Thousands beaten, raped in Irish reform schools

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By SHAWN POGATCHNIK, Associated Press Writer Shawn Pogatchnik, Associated Press Writer – 10 mins ago

DUBLIN – A fiercely debated, nine-year 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.

High Court Justice Sean Ryan on Wednesday unveiled the 2,600-page final report of Ireland's Commission to Inquire Into Child Abuse, which is based on testimony from thousands of former students and officials from more than 250 church-run 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 Ireland's austere network of industrial schools, reformatories, orphanages and hostels from the 1930s until the last church-run facilities shut in the 1990s.

The report found that molestation and rape were "endemic" in boys' facilities, chiefly run by the Christian Brothers order, and supervisors pursued policies that increased the danger. Girls supervised by orders of nuns, chiefly the Sisters of Mercy, suffered much less sexual abuse but frequent assaults and humiliation designed to make them feel worthless.

"In some schools a high level of ritualized beating was routine. ... Girls were struck with implements designed to maximize pain and were struck on all parts of the body," the report said. "Personal and family denigration was widespread."

Victims of the system have long demanded that the truth of their experiences be documented and made public, so that children in Ireland never endure such suffering again.

But most leaders of religious orders have rejected the allegations as exaggerations and lies, and testified to the commission that any abuses were the responsibility of often long-dead individuals.

Wednesday's five-volume report sides almost completely with the former students' accounts. It concludes that church officials always shielded their orders' pedophiles from arrest amid a culture of self-serving secrecy.

"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," the report concluded.

The commission said overwhelming, consistent testimony from still-traumatized men and women, now in their 50s to 80s, had demonstrated beyond a doubt that the entire system treated children more like prison inmates and slaves than people with legal rights and human potential.

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

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 Irish government already has funded a parallel compensation system that has paid 12,000 abuse victims an average of euro65,000 ($90,000). About 2,000 claims remain outstanding.

Victims receive the payouts only if they waive their rights to sue the state and the church. Hundreds have rejected that condition and taken their abusers and those church employers to court.

Wednesday's 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.

"The management did not listen to or believe children when they complained of the activities of some of the men who had responsibility for their care," the commission found. "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 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 opinion 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 this when one of their own had committed the crime.

"Contrary to the congregations' claims that the recidivist nature of sexual offending was not understood, it is clear from the documented cases that they were aware of the propensity for abusers to re-abuse," it said.

Religious orders were chiefly concerned about preventing scandal, not the danger to children, it said.

The commission also condemned Ireland's Education Department for aiding the abusive culture through infrequent, toothless inspections that deferred to church authority.

Inspectors were supposed to restrict the use of corporal punishment and make sure the children were adequately fed, clothed and educated — but the report called those inspections "fundamentally flawed."

It said a lone inspector was responsible for monitoring more than 50 industrial schools, schools were told about the visits in advance and inspectors rarely talked to the children.

Wednesday's report also highlighted the rarity of human kindness in the institutions.

"A word of consideration or encouragement, or an act of sympathy or understanding, had a profound effect. Adults in their 60s and 70s recalled seemingly insignificant events that had remained with them all their lives," the report said.

"Often the act of kindness, recalled in such a positive light, arose from the simple fact that the staff member had not given a beating when one was expected."

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On the Net: http://www.childabusecommission.ie/


http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090520/...catholic_abuse

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Catholic Church shamed by Irish abuse report
By SHAWN POGATCHNIK, Associated Press Writer Shawn Pogatchnik, Associated Press Writer – 3 mins ago

DUBLIN – After a nine-year investigation, a commission published a damning report Wednesday on decades of rapes, humiliation and beatings at Catholic Church-run reform schools for Ireland's castaway children.

The 2,600-page report painted the most detailed and damning portrait yet of church-administered abuse in a country grown weary of revelations about child molestation by priests.

The investigation of the tax-supported schools uncovered previously secret Vatican records that demonstrated church knowledge of pedophiles in their ranks all the way back to the 1930s.

Wednesday's five-volume report on the probe — which was resisted by Catholic religious orders — concluded that church officials shielded their orders' pedophiles from arrest amid a culture of self-serving secrecy.

