Kieran Tapsell

Kieran Tapsell is a retired Australian civil lawyer and the author of Potiphar’s Wife: The Vatican’s Secret and Child Sexual Abuse, (2014), Second Edition, Updated and Expanded (2024).”

Kieran's recent articles

Kieran Tapsell. The war on drugs.

Juan Gabriel Vsquez, El Espectador, Colombia, 20 December 2013, http://www.elespectador.com/opinion/esta-babilonia-nuestra-columna-465199 Summary: The so called War on Drugs is an American invention from the time of Nixon. It has been a spectacular and costly failure. But the Puritans in the Americas do not want to even discuss the subject. A year and a half ago, President Santos of Colombia said to Obama that the 40 year war on drugs had failed, and that perhaps it was time to look for alternatives. Obama, for his part, recognized the necessity for debate, and that simple concession was seen by various...

Kieran Tapsell. Things are improving.

Hctor Abad Faciolince, El Espectador, Colombia, 29 December 2013, http://www.elespectador.com/opinion/el-espantoso-mundo-vivimos-columna-466312 Summary: The world we live in is frightening, but it is less frightening than it used to be. One of the best definitions of the word, intellectual that I have read is: a person who has studied beyond his own capacities. There are those incapable of comparing the world of today with that of yesterday, of weighing up the gains and losses; their obsession consists in outraged criticism, arrogant moralising, scorn for any progress, enjoyment or happiness, in the conviction that there is no creature more repugnant...

Kieran Tapsell. Two empires.

Antonio Caballero, Semana, Colombia, 30 March 2014 http://www.semana.com/opinion/articulo/antonio-caballero-dos-imperios/381891-3 Barack Obama is normally very careful in his rhetoric, but some days ago, he said something a little unfortunate. When criticizing Russias annexation of the Crimea, he said to the press: We (the United States) have considerable influence on our neighbours. But generally, we do not need to invade them to enforce their cooperation. Generally? In its brief history of a little more than two centuries, the United States has invaded its neighbours on the American continent twenty nine times, beginning with its defeat in attempting to annexe Canada in...

Kieran Tapsell. Facing prejudice.

Piedad Bonnett, El Espectador, Colombia 5 November 2013 http://www.elespectador.com/opinion/una-injusticia-historica-columna-466919 Summary: Alan Turing was responsible for breaking the German enigma code in the Second World War. He was subsequently convicted of the crime of homosexuality, and given a choice of being chemically castrated or imprisoned. He chose the former and then committed suicide. The Queen has recently pardoned him posthumously. When, in 1952, the British mathematician, Alan Turing was threatened with choosing prison or oestrogen treatment to cure his homosexuality, the freethinking atheist, who openly admitted his sexual preferences to investigating police, risking public derision, chose what was in...

Kieran Tapsell. Pell's business strategy in tatters.

There was once a rich man in England who became tired of watching his friends estates being eaten up by lawyers fees in disputes over wills. So, he made a very simple will leaving everything to a friend, and then wrote a letter to the friend explaining what he wanted the friend to do with his estate, thinking that this was the best way to keep lawyers snouts out of it. That will and the letter ended up becoming a lawyers veritable pig feast because it became the classic case in the House of Lords on secret trusts. I could...

Kieran Tapsell. The best drama in town: the Royal Commission on the Ellis Case.

There is a veritable whodunit being played out at the Royal Commission into Sex Abuse. The Commission is inquiring into the treatment of John Ellis who lent his name to the so called Ellis defence, that confirmed that the Catholic Churchdoes not exist in law. If the sex abusing priest or the negligent bishop is dead or has no assets, there is no one else to sue. John Ellis was an altar boy and was sexually abused by Fr Aidan Duggan from the age of 13. He subsequently suffered serious psychological problems, and approached the Church through its Towards Healing...

