, technically, always trained to keep people safe, to report or to hold records. Statutory safeguarding for our Churches would help and would make them accountable. There is a range of testimonies, and they span from the 1960s or 1970s to the 2010s; that is those who are included in the research and those who have come to us personally. It is very much a current issue.

The Chairperson (Ms Bradshaw): You have answered my follow-up question about what needs to happen. Thank you.

Tony, you talked about the need for a public inquiry, and, in your written submission, you said that attention needs to be given to the cover-up during the Troubles. Can you talk about that? You have also talked about the role of bystanders or a lack of action by those who had an opportunity to intervene and protect. In the context of a public inquiry, why do you feel that those two issues, in particular, are important?

Mr Gribben: That note was very much Dromore-specific.

The Chairperson (Ms Bradshaw): That is why I am asking you about it.

Mr Gribben: The issues that I will raise with you today will equally apply to other faiths and other geopolitical areas. One issue that comes up is that we do not understand how a paedophile was on the loose for 30 years. How can that happen? It was the worst-kept secret in the school, particularly among the schoolboys, that that paedophile — Father Malachy Finegan — had a sexual interest in young boys. You were called out of study at night and returned to study within the hour, and then someone else was called out. "No one knew what was happening" is simply not possible to believe. I am talking about school governors. They would have been aware. In my case, the case of St Colman's College, Finegan was reallocated to a parish for a cooling-off period before coming back and hitting on youngsters even more violently. We are meant to believe that the governors, the teaching body and the two sisters — one was responsible for the health and care of boarding-school pupils — did not know.

One of the testimonies in there is mine, where the sister — I am sure of it — knew what was happening but failed to intervene. Of course, you have the wider clergy in the diocese. It is not possible that people did not know. We need to know why they did nothing. We know that people turned away. I have evidence of where a fellow priest suspected that Finegan was hitting on youngsters but did nothing.

I come back to the point about mandatory reporting. There is legislation — section 5 of the Criminal Law Act 1967 — that was introduced at the beginning of the Troubles. It was not designed to deal with predatory clergy, but, under section 5 of the Act, anyone who suspects that a criminal offence has been committed has a legislative duty to report it to the authorities. We have mandatory reporting, but that legislation has not been used. I want to know why. An inquiry would ask why that legislation has not been used.

The Chairperson (Ms Bradshaw): Thank you.

Patrick, your submission refers to the 'In Plain Sight' report from Amnesty International Ireland and touches on the human rights duties a bit. Will you speak to why you feel that the Executive Office should legislate for a public inquiry here and what damage to the faith and confidence of victims and survivors would be done if there were prevarication on a decision on whether to have a public inquiry? We saw with the mother-and-baby institutions that it took far too long. Everything takes too long. Can you speak to why we need a public inquiry, what the duties are and what will happen if it does not happen?

Mr Corrigan: Victims and survivors of clerical child abuse are conscious that they have been put to the end of the line. We are 16 years on from when I started working with clerical abuse victims and we started asking the Executive Office for a public inquiry. They are still there and still asking for that. In the interim, some have died and others have lost faith in political processes to deliver any sort of accountability for them and have disengaged from all processes. I pay tribute to those who fought back then and are still fighting today.

A public inquiry on the issue is important because, as Tony suggested, we are not simply talking about individual perpetrators and individual bad people. In faith settings, there is a culture of deference to a powerful institution, maybe at an international and a national level and very much at a local community parish level, depending on the denomination. Often, the clergy person is a powerful figure in that community, and, if they are the abuser or if somebody in their circle is the abuser, there sometimes has been a reluctance among the wider Church to rock the boat. Again, we have touched on the fact that Church institutions, the most well documented being the Catholic Church but also the Church of Ireland in this jurisdiction and other denominations, had, in effect, a policy of not reporting abusive priests who, they knew, were responsible for criminal behaviour against children. Instead, the Church moved them to another parish, another diocese or, indeed, another jurisdiction across the border. We have seen that cross-border mobility. When we get to a public inquiry, it will be important that there is a cross-border dimension. It will be important for both jurisdictions to understand how perpetrators were kept removed from the reach of criminal justice systems not just by non-reporting but by moving the perpetrators away from the reach of criminal justice systems.

It has also been well documented that inquiries in the Republic, in GB and in other jurisdictions have uncovered a culture of deference from criminal justice agencies, including the police, towards the Churches and towards clergy people, who are powerful figures in the community. In a Northern Ireland context, particularly during the Troubles, there was also a compelling reason to maybe not rock the boat with certain Churches and to keep stability and relationships. We have received information from victims for whom that was a dimension. A further dimension was the breakdown in trust between the police and the Catholic community, where the police service was not seen as a reliable criminal justice agency to report to. There is a mixture of issues. It is not just about individual perpetrators; there was the Churches' institutional culpability and catastrophic failures of the state to hold perpetrators to justice. We have seen that in other jurisdictions, and we will fully uncover that here if and when we have a public inquiry.

The consequences of not delivering that form of justice will be catastrophic. We have identified that, when victims feel unheard, when their reports of abuse go unvalidated and when they have no way for the state to listen to them, they need reliable processes to deliver that, partly because they want to tell their story but also because they want the next generation to benefit from their bitter experiences. An inquiry is important for the same reasons as it was for the other issues that we have talked about in this jurisdiction and elsewhere. It is important to fully get to the truth to ensure that there is accountability, and it is important to have the power to compel evidence. The records research that was conducted as part of the three-strand research process pointed to the fact that it would be impossible to go further and access the records, given the issues with consent and data protection, without the compellability that a statutory public inquiry would offer. It would be impossible to take forward that work without that legal framework.