"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," Ireland's Commission to Inquire Into Child Abuse concluded.

Victims of the abuse, who are now in their 50s to 80s, lobbied long and hard for an official investigation. They say that for all its incredible detail, the report doesn't nail down what really matters — the names of their abusers.

"I do genuinely believe that it would have been a further step towards our healing if our abusers had been named and shamed," said Christine Buckley, 62, who spent the first 18 years of her life in a Dublin orphanage where children were forced to manufacture rosaries — and were humiliated, beaten and raped whether they achieved their quota or not.

The Catholic religious orders that ran more than 50 workhouse-style reform schools from the late 19th century until the mid-1990s offered public words of apology, shame and regret Wednesday. But when questioned, their leaders indicated they would continue to protect the identities of clergy accused of abuse — men and women who were never reported to police, and were instead permitted to change jobs and keep harming children.

The Christian Brothers, which ran several boys' institutions deemed to have harbored serial child molesters and sadists on their staff, insisted it had cooperated fully with the probe. The order 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.

The Christian Brothers' leader in Ireland, Brother Kevin Mullan, said the organization had been right to keep names secret because "perhaps we had doubts about some of the allegations."

"But on the other hand, I'd have to say that at this stage, we have no interest in protecting people who were perpetrators of abuse," Mullan said, vowing to "cooperate fully with any investigation or any civil authority seeking to explore those matters."

Buckley, who said she was abused at an orphanage run by the Sisters of Mercy, which ran several refuges for girls where the report documented chronic brutality, said the religious orders for years branded the victims as money-seeking liars — and were incapable of admitting their guilt today.

She criticized Mullan for suggesting that "today, having read the report, he doesn't mind if the abusers are named and shamed. Isn't that a little bit late for us?"

The report found that molestation and rape were "endemic" in boys' facilities, chiefly run by the Christian Brothers order, and supervisors pursued policies that increased the danger. Girls supervised by orders of nuns, chiefly the Sisters of Mercy, suffered much less sexual abuse but frequent assaults and humiliation designed to make them feel worthless.

"In some schools a high level of ritualized beating was routine. ... Girls were struck with implements designed to maximize pain and were struck on all parts of the body," the report said. "Personal and family denigration was widespread."

Ireland's myriad religious orders, much like their mother church, have been devastated by 15 years of scandals involving past cover-ups of abusers in their ranks.

The Christian Brothers have withdrawn from running several schools that still bear their name and the order has had few recruits in Ireland in the past two decades. Other orders are down to a handful of members, and their bases are closer to nursing homes than active missions.

"Most of these orders will literally die out in Ireland within the next generation or so," said Michael Kelly, editor of the Irish Catholic newspaper in Dublin. "Many of them are already in wind-up mode. They lack the confidence even to seek new vocations (recruits), due to the stigma associated with their members' shocking, scandalous behavior."

The Irish government, which in 1999 apologized for its role in permitting decades of abuse and established the commission to nail down the full truth of the matter, has tried to use money to bring closure to the victims.

A government-appointed panel has paid 12,000 survivors of the schools, orphanages and other church-run residences an average of $90,000 each — on condition they surrender their right to sue either the church or state. About 2,000 more claims are pending. Irish Catholic leaders cut a controversial deal with the government in 2001 that capped the church's contribution at $175 million — a fraction of the final cost.

Some victims emphasized, even as they began thumbing through the report, that nothing — not even criminal convictions of their long-ago tormentors — will ever put right their psychological wounds and make their nightmares go away.

Tom Sweeney, who spent five years in two Christian Brothers-run institutions where he was placed for truancy, says he suffered sexual abuse and beatings. He also has bitter memories about more everyday humiliations — such as being forced to wrap his urine-stained sheets around his neck and parade in front of other children when he'd wet his bed.

"It's something you'll never forget, the way you lived in these industrial schools," he said.

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On the Net:

Commission to Inquire Into Child Abuse report, http://www.childabusecommission.ie/rpt/


http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090521/...catholic_abuse

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Critics: Ireland slow to protect its children
By SHAWN POGATCHNIK, Associated Press Writer Shawn Pogatchnik, Associated Press Writer – Thu May 21, 5:41 pm ET

DUBLIN – Child-abuse activists warned Thursday that Ireland failed to learn the lessons from decades of unchecked brutality inside Catholic Church-run schools and still offers poor protection to vulnerable boys and girls.