Kieran Tapsell. The Trickle-down Effect in Toowoomba

Cardinal Francis George, the former President of the United States Bishops Conference has been described as one of the Catholic Churchs most formidable intellectuals. In the 2003 Ave Maria Law Review he wrote an article entitled, Law and Culture, in which he discusses the famous U.S. Supreme Court case of Brown v The Board of Education, which ended legal segregation in the United States. He pointed out that law, whether just or unjust, acts as a teacher. The segregation laws, he wrote, were a reflection of the culture at the time when they were passed, but their very existence deepened...

Kieran Tapsell. Sexual abuse in the Church - the failure of the Vatican and Popes

As with so many other things on the sex abuse issue, the Holy Sees response to the findings of the United Nations Committee for the Rights of the Child is conspicuous for its failure to acknowledge the central issue raised by that Committee: pontifical secrecy imposed on the Churchs investigations of child sexual abuse by clergy. The Vatican spokesman, Fr Lombardi complained that the Holy See provided ample written responses under the Convention, but the Committee did not take adequate account of the responses, both written and oral. Lombardi makes the gratuitous comment that the report suggests that it was...

Kieran Tapsell. The United Nations and the 'Warts-and-all' history.

On 15 October 2013, Francis Sullivan, the CEO of the Truth, Justice and Healing Council, the body that speaks on behalf of the Australian Catholic Church at the Royal Commission, wrote an opinion piece for the ABCs Religion and Ethics page. He claimed that the submission the Council had presented to the Royal Commission on the Towards Healing protocol for dealing with clergy sex abuse was the most comprehensive document ever produced by the Church dealing with child sexual abuse and a warts-and-all history, going back many decades. The 206 page submission, dated 11 October 2013, conceded that some in...

Kieran Tapsell: The Inquisition of the Catholic Church at the United Nations.

The Vaticans former Chief Prosecutor, Bishop Charles Scicluna, found himself before the United Nations Committee for the Rights of the Child in Geneva on 16 January 2014. He joked that in the past his predecessors may have been on the other side of the table as the Grand Inquisitor. The Church signed up to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child in 1990, but had failed to provide reports under the Convention until 2012, arguing that its only responsibility for child abuse was within the 44 hectares of the Vatican City. It was a Jesuitical response that it...

Sex abuse: the de facto privilege of clergy. Kieran Tapsell

On 29 December 1170, four armed knights from the Court of King Henry II of England entered Canterbury Cathedral. They had previously heard the King complain about the Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas aBecket, who was in dispute with Henry over privilege of clergy, the right of clergy to be tried exclusively in Church or canonical courts for any kind of crime. Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest? Henry is reported to have said. Four knights of his Court took the hint, went to Canterbury Cathedral, and sliced the top off aBeckets head. Privilege of clergy was whittled...

The Revival of Misprision of Felony. Guest blogger: Kieran Tapsell

In the days before police forces, the State in the English speaking world relied on citizens to report serious crimes, called felonies. The posse in the Western movies is a reflection of the hue and cry that citizens were expected to raise. Failing to report a felony was itself a crime, called misprision of felony. The crime, according to Lord Denning in the 1962 House of Lords case, Sykes v The Director of Public Prosecutions, was more than 700 years old. It is so old that the word misprision, meaning concealment has disappeared from everyday use. In the 1960s, Law...

Putting the Jesuitical back into the Jesuit. Guest blogger: Kieran Tapsell

The Vatican has two hats. It is the mini-State of 44 hectares in Rome, and it is the Holy See, the governing body of the Catholic Church. When it suits, it puts on one hat and hides the other. At the Murphy Commission in Ireland it relied on its status as a foreign country in refusing to hand over documents relevant to the Commissions investigation of child sexual abuse. The recent response of the Church to the UN investigating committee on child abuse is another example. Fr. Frederico Lombardi SJ said that the Holy See would not be responding to...