The Chairperson (Ms Bradshaw): I have just thought of a further small question to ask before I hand over to the Deputy Chair. Nikella, you are doing amazing work online with TikTok and other social media platforms through an almost peer-support organisation. Will you speak a bit about that, in case anyone is watching today who wants to link in with the support that you provide to other victims and survivors?

Ms Holmes: It makes it clear that victims and survivors want to be heard. As part of the Northern Ireland Survivor Council, we got funding from the Department of Justice and the Department of Health to commission research for survivors by survivors. We had an event to bring together the voices of survivors, and we sold out in three days over the weekend. It shows that survivors want to be heard and get their story out. For me and so many others, what we went through was horrendous, but, if we can tell others about the experience and use it so that it does not happen to someone else, that is a good reason to talk about it. When I talk about the survivors of clerical abuse, it is the same thing: how can we make it better so that things are safer? There is a bit of a movement about survivors speaking for themselves that is going on now and will keep going.

The Chairperson (Ms Bradshaw): Good stuff. Tony, do you want to come in on that point?

Mr Gribben: Yes, on technology. Part of our difficulty is that the press and politicians refer to "historical" clerical sex abuse, but there is nothing historical about it. It happened in the past, but we live with the impact of it in the present. The predatory clergy are catching up with technology. There was a recent case where a priest somewhere up in the north-west, in Donegal, who was originally from Derry, had been on an app, engaged with youngsters and brought them to his caravan in Bundoran: that is not historical. Predators, including predatory clergy, are adept at using technology to meet their sexual interests.

The Chairperson (Ms Bradshaw): Thank you. That is a good point.

Mr Dickson: Thank you for coming along today. None of this is easy; it is incredibly difficult for you to talk about it, and a lot of it is difficult for us to listen to. There is no doubt about that. I have been on the Committee working my way through the stories about mother-and-baby homes and Magdalene laundries, listening to people and engaging with those victims. Hopefully, we are moving to the point where there will be a public inquiry. Our Committee report on that work has been published, and we are moving into the legislative phase of delivering it. It will be interesting to see how that moves forward.

Are there lessons that we should learn from that in delivering a public inquiry for this area, in respect of where you are? A lot of aspects of the process, such as the background research, will be similar, but, often, the circumstances will be different. We have had some issues with the mother-and-baby-homes legislation around dates and the period to be covered.

I am aware that this is unfinished business; at least two of you made reference to that. It could be happening to somebody now, and that is disturbing. How will we process and deal with the circumstances of that happening? I am taken by the point that you made about mandatory reporting and whether the law that we have is fit for purpose.

The Chairperson (Ms Bradshaw): Who would like to respond to that?

Mr Corrigan: I will come in first, and others may want to comment. In this jurisdiction and in neighbouring jurisdictions — the Republic and, across the water, GB — we now have quite a lot of experience of running public inquiries into different forms of abuse. Every time, I hope that we are able to do it better by learning from what worked and what did not work in previous inquiries. Some of the lessons of what worked and what did not work from the HIA inquiry have informed how the work on mother-and-baby homes will be done. There was some fantastic digging into that by the people who have been involved in the various research projects to date on which legislators have been able to build, as well as experiences from down South and across the water. One of the difficulties with the HIA inquiry that victims will tell you is that it was not particularly trauma-informed; in fact, for some, it was a re-traumatising process, which was partly down to the structure, in that there was an adversarial approach, and partly down to the inequality of arms, in that religious institutions were represented by lawyers but victims and survivors not so much.

One recommendation that has flowed out of the research and that will be for legislators to determine how to take forward is that the inquiry period will start from 1945. There may be legislative reasons for that or reasons around what is a reasonable date from which to start. We can argue the toss about the best date, but, if one thinks of the age of surviving victims and survivors, starting from that point might seem reasonable.

Inquiries can be difficult due to the length of time that they can take. They can be a long-drawn-out process. Obviously, the longer things take, the more money they may take. One of the research recommendations is about taking a modular approach to grappling with such a vast problem. The research identified that there are something like 3,000 faith settings in Northern Ireland. It is not just the big denominations; there are lots of smaller ones. It is about how you grapple with that and the, frankly, unknown number of victims and perpetrators. One of the recommendations is to have a modular approach. Modules might focus on particular denominations, dioceses, notorious prolific abusers or other themes. Then, on a regular basis, when you get to the end of a module, you provide findings and recommendations and build on those as you move on to the next one. That is one way to build the work.

There are different ways in which we can construct an inquiry. It will take some years, and it will be important for the budget-setters to set a multi-year budget in order to facilitate that. We should not shy away from that. It is important work, and it needs to be resourced properly over a number of years. However, it does not need to be done in the way that, for example, the HIA inquiry was done.

The Chairperson (Ms Bradshaw): Tony, do you want to pick up on something?

Mr Gribben: On Mr Dickson's point, the key recommendation that comes out of the records report, as you will see when you get it, is the good practice from Australia. They have taken a modular approach, rather than having an eight-year inquiry and producing a big report with people in the cemetery by the time it is delivered. As a group of survivors, we would like to see a strategy that has a multi-annual perspective and a multi-annual financial commitment but annual action plans where we can see progress and results. That will be very important.

