Ti-Amie
05-20-2009, 12:17 PM
DUBLIN — A fiercely debated, long-delayed investigation into Ireland's Roman Catholic-run institutions says priests and nuns terrorized thousands of boys and girls in workhouse-style schools for decades _ and government inspectors failed to stop the chronic beatings, rapes and humiliation.
Nine years in the making, Wednesday's 2,600-page report sides almost completely with the horrific reports of abuse from former students sent to more than 250 church-run, mostly residential institutions. But victims' leaders said it didn't go far enough _ particularly because none of their abusers were identified by name.
(...)
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 Ireland's austere network of industrial schools, reformatories, orphanages and hostels from the 1930s until the last church-run facilities shut in the 1990s.
(...)
But several victims _ who were prevented from attending Wednesday's report launch and scuffled with police outside a central Dublin hotel _ said the report didn't go far enough and rejected the church leaders' apologies as insincere.
"Victims will feel a small degree of comfort that they've been vindicated. But the findings do not go far enough," said John Kelly, a former inmate of a Dublin industial school who fled to London and today leads a pressure group called Irish Survivors of Child Abuse.
(...)
But its findings will not be used for criminal prosecutions _ in part because the Christian Brothers successfully sued the commission in 2004 to keep the identities of all of its members, dead or alive, unnamed in the report. No real names, whether of victims or perpetrators, appear in the final document.
Irish church leaders and religious orders all declined to comment Wednesday, citing the need to read the massive document first. The Vatican also declined to comment.
(...)
The commission dismissed as implausible a central defense of the religious orders _ that, in bygone days, people did not recognize the sexual abuse of a child as a criminal offense, but rather as a sin that required repentance.
In their testimony, religious orders typically cited this as the principal reason why sex-predator priests and brothers were sheltered within the system and moved to new posts where they could still maintain daily contact with children.
But the commission said its fact-finding _ which included unearthing decades-old church files, chiefly stored in the Vatican, on scores of unreported abuse cases from Ireland's industrial schools _ demonstrated that officials understood exactly what was at stake: their own reputations.
It cited numerous examples where school managers told police about child abusers who were not church officials _ but never did when one of their own had committed the crime.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/05/20/irish-reform-schools-thou_n_205719.html
Nine years in the making, Wednesday's 2,600-page report sides almost completely with the horrific reports of abuse from former students sent to more than 250 church-run, mostly residential institutions. But victims' leaders said it didn't go far enough _ particularly because none of their abusers were identified by name.
(...)
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 Ireland's austere network of industrial schools, reformatories, orphanages and hostels from the 1930s until the last church-run facilities shut in the 1990s.
(...)
But several victims _ who were prevented from attending Wednesday's report launch and scuffled with police outside a central Dublin hotel _ said the report didn't go far enough and rejected the church leaders' apologies as insincere.
"Victims will feel a small degree of comfort that they've been vindicated. But the findings do not go far enough," said John Kelly, a former inmate of a Dublin industial school who fled to London and today leads a pressure group called Irish Survivors of Child Abuse.
(...)
But its findings will not be used for criminal prosecutions _ in part because the Christian Brothers successfully sued the commission in 2004 to keep the identities of all of its members, dead or alive, unnamed in the report. No real names, whether of victims or perpetrators, appear in the final document.
Irish church leaders and religious orders all declined to comment Wednesday, citing the need to read the massive document first. The Vatican also declined to comment.
(...)
The commission dismissed as implausible a central defense of the religious orders _ that, in bygone days, people did not recognize the sexual abuse of a child as a criminal offense, but rather as a sin that required repentance.
In their testimony, religious orders typically cited this as the principal reason why sex-predator priests and brothers were sheltered within the system and moved to new posts where they could still maintain daily contact with children.
But the commission said its fact-finding _ which included unearthing decades-old church files, chiefly stored in the Vatican, on scores of unreported abuse cases from Ireland's industrial schools _ demonstrated that officials understood exactly what was at stake: their own reputations.
It cited numerous examples where school managers told police about child abusers who were not church officials _ but never did when one of their own had committed the crime.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/05/20/irish-reform-schools-thou_n_205719.html