Report damns Catholic Church's role in abuse

The fiercely-debated Child Abuse Commission's 2,600-page report detailed a catalogue of 70 years of chronic sexual, physical and emotional abuse inflicted on thousands of disadvantaged, neglected and abandoned children by religious and lay staff.

It sided almost completely with the reports of abuse from former pupils, sent to more than 250 Church-run, mostly residential, institutions.

More than 30,000 children deemed to be petty thieves, truants or from dysfunctional families – a category that often included unmarried mothers – were sent to a network of industrial schools, reformatories, orphanages and hostels from the 1930s until the last Church-run facilities shut in the 1990s.

Basing its conclusions on what it said was overwhelming and consistent testimony from still-traumatised men and women, mainly now in their 50s to 80s, the inquiry said that it was beyond any doubt that the entire system treated children left in these institutions more like prison inmates and slaves than people with legal rights and human potential.

"A climate of fear, created by pervasive, excessive and arbitrary punishment, permeated most of the institutions and all those run for boys. Children lived with the daily terror of not knowing where the next beating was coming from," it said.

It concluded that Church officials always shielded their orders' paedophiles from arrest to protect their own reputations and, according to documents uncovered in the Vatican, knew that many paedophiles were serial attackers.

Last night, the leader of the Catholic Church in Ireland, Cardinal Sean Brady, said he was "profoundly sorry and deeply ashamed that children suffered in such awful ways in these institutions".

"This report makes it clear that great wrong and hurt were caused to some of the most vulnerable children in our society," he said.

"It documents a shameful catalogue of cruelty: neglect, physical, sexual and emotional abuse, perpetrated against children."

Judge Sean Ryan, who chaired the commission, concluded that when confronted with evidence of sex abuse, religious authorities responded by transferring the sex offenders to another location, where in many instances they were free to abuse again.

"There was evidence that such men took up teaching positions sometimes within days of receiving dispensations because of serious allegations or admissions of sexual abuse," the report said. "The safety of children in general was not a consideration."

But while the report was scathing in its conclusions, victims of abuse took little comfort in them yesterday. Angry exchanges took place between commission staff and victims of abuse, who were barred from the report's launch in a central Dublin hotel, to protest at the fact that their abusers would not be named in the report and would not be prosecuted.

Victim John Walsh, of leading campaign group Irish Survivors of Child Abuse (Soca), called the report a hatchet job that left open wounds gaping.

"The little comfort we have is that they acknowledged and vindicated the victims who were raped and sexually abused," he said.

"But what about the people who detained them, who unlawfully denied them their constitutional rights in the court.

"They weren't inquired into. The state refused to do it.

"It (the report] has devastated me and will devastate most victims, because there is no criminal proceedings and no accountability whatsoever."

However, yesterday, victims continued to demand that prosecutions be brought, and pledged to pursue their abusers through the courts. A further report on sexual abuse in Dublin and its surrounding areas, due soon, is also expected to reveal more evidence of abuse.

Kevin Flanagan from Ballymun, north Dublin, spoke out in support of his brother Mickey Flanagan who died 11 years ago still carrying the pain of the abuse he suffered in Artane Industrial School.

The teenager sparked a Dail debate in 1954 when his arm was broken while in care.

The case was dismissed as "an isolated incident".

"After Mickey left Artane he lived in the UK for the rest of his life," said Mr Flanagan.

"I'm not embarrassed to say he lived in squalor because of the suffering he went through.

"He hated the Christian Brothers but would still never talk about what happened."

The Sisters of Mercy and Christian Brothers, which ran the largest number of children's institutions, were among the long list of orders investigated.

Molestation and rape was said to be "endemic" in boys' schools, while in girls' schools, children were subjected to predatory abuse by male employees and visitors, and others when they were on outside placements.

The report said children had no safe way to tell authorities about the assaults they were suffering, particularly the sexual aggression from church officials and older inmates in boys' institutions.

Abuse was rarely reported to the state authorities, but on those rare occasions when the education department was informed, it colluded with the religious orders in the culture of silence.The department was found to have generally dismissed or ignored sexual abuse complaints and never brought them to the attention of the Garda (the Irish police).

"At best, the abusers were moved but nothing was done about the harm done to the child. At worst, the child was blamed and seen as corrupted by the sexual activity, and was punished severely," the report stated.

Children were so badly neglected, survivors spoke of scavenging for food from waste bins and animal feed. Unsupervised bullying in boys' schools often left smaller, weaker children without food.

The report has proposed 21 ways the government could recognise past wrongs, including building a permanent memorial, providing counselling and education to victims, and improving Ireland's current child protection services.

The Church will struggle to recover from depth and depravity of this abuse

PEOPLE in Ireland will be profoundly shocked by what has come out about the dreadful sexual and physical abuse of these children, writes Patsy McGarry.

Despite the fact that more and more people are becoming familiar with various sex abuse scandals, with the publicity and profile of them waxing and waning, this is by far the worst yet.

The abuse was extensive, with more than 800 paedophile perpetrators over one period alone.

I attended nearly all the hearings and was very disturbed by it all.

The degree of savagery is really shocking. I find myself running out of words to describe it.

It was an arbitrary reign of terror which was wholesale and widespread.

The sheer scale and span in terms of time and the unequivocal findings that the religious congregation (orders like the Christian Brothers) put themselves first, means it is profoundly damaged.

Responsibility for this lies with the state and Irish society.

Some people may have been aware of some of it but they wouldn't have known about the depth and depravity of it. That is the only mitigating factor.

Even when I was young we were threatened that if we didn't behave we would be sent to one of those places.

You must remember that we are talking about Holy Catholic Ireland where people were too inhibited to talk about sex even in the 20th century.

The utter negligence of the church and state will reverberate for some time. I don't think the institution will recover.

From past experience when cases of abuse by the Catholic Church have come to light people become increasingly alienated from it, with some losing their faith.

Others are able to differentiate between the Church and their beliefs.

There have been big falls in the number of people attending Mass, with the majority who are still going being predominantly elderly or living in rural Ireland.

People will go to church for weddings and funerals but increasing numbers are drifting away.

Another serious consequence for the Church will be a sharp fall in vocations. Vocations are already a huge problem, but this will be exacerbated still further by this report. But there are still other reports to come.

In terms of the victims, while no-one was named in court, it is open to them to bring charges against the perpetrators.

But a lot of them are reaching for closure. There is a great satisfaction that they were believed, that they now have proof over those who carried out the abuse, them and their acolytes and supporters.

Patsy McGarry is religious affairs correspondent for the Irish Times.