There are three key points that all survivors refer to: we want the truth, we want justice and we want accountability. Those three factors need to drive each of the modules as we move forward through a public inquiry. Avoid a Hart-type inquiry and engage with survivors to define the scope and design of the inquiry to ensure that we get a return on it.

The Chairperson (Ms Bradshaw): Nikella, do you have anything to add at this point?

Ms Holmes: With regard to the second part of your question, one recommendation states that the process should be victim-centred, there should be open dialogue, and care should be taken to avoid further traumatisation. That has been failing so far, but that is something that I would really recommend. We know how the abuse happens, and it is still happening. We have the evidence sitting ready to go on how we make changes and make our Churches safe while we still hear stories daily on the news of how Churches are not safe. The main thing is that we need to listen to the stories of the victims and survivors so that we can make the change in the future.

Mr Dickson: The inquiry will concentrate on mainly physical abuse, but is there also an element of mental abuse? It may be mixed with physical abuse, but could it be mental abuse on its own as well by people in clerical or Church settings?

The Chairperson (Ms Bradshaw): Do you want to answer that as well, Nikella? Sorry, Tony, go ahead.

Mr Gribben: The men whom I work with were all abused in one diocese, particularly one school: St Colman's College in Newry. I might come across as being quite resilient in coming to meetings to share my ideas with you, but behind me are broken people. There are people who are extremely badly damaged. It afflicts not only the boy or the man who was abused; it goes right back into the family. That has been a policy blind spot, not here — we have not moved here yet on the issues — but in other areas we have failed to look at the wider impact on families. Effectively, it destroys families because there is guilt among parents that they were not able to identify when their children were being abused. They did not understand their child. They knew that there was something wrong but did not have that type of conversation to determine what exactly the problem was. Therefore, there are parents' issues.

Then there are siblings. It goes back to the point that Patrick made: there was a sense of, "Well, I can't really report this because it will impact on my family". There was a sense of "my guilt" and "their guilt". Siblings have come forward more recently, and there has then been a breakdown in the relationship between the survivor and the sibling because it has brought shame back into the family. We need to address the issue of shame. There is that famous case of Gisèle Pelicot in France, who was raped multiple times by her husband and a group of men, and she said that we need to shift the shame back to the perpetrator.

The Chairperson (Ms Bradshaw): Patrick, do you want to add to that?

Mr Corrigan: We know from the HIA and similar inquiries that, while the headlines often focus on the sexual abuse of children, child abuse can take many forms, including sexual abuse, physical abuse, psychological abuse and, sometimes, a combination of those. Any of the processes, trauma-informed, need to be taken from the victims' perspective, no matter how they were abused, and be able to respond to that. We are trying to save the next generation of children not from just one form of abuse but from any abuse.

Ms Ní Chuilín: Thank you for coming to the Committee. It is not easy; I just want to say that. I will give you an assurance: I do not think that anyone on the Committee will have any deference to anyone.

Given the time that we spent on our inquiry on mother-and-baby homes, workhouses and Magdalene laundries, I was not aware that Amnesty was involved in this, Patrick. We should have had you in. You mentioned the culture of secrecy and shame. Everyone knew what was going on. They knew why those institutions were there. No one ever questioned why 14-year-old girls ended up pregnant. They did not ask about the pathways of someone who ended up there. I assure you that we were diligent. We dug deep and then some. The approach that we looked at and favoured was a modular approach from Australia and from the recent COVID inquiry, because it is a more participative process for survivors and victims.

The thing that is not sitting well with me at all is that we have not seen the research that is being referred to constantly. We will need to get to the bottom of that.

When it comes to safeguarding, we need to get the Safeguarding Board in as well. There is an obligation now because, if someone committed a crime and someone else knew but did not report it, not reporting it is a crime. To give you all comfort, we will ensure that, when we bring the Safeguarding Board in, we will ask it about religious and state institutions. I know even from preparation for our inquiry on mother-and-baby homes that a lot of youth clubs and boxing clubs were connected to Churches and there were open secrets, as you described them. People grew up with that and grew up with the shame. One thing that everyone has said — you and survivors of mother-and-baby homes — is that it needs to be victim- and survivor-centred and have a trauma-informed approach.

This is all new to us. I know that you have waited a long time. It is new to me because I was not involved in the HIA inquiry but in the one after that. I can see that we have a long time in front us before we get to an inquiry. I will just assure you that, when we start taking evidence and asking people for their opinions and experience, we will do so not from a place of patronising you but from a place of needing to ensure that it is as good as it can be for you. That is the least to which you are entitled. I want to give you that.

I feel uncomfortable questioning you. I accept everything that you say. I am in no doubt about that.

Mr Gribben: Please, put questions to us. We come here with resilience.

Ms Ní Chuilín: I know, Tony, but I think that you need more reassurance. You need to know that we will be as resilient, resistant and persistent as possible on your behalf. For me, that is more important. We must also ensure that, wherever the gaps are, we try to fill them. One thing that stuck out in your evidence was that no one wants quick fixes.

Mr Gribben: Sorry: what was that?

Ms Ní Chuilín: They do not want quick fixes.

Mr Gribben: No quick fixes.

Ms Ní Chuilín: I ask you to bear with us, because we want to ensure that, if there is a public inquiry into this, it is the right type, and no one is left behind.

Mr Corrigan: It seems to me that the Committee has been left in an impossible position. We have had the benefit of seeing the research. You have not, and you are the scrutiny Committee that is designed to hold Ministers to account.

Ms Ní Chuilín: I accept that.

The Chairperson (Ms Bradshaw): We tried.

