Church should use wealth to keep abusers away from public – child protection advocate. Two of America’s leading Catholic child protection
advocates have strongly opposed suggestions by the church that care of
laicised priests convicted of child abuse ought, in certain
circumstances, to be a State responsibility.
It follows an interview in which Teresa Devlin,
chief executive of the Irish Catholic Church’s child protection
watchdog – its National Board for Safeguarding Children – said “once you
know he is guilty, then you do have to cut the ties, you cannot
continue to pay for someone, and at some stage the State has to take
over with pensions.