Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse Report

As expected the report released today by the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse on institutions run by Catholic congregations and orders is horrifying and paints a truly terrible picture of the Roman Catholic Church - which was well aware of the widespread sexual and physical abuse of children and chose to cover it up and protect their own. Sadly, I suspect that if a similar commission and investigation of Church run facilities in other countries were conducted the results would be similarly shocking. Truth be told, the Catholic Church hierarchy is an evil institution that cares nothing for the lives of children but everything about power, money and appearances. I hope this report puts the final nail in the coffin of the Church's influence in Ireland. Here are some highlights from the Irish Times:

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THOUSANDS OF children suffered physical and sexual abuse over several decades in residential institutions run by religious congregations, the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse has found.

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The report published yesterday describes how children lived in “a climate of fear” in the institutions and finds that “sexual abuse was endemic in boys’ institutions”. Cases of sexual abuse were hidden by the congregations that ran the institutions and offenders were transferred to other locations where they were free to abuse again, the report says.

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Eight chapters in the report are devoted to the Christian Brothers, the largest provider of residential care for boys in the State. More allegations were made against the Christian Brothers than all other male orders combined.

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The commission, which was set up in 1999, investigated industrial schools, reformatories, orphanages, institutions for children with disabilities and ordinary day schools. It heard evidence covering the period from 1914 to the present but the bulk of its work addressed the period from the early 1930s to the early 1970s.

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Accounts of abuse given in relation to 216 institutions are detailed in the report, which runs to nearly 3,000 pages. More than 800 priests, brothers, nuns and lay people were implicated. The final cost of the commission may be over €100 million.

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The Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse is separate from the Residential Institutions Redress Board, which has received some 15,000 applications. It is expected the total cost of awards by the board will exceed €1 billion, of which €128 million has been contributed by 18 religious congregations.

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Another article in the Irish Times went on to state as follows:

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[T]the abject failure by most of the congregations to accept any responsibility for the abuse has been identified repeatedly by the commission. In this respect, its findings are targeted directly at the current leadership within these organisations. Again in the case of the Christian Brothers, the report draws a pointed distinction between the evidence of contrition given by many individual Brothers who had worked in the industrial schools, and the attitude of blanket denial coming from those who are currently in charge of the congregation.

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The commission describes a range of problems encountered when dealing with the Christian Brothers: assertions “known to be incorrect or misleading”; relevant facts omitted; and a policy of denying that a Brother was ever in an institution where “a complainant had got a name even slightly wrong”.

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This asks important questions of us as a society: are we simply to sweep this under the carpet, to conveniently agree that everything is much better today? Or should we instead look to change a system where so much of the educational and care provision for our children is farmed out to organisations who are unaccountable and now proven to have a long track record of abuse and cover-up?

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[W]hat the Ryan commission report has done with great thoroughness is to give us a compelling vision of the hell to which so many children were consigned. It is up to ourselves as a society to demand from Government a series of guarantees, constitutional in part, to ensure that it is never again repeated.

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What is sad that I an so many others allowed thoroughly the morally bankrupt Roman Catholic Church to brainwash us, fill us with self-hate, and denigrate us - all the while as the Church covered up massive amounts of sexual abuse of children and other cruelty and violence against children. When will more people wake up to the evils of this institution and begin to demand full accountability?

Irish Catholics Brace for Release of Abuse Report

The influence of the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland has plummeted - and rightly so - over the last few years as reports of sexual abuse by priests and workhouse horrors have swept the headlines. Now, a new report is due for release tomorrow and the Church may receive yet another near knockout blow to what little reputation it has left in a country that once was a bastion of Catholicism. As the Sydney Morning Herald reports, the expectations are that the report by the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse is anticipated to be devastating, possibly implicating 500 priests in the diocese of Dublin alone. Here are some story highlights:

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HUNDREDS of Catholic priests are expected to be implicated in child abuse in Ireland when a long-awaited report is published this week. The Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse has spent nine years looking into allegations, some of which date back more than 60 years, from thousands of former residents of state schools and orphanages. It is due to report tomorrow, and the commission will publish a second report, on how the church handled sex abuse complaints, in July. It is thought about 500 priests in the diocese of Dublin alone have been implicated.

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Many thousands of children sent to institutions suffered at the hands of religious orders such as the Christian Brothers and Sisters of Mercy. Most of the children were born to unmarried mothers or came from large, impoverished families that could not afford to keep them. . . . At Easter the Archbishop of Dublin, Diarmuid Martin, warned churchgoers that when published the report would "shock us all". "It is likely that thousands of children or young people across Ireland were abused by priests in the period under investigation, . . .

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In 2003 the government offered compensation to victims of institutionalised child abuse. It was expected to cost $1.5 billion. The estimated bill was based on just 10,000 of the 150,000 victims coming forward. If all survivors claimed, the Republic could face a bill of about $22 billion.

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In the second report the church is likely to face heavy criticism for trying to cover up abuse when it emerged. In some instances the church simply moved abusive priests from parish to parish to avoid scandal.

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Given the Church's horrible history of abuse, cover up and unbelievable hypocrisy one has to wonder why anyone continues to listen to the bleating of its hierarchy. In any other institution there would have been wholesale firings and forced resignations of those in charge who had failed so miserably on their watch. But not so in the Roman Catholic Church. It is an ugly, ugly situation and I am pleased that the Church in Ireland has rightly lost much of its ability to hide its dirty linen. If anyone is "inherently disordered," I'd say its the Church hierarchy.