5. As a result of the Nolan report, the Church made a number of structural changes in relation to its handling of child sexual abuse allegations.
6. The Catholic Office for the Protection of Children and Vulnerable Adults (COPCA) was established in January 2002 as the national child protection unit envisaged by the Nolan report. COPCA was funded by the Bishops’ Conference and by the CoR. Its director was Mrs Eileen Shearer and its work included:
7. One of COPCA’s first recommendations was for the Church to establish a formalised organisational structure. This was approved by the Bishops’ Conference and resulted in the introduction of a number of structural changes.
8. Mrs Shearer stated that achieving a similar organisational structure for the religious institutes was “highly problematic”.[4] One proposal was for the religious institutes to join the diocesan child protection structure. Mrs Shearer told us that this proposal was “unacceptable” to:
“some of the religious, partly because they were fiercely independent, partly because they did not view it as correct that they should come under … the rule of a bishop when they had their own governance structures of various kinds”.[5]
9. In 2005, COPCA suggested that four regional religious commissions be established with membership, roles and responsibilities similar to those of the diocesan child protection commissions. Each regional religious commission was intended to have a safeguarding coordinator but in practice this did not happen “in part due to the lack of resources available” to the institutes and also “a failure to fully understand safeguarding for many of the orders”.[6]
10. Adrian Child, who was appointed as assistant director of COPCA in 2006, told us that the regional religious commissions “didn’t really have the professional expertise that was required” nor did they have a safeguarding coordinator.[7]
11. As discussed in Part E, the religious institutes ultimately aligned with diocesan safeguarding commissions or established their own safeguarding commissions.