Mr Corrigan: We are bound by the confidentiality of a process in which we have been involved. Therefore, we have not given you the research reports. We have not published them ourselves or leaked them to the press. We are trying to stick to the commitments that we have made. However, we are now at a stage where Ministers have had the research since July. We have not seen evidence of progress since. I am sure that discussions and deliberations are going on behind the scenes. I know that you will talk to officials after this, and you may be given more information about it. However, there has been a failure by the Executive Office to continue any engagement with the reference group or individual victims' groups or other stakeholders, and so a silence has fallen over the last nine months. We do not know what is happening. There has been a lack of engagement with victims and survivors and the reference group members. You do not fully know what is happening either.

Ms Ní Chuilín: We do not.

Mr Corrigan: I understand: one is reluctant to ask questions or to probe. If you had access to the research, you would have testimony from 37 victims and survivors, for instance, as Nikella has said, as well as much more. You would be on firmer ground on which to examine the issue and hold Ministers to account.

The Chairperson (Ms Bradshaw): This gentleman — he has just replaced a woman — is from Hansard. They are making an official report of everything that is said today. Obviously, there are indications that there might be legislation off the back of this.

I will pick up on Patrick's point. I am not sure whether Tony or Nikella want to outline this. The research came out in July. Talk to us about what has happened since then: what letters you have written, what meetings have happened and your attempts to push this forward. Is that OK?

Ms Ní Chuilín: That is all that I was going to ask, rather than probe into research that we have not seen. It is unfair on you, and it is certainly unfair on us. Please, in some detail, explain exactly what Paula has laid out. We will have documentation of that, and we will be able to scrutinise it and get beneath the skin of it.

Ms Holmes: Tony knows the detail better than me. I will pick up on your point about the Safeguarding Board. Just so that you are aware, I have had a couple of meetings with the interfaith committee that the Safeguarding Board runs. That is a voluntary representation of Churches in Northern Ireland. Those who are on that voluntarily carry out what is called a "section 12 audit" of their safeguarding. That is marking their own homework in a way.

Ms Ní Chuilín: It is all voluntary. Is there no compulsion?

Ms Holmes: No. There is some fantastic work going on there, but it is not enforceable.

I will pass to Tony to answer that question.

The Chairperson (Ms Bradshaw): Can you give us a bit of a timeline of engagement, please?

Mr Gribben: Yes. The group of survivors had been working through the reference group diligently. We have worked through the process particularly with the chair, Lisa Caldwell. We were really happy when we got the reports in, and then we worked on recommendations, which involved all parts of the Administration here. Different Departments had a person inside the working group. We worked with that working group as well. We got down to six recommendations, really easy to understand. Those were delivered to the First Minister and the deputy First Minister in July.

Ms Ní Chuilín: Can I just say — I am sorry, Chair — in fairness, for completeness, that we got a summary? We got a brief summary of the recommendations. I do not want to portray to you that we are not aware. We got it yesterday. I just want to say that that is all we got: a summary of the recommendations. There was no indication of the pathway through which those recommendations came to be.

Mr Gribben: The evidence in the research builds up arguments for those six recommendations. The one key recommendation is the public inquiry. We can come back to that. In the calendar, we worked with the TEO colleagues — some of them are sitting behind me — and the reports were delivered to the First Minister and the deputy First Minister early in July. OK, we were moving into the summer period, and we did not expect immediate responses. Then we came back in September. We were waiting to get a response. We wanted a reply, a signal that the Ministers had read the reports and of whether they disagreed or agreed with them or maybe that some of the recommendations could be followed up and others not. There has been complete silence. The Dromore Group and the Interfaith Clerical Abuse Survivors group have been back and forth with letters. We were working really well together, saying, "Listen, what can we do to get you to a decision? What more can we do?". The deafening silence is what concerns us.

Coming back to trauma-informed approaches, people are upset — some are very upset — because it sends a signal back to the Churches. You know, "Mani pulite"

: "We are not working on this. It is not a priority. There is something else on the calendar that we are going to address". We need to know whether it is a priority. Is the sexual abuse of children over 30 to 40 years — we have more data coming in on that — a priority for the Administration? It is not a priority for the Churches, at least not for the Catholic Church in the diocese of Down and Dromore, with which I am working. We continue to get pushback when we go looking for truth, although I will not go into the details. The question for you to ask, as overseers of TEO, is this: when are we likely to get a response? You need to ask for a calendar. We sent a copy of the action plan. I have a copy of it here.

The Chairperson (Ms Bradshaw): Yes. You shared that with me, and I have shared it with the Committee.

Mr Gribben: I have here an action plan, which is, I think, in the Committee's pack. I have never in my life seen such a poor action plan. It is dispiriting and disappointing that an open-ended action plan can continue despite the fact that the reports have been in since July last year. We still do not know whether we will get a meeting with the Ministers.

We recently received two proposals. One was on the evening before —

The Chairperson (Ms Bradshaw): The debate.

Mr Gribben: — the motion was debated in the Assembly. I thank you for your contributions to that. We received a proposal to meet on the evening before that debate. The presentation of a proposal such as that to a group of survivors, just before a critical political meeting, is manipulation. Meetings have to be planned; there needs to be an agenda; and the organiser has to make sure that everybody is ready and able to attend at a particular time. That did not happen.

