Abuse victim ac
Ex-priest speaks out publicly for f irst time – 20yrs after cardinal abused him – and says lessons still not learned
A FORMER priest who was abused by one of the most senior members of the Catholic Church says the clergy have not learned from the scandal.
Brian Devlin, now 61, was one of four priests who in 2013 accused Cardinal Keith O’Brien, the Archbishop of St Andrews and Edinburgh, of sexual misconduct.
It led to the cardinal, the most senior Catholic cleric in Britain, apologising and resigning, saying his behaviour had fallen beneath the standards expected of him.
Now Mr Devlin wants a ‘radical change’ of the institution to which he once committed his life.
Waiving his right to anonymity as a victim of abuse, Mr Devlin, from Dunfermline, in Fife, has said he was inappropriately touched by O’Brien on numerous occasions while studying to become a priest at Drygrange seminary, near Melrose, in the Borders.
In a new book, Mr Devlin has accused senior clerics of being ‘masters of cover-up and masters of power abuse’, adding that an air of ‘supreme authority’ still dominates the Church – and fears that without change, others will be hurt as he has been. Last night, he said: ‘The story was a global sensation and I thought that the Church would learn its lessons. They haven’t.
‘The clericalism, the arrogance, the misogyny, still exists. There is a creeping clericalism coming back in which distances priests, puts them on pedestals, puts bishops on even higher pedestals, where they don’t feel accountable to anybody apart from their own numbers. What I’m calling for is a radical change in the way the Church is governed.’
For almost eight years, Mr Devlin has kept quiet about his identity as one of four priests who complained to the Vatican about O’Brien, who Mr Devlin first met when was just 18 years old.
His book, Cardinal Sin, will be published this week, three years after his abuser died, aged 80.
Mr Devlin recalls O’Brien at first being a ‘funny, charismatic’ man who seemed to stand apart from the other priests as more approachable. But the student started to feel uncomfortable when, at the end of their fortand nightly meetings, O’Brien began giving him ‘intense’ hugs.
The former priest also said the cardinal began touching and caressing his arms and legs when giving him and a friend a lift from Edinburgh back to the seminary.
The most serious incident happened in O’Brien’s bedroom, when Mr Devlin said he was ‘pulled down on top of him’.
He added: ‘After night prayers he, as he did routinely, embraced me, then he pulled me down on top of him as he collapsed back into a chair.
‘He started caressing me, my arms, my legs. He kept telling me how much he loved me. It seemed clear that what he was saying was that he wanted to have a sexual relationship with me. I was very, very disturbed.’
When O’Brien was made Cardinal in 1984, three months after Mr Devlin was ordained, Mr Devlin made the painful decision to leave the priesthood, as he considered O’Brien ‘a fraud’.
In 2013, he found other priests who claimed to have been abused by O’Brien on social media.
They came together and complained to the Vatican’s nuncio, a form of ambassador, but nothing happened.
‘We said [to the Vatican] that if something isn’t done we’ll go to the press,’ Mr Devlin said.
The four men did and the story became a global scandal.
A spokesman for the Catholic Church said: ‘As the author points out, organisations such as the Church are run by humans, and humans are flawed, which means that every human failing is present within the Church.’
‘I thought they’d learn lessons. They haven’t’