Los Angeles Personal Injury Lawyer - Ireland

Catholic Church "Repentant" Over Irish Abuse Scandal, Past and Present Actions Contradict Its Rhetoric

Paul Kiesel — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 18:07:43 GMT

DUBLIN (Reuters) - Irish bishops said they were "ashamed, humbled and repentant" about widespread abuse of children at Catholic-run schools after victims marched silently to the Irish parliament Wednesday to demand justice.

Disclosures of floggings, slave labor and gang rape in Ireland's now defunct system of industrial and reform schools have shamed Irish people, particularly older ones who did not confront what a report last month described as endemic abuse.

"Heinous crimes were perpetrated against the most innocent and vulnerable, and vile acts with life-lasting effects were carried out under the guise of the mission of Jesus Christ," the Irish Bishops' Conference said in a statement.

The leaders of the Catholic Church in Ireland met Pope Benedict Friday and he told them to make sure justice was done for all, "to bring healing to the survivors of abuse" and to prevent abuse from happening again, the bishops said.

The statement came hours after hundreds of victims of abuse, carrying children's shoes and wearing white ribbons symbolizing their lost youth, marched to parliament accompanied by thousands of other protestors.

"It was as if you were inside prison and when you come out you don't talk about it," said Marina Permaul, 66, who was brought up "military style" by nuns in the western county of Galway.

"You don't talk about it even to your children," said Permaul, who arrived from London to attend the march. "You're too ashamed of it all, and in any case would they believe you? You didn't dare speak out against a religious order."

COMPENSATION

Organizers of the march, held to coincide with a parliamentary debate on the report, have expressed anger that the debate was postponed to allow parliament to deal with a motion of confidence in the government.

"It really emphasizes again that the state hasn't actually understood one iota of what it was like for 165,000 children who went through 216 institutions," said victim Christine Buckley.

The inquiry, chaired by High Court Justice Sean Ryan, criticized religious authorities for covering up the crimes and the Department of Education for colluding in the silence. It noted children were also preyed upon by foster parents, volunteer workers and employers [. . .]

Click here for the rest of the article.

Originally posted at InjuryBoard by Paul Kiesel

Sexual Abuse of Children was 'Endemic' and Covered Up by the Clergy in Ireland

Paul Kiesel — Fri, 22 May 2009 19:59:14 GMT

From Bloomberg:

May 20 (Bloomberg) -- Sexual abuse of children in Irish state and church-run institutions for boys was “endemic” and covered up by the clergy, according to a commission’s report.

“The recidivist nature of sexual abuse was known to religious authorities,” the government-appointed Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse said in its report, published in Dublin today. “The risk was seen by the congregations in terms of potential for scandal and bad publicity should the abuse be disclosed. The danger to children was not taken into account.”

The five-volume, 2,500-page Commission Report was published amid angry scenes as victims demonstrated outside a press conference demanding copies. The document is the result of almost 10 years of investigation into beatings and rapes at orphanages, schools and hospitals from the 1930s until the 1990s. The inquiry heard confidential testimony from more than 1,000 people who had been in 216 institutions.

“The schools investigated revealed a substantial level of sexual abuse of boys in care that extended over a range from improper touching and fondling to rape with violence,” according to the report. Corporal punishment in girls’ schools was “pervasive, severe, arbitrary and unpredictable.”

More than 90 percent of witnesses who gave evidence to the commission’s confidential committee reported being physically abused. Around half of the witnesses reported sexual abuse.

‘Abuse and Neglect’

“These children lived under a regime of physical, sexual, emotional abuse and neglect,” Meave Lewis, executive director of One in Four, a victims’ lobby group, told reporters. “Even put in the context of the harsh child-rearing practices of the time, it is really shocking.”

The Catholic Church has been grappling in recent years with allegations of sexual abuse by clergy in countries including Ireland and the U.S. Priests have been jailed and defrocked while the church has faced criticism for covering up the allegations by moving pedophile priests from parish to parish.

“We are deeply sorry for the hurt caused,” the Christian Brothers in Ireland said in an e-mailed statement today. “We are ashamed and saddened that many who complained of abuse were not listened to. We acknowledge and regret that our responses to physical and sexual abuse failed to consider the long term psychological effects on children.”

Pope Benedict XVI said he was “outraged” by the sex abuse scandal on a trip to the U.S. last year. “No words of mine can describe the pain and harm inflicted by such abuse,” he said.

Click here for the rest of the article.

Originally posted at InjuryBoard by Paul Kiesel

Hundreds of Children Beaten, Sexually Abused and "Terrorized" for Decades at Catholic-run Schools in Ireland

Paul Kiesel — Wed, 20 May 2009 17:40:46 GMT

From the Los Angeles Times:

Reporting from London -- Boys and girls were beaten, sexually abused and emotionally terrorized for decades in workhouse-style schools run by Ireland's Catholic Church, in which a "culture of silence" showed more concern for protecting victimizers than the children in their care, according to a long-awaited report released today in Dublin.

For more than half a century, excessive and arbitrary punishment created a climate in which students at schools administered by Catholic religious orders lived "with the daily terror of not knowing where the next beating was coming from."

Sexual molestation was "endemic," committed by offenders who were often transferred to other institutions rather than dismissed or turned over to authorities, said the report by Ireland's Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse.

And through it all, government inspectors failed to stop what was going on, despite attempts by some individuals to bring their abusers to account in an effort to lessen the trauma that many still suffer years later.

These are some of the findings of the 2,600-page report unveiled after a nine-year investigation. Drawing on the testimony of nearly 2,000 witnesses, men and women at more than 200 Catholic-run schools during the 1940s through the 1990s, the commission pieced together a damning picture of a church engaged too often in covering up misdeeds within its ranks instead of rooting out their perpetrators.

The five-volume report is a major blow for a religious institution that continues to wield enormous, albeit declining, influence on Irish society, especially on moral issues such as divorce and abortion.

Even then, it wasn't tough enough for some of the victims. Many are angry that the report includes no names of alleged offenders, an omission that one of the religious orders under investigation won in court. Only pseudonyms are used, making the chances of criminal prosecution slim.

"We expected that these people would be named and shamed and that some of them would be convicted," John Barrett, who testified before the commission, told Irish radio station TodayFM. "At the end of the day, some of us won't sleep tonight. We're still nowhere near the truth."

Barrett alleges that he was sexually abused while at a school for boys with learning disabilities, which was run by the Brothers of Charity in Ireland's County Cork.

Edmund Garvey, a spokesman for the Christian Brothers, one of the religious orders whose schools came under investigation, said: "Our first response to the report is to openly and unreservedly express our heartfelt sorrow and sadness and regret to those people who were victimized . . . We are deeply sorry, deeply regretful."

Originally posted at InjuryBoard by Paul Kiesel