Before this Committee meeting, we received a proposal to meet this morning. OK, I heard in the corridor from Patrick that that was because I live in Rome and was going to be sur place

here, so there was an opportunity to meet. Frankly, however, the time to talk to civil servants and junior Ministers has passed. We now need to talk to the decision makers: Michelle O'Neill and Emma Little-Pengelly. We would like to meet them. We have never met them. We would like to meet them so that they can get a sense of who we are as people and of the issues that concern us. I think that we could convince them that they can get to a decision.

As a group, we are asking, "What's the hold-up?". One of the hold-ups could be budgetary. Well, if that is the case, let us sit down and talk about it. We think that a multi-annual financial commitment over a seven- or eight-year period with disbursements being made annually is possible and would get around the idea of having a big Hart-type inquiry, which is not what we want.

Ms Ní Chuilín: Thank you, Tony.

The Chairperson (Ms Bradshaw): Thank you. That is helpful.

Mr Gaston: Thank you very much for coming along to the Committee this afternoon. I am astounded by some of the information that you have shared with us about the timeline, such as the fact that the research was presented to the First Minister and deputy First Minister last July and has been stonewalled — there has been silence — since then.

I will say it in layman's terms, so that I have it right in my head. The Executive Office commissioned three major research papers to look at records, safeguarding and testimony, and that research has been shared with you. I read in the summary in your submission that, from those reports, there were:

with survivor participation. You have taken part and were involved in formulating the recommendations. Indeed, you have the report: is that correct?

Mr Gribben: Yes.

Mr Gaston: You are sitting on the far side of the table presenting to the Committee, yet that research has not been shared with us. As a member of the Committee, I find that disappointing. It is right and proper that you have that and that you have it before the Committee, but it is a failing on the part of the Executive Office that it still has not been shared with us.

I want to get a timeline of events. The research was presented in July of last year. We heard that there were 37 testimonies dating back to the 1960s and 1970s and up to 2010. When did TEO engage with you to get your lived experience? How long ago was that? How long has the process been going on for you?

Ms Holmes: One member of the group contacted the Executive Office 15 years ago. I went public with my story only last January, and that is when I became involved.

You have been involved for longer, Tony.

Mr Gribben: I had a court case in June 2021 and immediately engaged in a structured way with the Church, but I did not see this only as a Church issue. At that time, the work that was coming in was part of the spillover from the work on institutional abuse. Judith Gillespie was our chair. I immediately contacted her. I built up a really good relationship with her. We got to a point at which we were starting to move on the work. That work had a setback: a procurement process was undertaken, and then the work was stopped, despite the fact that the experts had been contracted. We had held our first meeting, and then that work was put on hold.

We went back to the drawing board and started to redraft terms of reference. That was fine, but it added an extra nine months or a year. I wondered why the first procurement process had failed. I think that it was a decision of the ethics committee, because it felt that the experts who had been chosen did not have a sufficient academic profile for the type of research. The new group and the new terms of reference delivered a number of teams that came together and worked on the three reports. Then we had what happened with Judith Gillespie. We did not understand why Judith had walked away from the project. I still do not know why she walked away from it.

The Chairperson (Ms Bradshaw): There was a series of chairs of the interdepartmental working group, so, in some respects, there was no continuity.

Mr Gribben: Lisa Caldwell then came on board. It takes time to build up a relationship and confidence. Lisa brought us through the process. It was not always an easy dialogue between survivors and the Administration, but Lisa was able to mediate and to get agreement on the terms of reference and what the final report should look like and, ultimately, the recommendations. Now Lisa has gone, so we do not know where we are in our structured engagement with TEO. Does the reference group still exist? We do not know. There had been efforts to meet with some but not all of the reference group. Going forward, it is extremely important that all survivors are involved, not just those who aim to turn up at meetings.

Mr Corrigan: To your question, Mr Gaston, I first accompanied victims and survivors to share their testimony of what they had experienced 15 years ago. At the time, the current deputy First Minister was a special adviser to the then First Minister. The call from victims for a public inquiry, which is still the central call, is one of long standing. There should be no surprise in the Executive Office about what the central demand is. That has been evidenced by three bodies of research that have led us to this point. There have been fits and starts, and it has been a long-drawn-out process. It is about how we move on. We have the evidence base and the agreed recommendations. We need a decision, and we will then need implementation, with victims and survivors helping to shape those decisions. That is the missing bit at the moment.

Unfortunately, the ongoing engagement stopped at the point at which the research reports were handed over to the First Minister and deputy First Minister last summer. The reference group and, in fact, I think, the interdepartmental working group that was overseeing that work were closed down. There has been no ongoing engagement, apart from a couple of emails on the eve of an Assembly debate or this afternoon's Committee session, to suggest getting a meeting with junior Ministers in the diary.

The experience since the reports were handed over nine months ago has been disappointing.

Mr Gaston: Are you aware of any Churches or organisations that were consulted prior to the decision to sit on, rather than publish, the reports?

Mr Corrigan: That is not the issue at all. All of the main denominations and many smaller ones took part in the research and shared their records etc. There were key meetings with key personnel from the main Churches. I do not believe that the decision not to share the research with the Committee or publish it more widely was driven by Churches. If the research were out in the open, it would really help public discourse, public policymaking and your role. If there are details that need to be redacted, so be it — we are all familiar with that — but that should not detract from the importance of getting it out there.

As I said in my opening remarks, this is the most comprehensive piece of work that has ever been done on clerical child abuse in this jurisdiction. It helps to set out its scope, impact and implications. It is a really important piece of work, and it should be out there. It is not helpful if it is published only at the same time as a ministerial decision is announced. That is not the way in which we should be working to inform ministerial decision-making.

