There was a period last year 2025 where it looked like the RLSS was being pro-active and actually trying to bring about change as they had promised. This was down to the valiant efforts of one RLSS Safeguarding Officer alone.
I could see they were really trying – unlike their predecessors – so I was content to wait patiently while progress was being made
That period has come to an end. The Officer is leaving. The RLSS are treading water, stalling, delaying and losing credibility again.
We are now back to the bad old days, with endless delays and no action. And the worthless social worker remedy of meaningless ‘tea and sympathy’ for Survivors.
So it’s necessary to present the key ways that the RLSS are STILL enabling criminal actions and betraying Survivors.
If you are a Survivor reading this for the first time and looking for a way forward – go to the police or to a lawyer.
Unless the RLSS provably changes in the next few months, I can’t see how they can help you.
In the coming year, my efforts will be spent on publicising their failures in the media and looking at what legal steps I can take against the De La Salles (DLS) and the Catholic Laity (in the form of the Knights of St Columba). Together with Catholic Safeguarding they have all gravely betrayed Survivors.
I intend to redouble my efforts now I have given up on the RLSS.
Currently children are at risk thanks to these entities.
1) The RLSS have sent in a (male) Jesuit as a peacemaker to the De La Salles This is after the DLS refused to have contact with two female lay Safeguarding Officers for daring to criticise them!
This is pandering to an organisation who have provably covered up numerous serious crimes against children and therefore can be described as a criminal organisation.
Catholic Safeguarding – the RLSS – should have nothing to do with criminals and yet they continue to humour them. Why? Because they are PAID by the DLS.
This is the most venal and corrupt arrangement which should not stand.
I was told at one stage that the two DLS concerned were ‘genuine, good guys’. Clearly they are not – as the RLSS would agree themselves – and they will be the subject of a future post proving that these two ‘good guys’ are criminal enablers.
In my view enabling or hiding serious crimes with knowledge and forethought makes the persons concerned criminals.
2)I was told by the CEO of the RLSS, Dani Wardman, that the RLSS would act on all forms of Catholic abuse against children including the Knights of St Columba. Even if they weren’t paid clients.
I suspect the RLSS would like to revoke Dani’s promise, but haven’t got the nerve to actually say this to me.
Twice the Knights of St Columba have promised an apology for their crimes, once in recent months. Yet there has been a lack lustre response to progressing this apology. Indeed earlier an RLSS Safeguarding Officer suggested I give up. Only when I took it to the media was there action.
There is no indication from the RLSS who the Knights should be answerable to in the Church.
Answer: Probably no one, they are like so many corrupt organisations in the Church – e.g. Opus Dei.
But it’s important because the Knights – with no DBS checks – are still provably financing boys to become priests TODAY – a recipe for abuse just as it was in my day.
So children are in danger.
Obviously the RLSS really don’t give a damn about children
3) I have endlessly quoted serious cases of SYSTEMIC ORGANISED ABUSE by the DLS and the Knights.
The RLSS have read these but choose not to comment which, in my view, makes them culpable.
Today, we would call such organised clerical and Catholic lay abuse : Grooming Gangs and Sex Trafficking.
Today, the DLS have refused to discuss it. Or to say anything in writing. And have ignored the case where they knowingly lied to the media. The RLSS have declined to tell Survivors why a RLSS National Enquiry into the DLS was curtailed.
The RLSS have yet to follow up on any of this.
4) Three times, a wheelchair user DLS Survivor Rafael Viola, travelled to the Vatican Child Safeguarding in Rome who said they couldn’t help, and referred him to four completely irrelevant Vatican organisations.
Why? I suspect it was wilfully ‘taking the piss’ as a retaliation for Rafael annoying them so much with his persistence. Chuckling to themselves at his frustration. If that sounds far-fetched, look how a high-ranking priest – with a big smirk on his face – forcibly blessed Rafael despite his protests not to. We have the video.
But the RLSS have a responsibility to comment or advise in this situation and help a Survivor of the DLS. Instead, they ignore Rafael.
Are the RLSS really so scared and in awe of the Vatican? I’m afraid so. They are cowards.
5) Wilful and calculated obstruction by the RLSS which is ongoing.
Some ways are ‘small’. For example, after several years the RLSS still has no social media, no X, facebook etc.
They make excuses – ‘it’s in hand’. But it’s not. The RLSS are genuinely SCARED of facing Survivors.
Even Starmer’s government faces its critics on social media. Not the RLSS.
Once again they are cowards.
Other ways are even more serious.
For example, the recent rigged audit of the DLS to give them top marks. (By the CSSA which is not explained) I could unpack that easily and show how it’s corrupt.
They’re using a technique which I suspect the RLSS are using on themselves, too. Briefly, you limit your terms of reference, excluding anything that puts your organisation or one you’re defending in a negative light. So meaningless ‘performance indicators’, especially KPIs – key performance indicators – would feature. But you exclude anything that challenges the KPIs – like the views of Survivors like myself. Or past history.
Outstanding important issues regarding Canon Law were also ignored by the RLSS despite my interviewing two Canon Lawyers. One of whom, a priest, is on the RLSS board and showed zero sympathy for Survivors, claiming the terrible things that happened to kids: ‘That was not my experience’.
Those questions are still on the table.
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Of the greatest concern to me personally is that organised systemic abuse of children, especially involving the Catholic Laity, with no DBS checks, could still be in operation. There are some indications that this is still the case. And that these ‘holy men’, these Knights, continue to prey on the vulnerable as they did in my childhood.
Why would anyone imagine that they would change just because there are stricter protocols today?
The Catholic Church and its various organisations – including the RLSS – have always found a way to get around laws.
The current head of the CSSA admitted to me in an email that ‘What was the point of IICSA?’
Survivors are having to deal with members of Catholic Safeguarding who do not give a damn about the safety of children, past and present.
Just protecting their jobs and the Catholic Church.
Shame on them all!