Cracks in the Church Dyke at the Royal Commission. Guest blogger: Kieran Tapsell

On 19March 2010, after the Murphy Commission in Ireland found that there had been widespread cover up of child sex abuse in the Archdiocese of Dublin, Pope Benedict XVI wrote a Pastoral Letter to the People of Ireland. The Murphy Commission had some harsh things to say about canon law and the requirements of secrecy, and found that the structures and rules of the Catholic Church facilitated the cover up. Benedict ignored this criticism, and attacked the bishops for failing to use the long established norms of canon law to dismiss these priests. His letter wrote the script for a...

Archbishop Coleridge and Canon Law: Humpty Dumpty Rules . Guest blogger Kieran Tapsell

When I use a word, Humpty Dumpty said in a rather scornful tone, It means just what I choose it to mean, neither more nor less. The question is, said Alice, whether you can make words mean so many things. The question is, said Humpty Dumpty, which is to be master thats all. Lewis...

Flogging a dead horse at the Royal Commission on Sexual Abuse. Guest blogger: Kieran Tapsell

Whenever there has been an inquiry into the Catholic Churchs handling of child sex abuse by its clergy, the Church has claimed that child sex abuse was some sort of hidden problem that the whole world, including the Church, had only just discovered. It has done this in the United States, Canada, Ireland, and now in Australia. The Victorian Church in its submission, Facing the Truth to the Victorian Parliamentary Inquiry, and the Australian bishops September 2013 submission to the Royal Commission on Towards Healing make the claim that there was a developing awareness of child sexual abuse in the...

New Vatican Committee on Sexual Abuse and 'zero tolerance' of Pope Benedict. Guest blogger: Kieran Tapsell

On 5 December 2013, the Vatican announced that it had set up a new Committee on sex abuse and that the the initiative was also in line with the zero tolerance approach of Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI. Pope John Paul II has rightly been hailed for his contribution to bringing down the Soviet Union. But another thing he brought down was any chance that the Churchs canon law might prevent priests from sexually attacking more children. Pontifical secrecy under canon law prevented bishops from reporting any information they had obtained in a canonical investigation of child sex abuse to the...

Bella Figura and the Vatican. Guest blogger: Kieran Tapsell

Bella figura, writes Bishop Geoffrey Robinson in his book, For Christs Sake, pervades the Vatican. In Italian, it means putting on a good appearance, and never admitting mistakes what we might call spin. Its opposite, bruta figura means looking dreadful. Bella figura can quickly turn bruta as Sir Walter Scott reminded us: Oh what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive. In 1983, Pope John Paul II promulgated the 1983 Code of Canon Law that made it virtually impossible to dismiss a paedophile priest. He had already abolished the simpler administrative trial, leaving only the...

Sexual abuse - don't mention Canon Law! Guest blogger: Kieran Tapsell

Submissions and speeches by the Australian Catholic Church about child sex abuse, remind me of Fawlty Towers, where Basil asks his non German guests not to mention the war. In the Churchs case, the unmentionable is canon law, the law of the Catholic Church. In his speech at Ballarat on 20 November 2013, Francis Sullivan, the CEO of the Churchs Truth, Justice and Healing Council acknowledged that there had been cover ups, but, once again, failed to mention that canon law was behind it. The Church submission, Facing the Truth to the Victorian Parliamentary Inquiry, has a chronology of 150...

Systemic issues arising from the Victorian Parliament's 'Betrayal of Trust Report' Guest blogger: Kieran Tapsell

On 13 November 2013, the Victorian Parliamentary Inquiry into the Handling of Child Abuse by Religious and Other Organizations handed down its Report, entitled Betrayal of Trust. It stated: No representatives of the Catholic Church directly reported the criminal conduct of its members to the police. The Committee found that there is simply no justification for this position. (p.170) There was no justification, but there was a reason. In 1922, Pope Pius XI issued Crimen Sollicitationis, requiring any investigation of child sex abuse by the Church to be covered by the secret of the Holy Office, the penalty for...

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