This week's mammoth report into the abuse of thousands of children in Catholic-run schools blamed successive Irish governments for permitting rape and other sadistic practices inside the tax-funded facilities throughout most of the 20th century.

The authors of the nine-year investigation offered a long list of recommendations to toughen and modernize the way children — particularly those in state care — are supervised and protected. The proposals included 24-hour emergency social care, surprise inspections of children's homes, and more rigorous enforcement of existing rules.

The government of Prime Minister Brian Cowen, which is battling one of Europe's worst recessions and budget deficits, says it will enact the improvements as quickly as possible. Those on the front lines of child protection said they doubted that would happen.

"People would be wrong to think that the danger is behind us. Ireland's child protection policies are still a generation behind the standards in the United Kingdom and the United States. Our leaders are far too complacent," said Maeve Lewis, whose Dublin pressure group One in Four publicizes child sexual abuse in Ireland.

Lewis noted that a string of child-abuse scandals involving church and lay abusers inspired a string of official inquiries and nearly 200 recommendations since 1993.

"Most of those recommendations have never been implemented," she said. "If we do not finally begin to put the needs of children first, all of us will be sitting here in 30 years' time talking about some other scandal that somehow evaded our attention or care."

Ireland's minister for children, Barry Andrews, said the government was determined to keep strengthening child protection.

He said today's system for placing children into protective care "bears no comparion" to Ireland's church-run industrial schools, which were closed down gradually from the 1960s to the 1990s. In those days, courts that deemed a child a petty criminal, school truant or from a dysfunctional home could order him or her into the church's custody — for an average of nine years.

These days Ireland's Health Service Executive, responsible for running hospitals and enforcing public health policy, places more than 90 percent of children deemed at risk with foster families, not institutions. Of approximately 5,300 children in state care, only about 450 are in state residences or emergency shelters.

Andrews declined to comment on the Health Service Executive's admission in February that 20 children in state care had died or been killed in the previous six years. The causes ranged from drug overdoses to assaults, but no inquest results have been made public in any case.

Child-abuse activists stressed that the greatest weakness in Ireland's system is that it takes far too long to identify children in danger and rescue them. They noted that the government and Health Service Executive fund no child-protection workers for nights and weekends, leaving police to fill in the gap.

Two recent cases illustrate the shocking risks that children still face from slow official reaction to even the most obvious warnings.

In January, a 40-year-old single mother became the first woman in Irish history to be convicted of incest. The woman — whose identity was concealed to protect her children — was a notorious drunk in her village, and her six children the object of ridicule in school, because of their poor hygiene, lice, cuts and bruises, filthy clothes and other inescapable signs of neglect.

Social workers and police spent nearly a decade monitoring the woman's inability to care for her children, which included garbage, clothes and even excrement piling up in the home. But the children weren't placed in foster care until the eldest boy, aged 13, told police she had been forcing him to have sex with her.

Earlier this month, Andrews' department published findings into the 2007 case of a couple who, descending into madness, had planned their own suicides and the murder of their two daughters aged 5 and 3.

The investigation found that the parents, Adrian and Ciara Dunne, took their children to a mortician and discussed plans for four coffins, a burial plot and the husband's will. Once the Dunnes left, the funeral home warned police.

It was a Friday night with no social workers on duty, so police asked a Catholic priest to visit the family. He asked a second priest, who found the Dunne home silent and curtains drawn. Police and Health Services Executive spent the weekend arguing about which organization should take charge.

When officers and social workers jointly made it to the Dunne home that Monday afternoon, they found the man hanging from a rope, his wife strangled, and both girls smothered with pillows.

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On the Net:

Commission to Inquire Into Child Abuse report, http://www.childabusecommission.ie/rpt/

Irish government ministry for children, http://www.omc.gov.ie/

Ireland's independent ombudsman for children, http://www.oco.ie/


http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090521/...catholic_abuse