It doesn’t surprise me to learn that Baroness Hollins was head girl of her Yorkshire Catholic girls’ school. She has gone on to be head girl in numerous fields – a professor of psychiatry at St George’s, University of London, a president of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, a president of the British Medical Association, chairwoman of the BMA Board of Science and a crossbench peer in the House of Lords.
For Catholics, she holds perhaps an even more distinguished and important position: she is currently advising Pope Francis on the protection of children and vulnerable adults.
The journey began in 2010 when she was invited by Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor to join the Vatican visitation to the Church in Ireland. The visit was in the wake of widespread fury about the way the Irish Church responded to the scandal of those who had been sexually abused in its care. Numerous private meetings and a series of four public meetings followed, two in the north, two in the south, and a detailed report was sent back to the Vatican.
But it took a conference in 2012 organised by the Pontifical Gregorian University for global change to begin to happen. Before taking part, Baroness Hollins warned the organisers that she would be vociferous in her criticism of the Church, which she felt hadn’t offered sufficient spiritual and other support to victims.
“People have to learn how to listen properly to the victims of abuse,” she says. “Things mustn’t be brushed under the carpet – it’s not just a case of financial compensation and some counselling.
We need to travel alongside these victims, however long it takes. While some people make extraordinary recoveries, a lot of people will wake up every morning remembering the moment when they were abused.”
A key step was to make sure a survivor of abuse would appear alongside Baroness Hollins on the conference panel. Marie Collins was a Dubliner who had already spoken out about being abused at 13. “Marie and I were the only lay women speakers,” Hollins recalls. “I think that our talk, especially Marie’s, was the thing that changed people’s minds.”
After the conference there was a new determination in Rome to tackle child abuse. The first step was by the Gregorian University to establish an e-learning programme which would help those in the Church understand child abuse – what it is, how to recognise it, what the consequences are and which measures you must have in place to stop it. The programme, which is now being trialled in 12 countries, also seeking to provide healing and care for survivors.
In addition, there is a diploma course to establish people in individual dioceses who will be responsible for developing such initiatives. Finally, there is a research programme, with PhD students investigating all aspects of child protection, including how to train priests, which is not traditionally covered in seminaries. Baroness Hollins remains the chairwoman of the scientific advisory group to the programme.
The effort to reform the Church gathered pace in 2013, and again Hollins played a key role. Pope Francis decided to set up a commission to advise him personally on the issue. Once again, Baroness Hollins insisted that abuse survivors be represented, and the first to be invited was Marie Collins. The commission has been meeting since 2014, which means Hollins now visits Rome a couple of times a year for a week-long series of meetings and working groups.
“We’re trying to create a series of policies that will help minors (children under the age of 18) and vulnerable adults – those with learning disabilities, autism or mental illness who may not fully understand issues around giving consent. I’m a policymaker by background. I think that’s how you make change happen.”
Just how successful does Hollins think the Vatican’s efforts are? “Is there a greater awareness? Yes. And is there a culture shift? Again yes. But there are some countries where it hasn’t happened, especially some French-speaking countries, and African countries are very slow. Senior cardinals used to say it’s a Western problem, but it’s not, it’s a world problem.”
Equally, she is cautiously optimistic that some myths around child sexual abuse are finally being busted. One myth is that homosexuality is the cause of sexual abuse. There’s no evidence of that, she says. A second myth is that celibacy is a cause.
“Actually, the truth is more complicated. It’s not celibacy per se that’s the problem, but it’s true that people’s sexual immaturity (and a study of sexuality has not been part of the formation of priests) can be a problem.”
Hollins admits there’s a huge amount more to be done. The commission has suggested to Pope Francis that there should be a world day of prayer for those who have been abused. He’s agreed, but to Hollins’s frustration, no date has been set. “I think people sometimes assume that the Vatican is very well managed. Actually, it’s under-managed in my view. It’s hard to make things happen.”
While the Pope is really committed, she says sometimes he is not always informed of what’s happening. He in turn relies on people to tell him the whole truth. Another initiative the commission recommended is a tribunal for bishops who have abused minors, or who have covered up abuse. Again, the Pope has agreed to do this, but again, a tribunal has yet to be set up.
In theory, Baroness Hollins will step down from the commission in 2017, but she is committed to reform and may stay on if invited. “We’ve got a hugely long way to go,” she says. “This is an issue that has been present in the Church since it began.
“We need a multi-pronged approach, in education and among families. More child abuse happens in families than anywhere else. Hitherto we’ve been too effective at covering it up, but that’s got to change.”
If anyone can make change happen, I believe it may be Baroness Hollins. She is a quietly powerful figure, sitting across me in the tearoom in the House of Lords, tall and elegant in a white bouclé jacket and dark trousers, with a warm smile and wavy greying hair.
I suspect something of her resilience and steeliness has been forged through family trauma and its aftermath. Her pregnant daughter Abigail Witchalls was left paralysed in a knife attack in 2005. In 2012, she told the Leveson inquiry that the Press Complaints Commission had failed to stop “incredibly intrusive” reporting of her daughter’s injury and survival.
She has four children including a son who has learning disabilities.Given Hollins’s stellar achievements across so many fields, I wonder as my last question what she would most like to be remembered for. She tells me she is proudest of creating Books Beyond Words (booksbeyondwords.co.uk) for adults with learning disabilities, to which her son is a contributor.
The series was inspired by picture stories she developed when he was a child to help him understand what was going to happen to him, or things that were new to him. There are now 50 titles in the series, which include difficult topics such as bereavement and abuse as well as more light-hearted stories. As she relaxes and proudly shows me some of the book covers on her iPad, I can see that this for her beats any amount of being head girl.
Rachel Kelly’s latest book is Walking on Sunshine: 52 Small Steps to Happiness, published by Short Books, £9.99. She tweets @RachelKellyNet
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