‘You are so concerned about the pain of the victim that you can’t write back saying, thank you very much, we got your letter?’

Survivor Marie Collins reveals why she quit Pope Francis’s special Vatican commission to tackle clerical sex abuse, and how her interaction with the Dublin diocese did more damage to her than her abuser

Abuse victim was met by stonewalling from Vatican; Desmond Connell refused to act in order to protect the abuser’s ‘good name’

By Thursday evening, Marie Collins was exhausted. She had no idea the media storm that would greet her resignation from Pope Francis’s special Vatican commission to tackle the problem of clerical sex abuse.

Since 6am she had fielded calls from the international media, starting with CBS News in America. As I arrive at her home in a west Dublin housing estate, she is turning down a request by a television station to fly ...