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Revealed, six decades of 'ritual' child abuse:

Catholic schools and orphanages damned in
report
By Tom Kelly
Last updated at 2:33 PM on 21st May 2009

Abuse was 'endemic' in childrens' institutions

Safety of children in general was not a consideration
No abusers will be prosecuted
Victims banned from launch of shocking report
Church leaders and government watchdogs covered up 'endemic' and 'ritualised' abuse of thousands of children in Roman Catholic
schools and orphanages in the Irish Republic, a shocking report revealed yesterday.

For six decades, priests and nuns terrorised boys and girls in the workhouse-style schools with sexual, physical and mental abuse.

Kevin Flannigan, right, and John Kelly, left, from the group Survivors of Child Abuse, protest at not being allowed into the launch of
the long-awaited Child Abuse Commission report at the Conrad Hotel Dublin

But officials in Ireland's Catholic Church shielded paedophile staff from arrest to protect their own reputations despite knowing they
were serial attackers, according to the 2,600-page report, which took nine years to complete.

Irish government inspectors also failed to stop the chronic beatings, rape and humiliation, it found.

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Justice Sean Ryan launches the report at the Conrad Hotel in Dublin today - but refuses to take questions from journalists

About 35,000 children and teenagers who were orphans, petty thieves, truants, unmarried mothers or from dysfunctional families
were sent to Ireland's network of 250 Church-run industrial schools, reformatories, orphanages and hostels from the 1930s up until
the early 1990s.

The report by Ireland's Commission to Inquire Into Child Abuse found 'a climate of fear, created by pervasive, excessive and arbitrary
punishment, permeated most of the institutions and all those run for boys'.

It added: 'Children lived with the daily terror of not knowing where the next beating was coming from.'

Judge Sean Ryan, who chaired the commission, said that when confronted with evidence of sex abuse, religious authorities
responded by moving 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.'

The leader of Ireland's four million Catholics, Cardinal Sean Brady, said he was 'sorry and deeply ashamed' after the report was
published yesterday.

'Children deserved better and especially from those caring for them in the name of Jesus Christ,' he said.

The report found that molestation and rape were 'endemic' in boys' facilities, chiefly run by the Christian Brothers order.

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Judge Sean Ryan, centre, delivers the Child Abuse Commission report at the Conrad Hotel in Dublin to a media frenzy today

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 ritualised beating was routine,' the report said.

'Girls were struck with implements designed to maximize pain and were struck on all parts of the body. Personal and family
denigration was widespread.'

Victims of the system have long demanded that the truth of their experiences be documented and made public.

John Kelly, from the group Survivors of Child Abuse, protests at not being allowed into the hotel for the launch today

But some victims' groups said the report didn't go far enough, particularly because there will not be any prosecutions as a result.

This is because in 2004 the Christian Brothers secured a ruling that guaranteed all of its members, dead or alive, would remain
anonymous in the report.

John Kelly, from victim group Irish Survivors of Child Abuse, said the report should have examined how children like himself were
taken away from parents without just cause, and why Irish governments ceded control over the lives of so many young people to the
Church.

Children at work in one of the notorious Magdalen asylum, earlier this summer

He said any apologies offered now were 'hollow, shallow and have no substance or merit at all'.

The group's John Walsh said he felt 'cheated and deceived' that the perpetrators would not be brought to justice.

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Mr Walsh said: 'I would have never opened my wounds if I'd known this was going to be the end result. It has devastated me and will
devastate most victims because there are no criminal proceedings and no accountability whatsoever.'

The victims were also banned from entering the Press conference on the report held in a Dublin hotel.

Ellen O'Malley-Dunlop, chief executive of the Dublin Rape Crisis Centre, said of the victims: 'The way that they have been treated
here has been disgraceful and is in effect little more than a repetition of abusive behaviour.'

Key steps in struggle to confront child abuse in the Catholic Church

June 1994
Catholic priest Brendan Smyth pleads guilty to 17 counts of indecently assaulting five girls and two boys in Belfast. His order, the
Norbertines, spent decades shuttling him among Irish and American parishes and harbored Smyth from British arrest.

November 1994
Taoiseach Albert Reynolds resigns, and his government collapses, amid claims that his attorney general colluded with church
authorities to delay the British extradition demand for Smyth. It shatters the taboo against pursuing criminal charges against priests.

July 1995
Former altar boy Andrew Madden becomes first person to speak publicly about abuse by a priest. Madden says the Church paid him
€35,000 to keep quiet about three years of assaults by Fr Ivan Payne. Archbishop Desmond Connell denies the deal until Madden
provides documentary proof of church payoff. Case spurs hundreds to pursue civil lawsuits against church authorities.

January 1996
Panel of Irish Catholic leaders instruct bishops to tell senior police officers ‘without delay’ about all suspected sex-abuse cases.
Some bishops continue to suppress such information over the coming decade.

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February 1996
Dear Daughter, a documentary shown on RTÉ details abuse suffered by Christine Buckley and others at St Vincent's Industrial
School, Goldenbridge, Inchicore, Dublin.

July 1997
After serving prison term in Northern Ireland, Smyth is extradited south and pleads guilty to 74 counts of sexually abusing 20 boys
and girls between 1958 and 1993. He dies of a heart attack one month into 12 year sentence.

January 1998
Payne is convicted in Dublin on 14 counts of sexually abusing eight boys aged 11 to 14. He serves only four years in prison.