Ms Holmes: I have seen the opposite: safeguarding professionals attached to Churches have asked me, "Is this happening?" and, "When's this happening?". For them, more regulation in that regard would mean more help. We have some fantastic people in some fantastic Churches out there who want assistance to make sure that their Churches are safe. That is the side that I have seen: they want it as much as we do.

Mr Gribben: Mr Gaston and Patrick were talking about communication with the wider public. Northern Irish society has to come to terms with an unsatisfactory period in our history. That can happen only with the fullest transparency when it comes to the research and the recommendations. The fact that we are sitting here with you, as elected representatives, is an incredibly important point in our democracy. We are going back to deal with a dark period, notwithstanding that the period has not completed, but there will always be risks.

Paula, you mentioned the Troubles: the clerical sexual abuse of children perhaps flourished during the Troubles. We had a very unstable state. We had a police force that had to become an army. We did not have a normal criminal justice system. Such people thrive when such conditions exist. I know that: I have worked in post-conflict situations in Bosnia and Kosovo, as well as in Palestine. I hope that, in 10 years or 15 years' time, they will have reached the point of being able to talk about the things that we are talking about here today. The Troubles created a period in which the paedophile could step forward and seek out his sexual interest.

I mentioned in my note my engagement with Doug Beattie. I am happy to say that a group of us are going to meet him online next Monday evening. There are clearly issues around the clerical sexual abuse of children that are Troubles-related. One of them concerns my case, on which I have been back and forth with the Chief Constable. The Chief Constable can neither confirm nor deny (NCND) that Father Malachy Finegan was an informant. If a paedophile priest was not an informant, just say, "No, he wasn't". NCND just creates further chagrin. That is one of the points. There are other issues around Troubles-related sexual offences. We fully support Doug Beattie's proposal that such issues be included in future legacy legislation.

Mr Gaston: I understand that the safeguarding report points out systemic failures.

Mr Gribben: Tim, I wear hearing appliances, and I cannot hear you very well.

Mr Gaston: Sorry. I understand that the safeguarding report points out systemic failures across multiple denominations. Nikella has given examples of Churches looking for regulation to help them to build capacity and put a structure in place: did any denominations not take part or respond? What reasons were cited for that?

Ms Holmes: There were quite a few major denominations that did not participate. We have quite a large number of independent Churches in Northern Ireland, and few of them responded. The number of congregations in Northern Ireland is hard to determine, but Google told me that there are about 2,500. The safeguarding research went out to a sample of 1,000 congregations in Northern Ireland, and it had meaningful responses from 291. Therefore, about 10% of churches in Northern Ireland responded and engaged in the safeguarding research. I am not 100% sure about the responses that came in. We had responses from the Catholic Church, the Presbyterian Church and the Church of Ireland, and we did not have a response from the Free Presbyterian Church. I am not sure whether the Elim Church responded, and there is a range of independent Churches. We can get the list.

Mr Gaston: Was there a reason for people not coming back?

Ms Holmes: They just did not engage.

Mr Gaston: They did not engage with the process.

Ms Holmes: It was said that the research needed to be done quite quickly, and we were chased by OFMDFM to get the research done. There was no time to continue to chase Churches.

Mr Gaston: There was an urgency shown for that, but there is no urgency shown to release the reports.

Mr Gribben: It reinforces the point that only through a public inquiry would the state have the teeth to press the Churches that did not engage with the earlier research phase.

Mr Gaston: Does the independent public inquiry into abuse in faith-based settings go well beyond clerical abuse? Are you calling for that?

Mr Corrigan: Clerical abuse is shorthand for people in positions of authority in Churches or other faith-based settings. Typically, we are talking about clergymen in various denominations, but there may be other figures with positions of authority in the Church who abused those positions. The cloak of respectability and, indeed, secrecy surrounds them because of their position of authority. In some cases, it may be people who were youth workers in a Church-affiliated youth association, but it will also include school settings where there is a religious dimension or authority connected to the governance of the school. It is not simply about clerics per se; it is about the abuse of children in faith-based settings.

Mr Gaston: It is essentially looking at the abuse; it is not looking at the position. It is wider than that. If somebody was involved in youth work and was a volunteer in a Church setting, you are asking for the terms of reference to bring that in.

Ms Holmes: Yes. The position and the setting enabled the abuse, and that ties in with it.

Mr Gaston: Moving on to developing the specialist support services that you are looking for, what support services currently exist?

Ms Holmes: There is very little. I am also looking at that piece of work. When we look at survivors, especially of faith-based abuse, we must remember that we are a highly faith-based country. Our faith comes down to a lot of things, and it goes to our core. When that is disrupted through abuse, it will not be fixed by a few sessions of counselling. We have limited resources in Northern Ireland, and many of them are not deep enough to deal with the issues that present from abuse. We need something that is tailored to that abuse to deal with the fact that it is abuse along with one of your core needs, which is identity through faith. We need accessible therapeutic services for people who have been through that abuse.

The Chairperson (Ms Bradshaw): One more question, and then I need to bring in Sinéad.

Mr Gaston: You summed it up well in your submission, Nikella, when you said:

That is a powerful and hard-hitting line. At the minute, if a Church is involved in the Gift Aid scheme, the Charity Commission will have a role in that. What would the body that you would like to see regulating Churches look like when it comes to safeguarding? Does the Charity Commission have any remit whereby, if somebody comes to it with concerns about child abuse or spiritual abuse, it can do something about that?