March 1999
Fr Sean Fortune commits suicide in prison while awaiting trial on 66 criminal charges of molesting and raping 29 boys in the
southeast Ferns diocese. One Fortune victim, former altar boy Colm O'Gorman, launches victims support group One in Four. It
lobbies government for investigations into abuse cases, particularly in Ferns.

April 1999
Groundbreaking documentary series ‘States of Fear’ by RTÉ exposes abuse of children in church-run workhouses, reformatories
and orphanages since the 1940s.

May 1999
Taoiseach Bertie Ahern issues ‘long overdue apology’ to all those abused in church-run institutions and vows to establish a financial
compensation board and a fact-finding commission into extent of abuse. Ms Justice Mary Laffoy is appointed to head the
Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse.

May 2000
Government gives investigatory powers to Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse to measure causes and extent of unchecked child
abuse in institutions from 1937 onward.

July 2001
The deadline for complaints of abuse to be made to the Commission. Some 3,149 people ask to testify.

April 2002
Ferns Bishop Brendan Comiskey becomes first, and only, church figure to resign because of failures to stop abuse. He admits he did
too little to stop pedophile priests.

December 2002
Government establishes board to pay compensation to people who suffered sexual, physical or mental abuse in church-run
institutions. Payouts require claimants to give up their right to sue church and state authorities. Taxpayers, not the church, cover bulk
of cost.

September 2003
High Court Judge Mary Laffoy resigns complaining that the Department of Education, which holds most records on church-run
institutions, is obstructing her investigation into child abuse. Her successor, Justice Sean Ryan, says probe must severely limit the
number of abuse cases it considers or it will never finish.

April 2004
A Vatican modernizer and diplomat, Diarmuid Martin, replaces Connell as Dublin archbishop. Pledges full cooperation with state and
police in exposing past cover-ups of abuse and protecting children in future.

June 2004
Judge Ryan announces the Commission will not name abusers unless they have been convicted. The Christian Brothers religious
order drops legal actions against the Commission.

July 2004
The Christian Brothers testify at a public hearing that files only recently discovered in its Rome-based archive show evidence of 30
canonical trials of brothers based on proven incidents of child sexual abuse against boys in their care from the 1930s onwards.

October 2005
Investigation led by retired Supreme Court justice finds that church, police and state authorities did too little to stop sexual abuse of
hundreds of children by 21 priests in Ferns. Report says Ferns bishops sheltered and promoted priests known to have raped altar

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boys and molested schoolgirls on an altar.

December 2005
Residential Institutions Redress Board says more than 14,000 people who claim to have suffered childhood abuse in church-run
institutions have filed claims for state payouts.

December 2008
Board says it has paid nearly 12,000 victims average of €64,230 each, about 2,000 claims remain. Cost including lawyers' fees
expected to reach €1.1bn.

May 20, 2009

Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse unveils 2,575-page report into thousands of child abuse cases in institutions. Two more
reports into the church's protection of sex-predator priests in the Dublin archdiocese and the southwest diocese of Cloyne may be
published later this year.

Places:
Dublin
Organisations:
Catholic Church

Comments (34)
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Paedophilia is the lowest of human depravity. But when child abuses were conducted by these so-called men and women of God
who were supposedly to bestow care and kindness to these vulnerable children, then they are worst of the lot, they are demons in
disguise. There won't be any heaven for them, that is for sure. The Church is just as guilty by covering up. That's why we don't go to
church anymore.

- mari, london, 20/5/2009 13:58

Click to rate Rating 539

Report abuse

To anybody who had to endure an education at the hands of the Christian Brothers or indeed Sisters during the 1950's or '60's as I
did then this will come as no surprise. Brutality and hypocracy are the word that best describe these "Christians."

The only surprise is that our parents put us through it while having first hand experience themselves of the brutality. I'm referring to
my experiences in THIS country at schools that still exist today.

- angus, bristol, 20/5/2009 13:51

Click to rate Rating 358

Report abuse

Patrick Rice, Hereford. Good luck and God Bless with your book.May you make lots of money and enjoy the Autumn of your days in
comfort. Good Irish stock always triumphs, fact.

- Michael, China, 20/5/2009 13:51

Click to rate Rating 135

Report abuse

How dare the catholic church sue the commision! They should be turning in the guilty priests, keeping them isolated until they can be

6 of 9 12/12/09 4:42 PM
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legally locked away. Also the Irish tax payer should not be footing the bill for compensation - all the money should come from the
Catholic church. Until the church does that, for any Catholic to continue to practise is tantamount to aiding and abetting child abuse.

- Sarah, Wales, 20/5/2009 13:47

Click to rate Rating 386

Report abuse

The problem lies with the terrible fear the Catholic religion imposes on it's "flock". I was one and glad I escaped from the hold this
religion had on me. I was told I would go to hell and the priests and pope had authority from God to inflict abuse at will. Shame on
this religion, it certainly isn't what God has ordained.

- kaali, ottawa, canada, 20/5/2009 13:41

Click to rate Rating 389

Report abuse

All in the name of Religion! For thousands of years terrible cruelty has been inflicted on innocent human beings and animals all over
the world - as punishments and sacrificial offerings - from races that buried children alive hundreds of years ago, and isn't it all still
going on somewhere on this planet. Every war has begun over 'religion'...that one faith is more superior than another! And for what?
At the end of the day, every one of us..no matter which faith you follow..die exactly the same.

- Lynn MW, North Wales, UK, 20/5/2009 13:36

Click to rate Rating 338

Report abuse

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