Ms Holmes: The Charity Commission can undertake investigations. I am talking about independent Churches. Churches open across Northern Ireland all the time. To be registered as a charity, they have to have those policies and procedures in place. Again, depending on the personalities in a church, those policies and procedures may be followed rigidly or they may collect dust; it just depends. As I said, as someone who used to prepare a church kitchen, I know that someone came in once a year to check that it was clean and up to standard. No one is coming in and checking that child protection is in place and up to standard. We have no one to call if we have a quick question. There is no support for Churches. How many church congregations know the lines that their children cannot cross with other people and that people should not cross with their children? There is so much there, and there needs to be a body to which Churches can go to help get everything up to standard and to which people can report and from which they can get advice. That may be the Charity Commission or the Safeguarding Board — I am not sure — but we need something specific to look at that and to hold Churches accountable when it comes to child protection.

Ms McLaughlin: I apologise to the panel for being late. The Economy Committee was meeting in my constituency today, and it ran a wee bit later than we thought.

Thank you for coming in. Forgive me if I ask questions that have already been asked. First, I know that your experience of engagement with TEO to date has been really poor. That is unacceptable, and, hopefully, after today's engagement at the Committee, we will push to make things different for you going forward. It is really important that, at this stage, you do not feel so lost when it comes to the papers that are with TEO. Movement is now required, and you should get to sit down with the First Minister and deputy First Minister. That is the least that you can expect at this stage. That will be one of the messages from the Committee after the meeting.

Nikella, I will come back to you. There is a real challenge in the short term. There are long-term issues and short-term issues, but ending self-regulation by the Churches is a very urgent safeguarding challenge. What action can be taken now to ensure that we intervene where we need to in order to protect vulnerable young people going forward?

Ms Holmes: Absolutely. I do not want to promote one organisation over another, but let us talk about the Safeguarding Board for Northern Ireland. It has an interfaith committee on which Churches come together to share good practice and are signing up to that section 12 audit under which everything is being checked. However, again, as I said, that is voluntary. The Safeguarding Board should have support to enforce that and get that across to other Churches so that they would know about it. I visited a church in the Ballymena area a few months ago because I was asked by some people about that church's child protection standards. The good practice that I saw there was fantastic. We can bring that across to other Churches. The work is already done. It is about sharing that information and making it a priority. Those safeguarding points could be done quickly. People are already doing the work, and we need to give them the support and structure to get it out there.

The other thing is awareness. We have a culture in Northern Ireland of the Church being the highest authority, but are we aware of when that stops? Are congregations aware of what abuse is and when it is OK to speak up and to report? An awareness campaign on that could do so much. After I had told my story, a friend at work told me that her 17-year-old daughter had been getting ready for her formal and she and her friends were talking about my story and did not realise that that could be abuse. That, for me, was the best reason for having told my story. The best weapon of protection is knowledge, and, if we can have an awareness programme on what abuse looks like and the fact that it can happen in Churches — not just the Catholic Church but everywhere — that could be done quickly and with a quick win.

Ms McLaughlin: Yes, particularly if the work has been done on reviewing the current safeguarding practices. A report is already there, albeit that we have not seen it, but there could be quick actions out of that, and that would be important as well.

Anthony, I want to come to you. Thank you for your testimony: it was powerful. You said "shift the shame": that wonderful French lady Gisèle Pelicot also spoke about shifting the shame to the abusers, and that is important.

You talked about clergy being moved across jurisdictions and the mobility of that. Would you support a strong cross-jurisdictional approach to that, given that abuse was widespread and those who were abusing were moved? We saw that with the historical institutional abuse inquiry and in mother-and-baby homes as well. It was cross-jurisdictional, yet it was difficult to deal with it in that manner. Do you have any thoughts on that?

Mr Gribben: Thank you, Sinéad. When I try to explain the politics of Northern Ireland or Ireland when I am away from home, people find it difficult to understand. What they understand, though, is that all the key Churches in Ireland are not defined by a border: it is from Derry to Kerry. One man who is in our group for various reasons is from the diocese of Clogher, which is Fermanagh and further west. He was essentially passed between two schools, one on the southern side of the border and one in Enniskillen. A public inquiry would get the detail of how that was able to happen.

I know Pam from her days when she was a junior Minister. When she first spoke to us, she brought up the case of Eddie Gorman, a Church of Ireland survivor whose abuser was shifted from somewhere in Belfast down to deepest Kerry. That was one way of getting rid of the problem, but, of course, it does not get rid of the problem. It just contributes to the institutional cover-up.

Coming back to your question of whether we need to look cross-jurisdictionally, yes, we do. However, it is not only Northern Ireland and the Republic. We know, for example, that there was a hideout — a Catholic priest therapy centre — in Stroud, Gloucestershire, to which priests were quickly removed for whatever reason, then to return home after their therapy to continue the abuse. Therefore, there also needs to be dialogue between police forces in the UK that should have known about those paedophiles when they were being moved between Newry and Stroud. Cross-jurisdictional engagement is important.

The South has moved much faster recently. It is not called a "public inquiry"; it is called a "commission of investigation", looking particularly at sexual abuse in schools of all faiths. There is an opportunity. Had TEO been able to move more quickly on the recommendations, dialogue could have started between those two inquiry teams, but we can still catch up on that. Cross-institutional cooperation will be important.

Ms McLaughlin: Thank you.

Patrick, you have been in this field for a long time: thank you for your work on it. Amnesty has stressed that parity with survivors of institutional abuse is important. What message does it send to victims — things are nearly like a hierarchy — of clerical sexual abuse if progress is not made on their challenges? So much work has gone into other areas, and that deep and significant cohort is being left behind. Could you speak to that for me?

Mr Corrigan: Thank you. Yes, I have been around the issue for a long time; in fact, I remember giving evidence to this Committee's predecessor in 2012, when the terms of reference were being drawn up for what became the HIA inquiry. I made the point to Committee members then that those who were excluded — in that case, I was talking about the mother-and-baby homes victims, as well as the non-institutional clerical abuse victims — were effectively being treated as second-class citizens or second-class victims. I got strong pushback from some members that that was definitely not the case. Here we are, 14 years on, and they are still trying to press forward.

There is growing and deep frustration that there is a reluctance to hear them, even after all the research has been carried out. That doubt needs to be disproved by action and implementation of the recommendations. Those recommendations flow from a comprehensive evidence base. Either Ministers are willing to accept the evidence base and the recommendations or, for some unknown reason, they are not. There is a lack of engagement with victims and survivors about what thought and decision-making processes are going on. That is unacceptable in itself, but there is also delay in going forward with the safeguarding measures, the engagement with survivors and, ultimately, the inquiry and other steps that will flow from it. It is simply unacceptable.

In the written evidence, I noted research that underlined that the failure of the state or those in authority to listen and respond to victims of child sexual abuse was a traumatising experience in itself. That is what some feel at the moment about the delay, denial and lack of information, with no end in sight. Here we are, 14 or 15 years on. That in itself is traumatising. The sense is that we are not simply second-class citizens; we are third-class citizens or worse, because we are at the end of the line and still do not have an answer.

Ms McLaughlin: We are talking about paedophilia and the abuse of children who are the most vulnerable in our communities. We should be wrapping our arms around them. The failure to address this and the manner in which it has been done is shameful.

The Chairperson (Ms Bradshaw): Thank you all for coming today. We have kept you longer than you probably anticipated, but do you perhaps have some final words? You have given some examples of things that need to happen etc, but perhaps there are final words that you want to leave the Committee with.

Mr Gribben: The Dromore Group continues to stand ready to engage with the First Minister and the deputy First Minister. We reach out with our experience, expertise and knowledge. We are a good group of people. We can bring value to the First Minister's office in order to shift the dossier forward. We have come to the end of what I call the "first phase of a policy cycle"; we are nearly there. We need to get it over the line. We would like to see it done as quickly as possible, and we are here to help the Administration.

The Chairperson (Ms Bradshaw): Thank you, Tony.

Any final word from you?

Ms Holmes: I just want to stop children being abused in church. That is all I want. How we do that is that we make perpetrators terrified to commit the offence. We have all the tools at hand, so I just want to get to work.

Mr Corrigan: It has been a surreal Committee hearing, where we have been discussing research and recommendations that we know about and you as the legislators have no access to. It is simply unacceptable. It is even more unacceptable to you than it is on this side of the table. That surreal shadow legislative process needs to come to an end, and you need to be given your place. Further than that, that research needs to be put into the public domain, because this is a much more important and bigger conversation that needs to be had.

Reflecting on the fact that this conversation has been going on in this Building for the past 16 or 17 years makes me really sorry that we have not made more progress sooner, particularly when I look at some of the safeguarding failures that have come to light in the Presbyterian Church in Ireland and elsewhere that have happened in the intervening years. I can only think, "What if?". What if there had been more robust and early intervention and robust safeguarding measures in place at that point, with those who were responsible for previous failings held to account then? Would the most recent generation of children have suffered? That is a question that we will never quite have the answer to, but it deeply worries me. I do not want any more people to suffer in that way.

The Chairperson (Ms Bradshaw): Thank you. That is a sobering thought to end with. Thanks again.

Mr Gaston: I have just one thing. Your letter to the junior Ministers dated 2 March 2026 contains five questions. Our next session is a closed session. You deserve a response to each of those five questions. Simply because the next session is in private, can we as a Committee ensure that you get the responses to the questions that you have asked the junior Ministers?

The Chairperson (Ms Bradshaw): I was going to excuse —.

Ms Ní Chuilín: Wrap it up at the end.

The Chairperson (Ms Bradshaw): Yes, and we will then agree our potential actions. That is certainly one that we can take up.

Ms Ní Chuilín: Yes, absolutely.

Mr Corrigan: Can I check that the written submissions that we have made in advance of this will also be published on the Assembly's website?

No, they will not. Is it possible for us to record that we would like them read into the record, effectively, so that the information that we are able to share is shared?

The Chairperson (Ms Bradshaw): I wonder whether some of our social media accounts could include that.

Ms Ní Chuilín: Why are they not published as part of the pack?

The Committee Clerk: The pack is not published.

Ms Ní Chuilín: I know that the pack is not published.

The Committee Clerk: Yes, and they are just part of the pack.

Ms Ní Chuilín: Is the Hansard report published?

The Committee Clerk: Yes.

Mr Gaston: Could it be attached to that?

The Chairperson (Ms Bradshaw): Leave that with us. We will see, but I agree with you.

The Committee Clerk: I am sure that there are mechanisms that we can find.

Mr Corrigan: If you had access to the report, I would not be asking the question, but you do not, and there is a need for more information sharing here at the very least.

The Chairperson (Ms Bradshaw): Absolutely. Thank you. We will certainly take that on board. Thanks again.