Kids in Irish 'Fritzl' incest hell

By JOANNE McELGUNN
Irish Sun Crime Editor
Published: 17 Jun 2009

A HORRIFYING case of suspected incest involving up to SEVEN youngsters and BOTH their parents is being investigated by Irish police. The children claim they were raped and brutally assaulted by their father and mother in their west of Ireland home.

In a case reminiscent of the infamous Josef Fritzl incest horror in Austria they detail how they endured years of vile abuse behind closed doors.

They told investigators how they were forced to have sex with their parents and each other. There are serious concerns that the mother gave birth to a child fathered by one of her sons. The terrified kids — aged between one and 13 when the alleged abuse came to light — detailed how they were raped by their father while their mother looked on.

They described a catalogue of unimaginable horror including watching their baby sister, then TWO, being raped by their father. A source said: “What they describe is beyond horror — way above anything that this country has ever previously heard.

Appalling

“This involves up to seven kids from an even larger family. It was a house of sheer, utter horror where every imaginable abuse is said to have taken place. “Parents forcing sex on the children who in turn were made have sex with each other — it’s all alleged. “There are also strong suspicions that the mother gave birth to her son’s child - who was one of the seven kids then abused.” The children told how their father abused them with a stick and forced them to have sex with both parents.The investigation also heard claims that they were made to perform sex acts on each other.

Following a two-year probe gardai sent a file to the DPP recommending the father be charged with the rape and aggravated sexual assault of the children. Officers also recommended the mother be charged with the aggravated sexual assault of four of the children and several counts of aiding and abetting sexual assaults. However, after assessing the file for over a year the DPP declined to prosecute. It has been alleged five of the children made statements detailing the abuse — including seeing their baby sister and brother being raped and assaulted. Now the DPP has ordered that the case be reviewed and resubmitted to his office.

The move, it is thought, follows the successful prosecution of a case in Roscommon. Last July this 40-year-old woman was convicted of incest against one son and the sexual abuse of another. She also pleaded guilty to neglect of six of her children. The DPP has ordered a review of other similar cases, including the one revealed by the Irish Sun today. Several officers have been appointed to examine this case before sending it back to the DPP. A source said: “They want to see if anything was missed.” The kids, who were taken into care a decade ago, first came to the attention of the Midland Health Board in the late 1990s when they lived in its catchment area. The family were placed under the supervision of the MHB after a number of complaints from neighbours about the physical condition of the children.

It was not until the family moved to the west of Ireland and came under the care of the Western Health Board that the claims of rapes and sex assaults came to light. The children were first interviewed about the sexual abuse around eight years ago and they detailed a horrific home-life of rapes, beatings, hunger and neglect. One told how he and his brother were made to have sex with their sister — who has since tried to kill herself several times and is feared to be “beyond hope”. Another detailed how he saw an older brother have sex with his mother and his father hav e sex with a sister. Yet another told how he would vomit after being forced to perform oral sex on his father.Another child said he saw his father having oral sex with four of his brothers and sisters. They also described how their father would beat them and their mother. All of the children were interviewed separately and have reportedly given startlingly similar accounts of abuse — detailing how they would hide under a table when their father was looking for his next victim.

Both parents were arrested in 2002 and denied any wrongdoing. The couple are still together, despite the fact the husband has been convicted of beating his wife. He is many years older than her and there is some suspicion he began having sex with her when she was 12 or 13.A source said: “The only comfort is that this mother is now beyond child-bearing age. “Some of the younger children remain in foster care where they are doing well. Others are older and no longer in care. They are trying to cope as best they can

[Author's email id : joanne.mcelgunn@the-sun.ie ]
[Thanks to Askios for the article ]

The Ryan Report: It's horrifying

The Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse (CICA) is one of a range of measures introduced by the Irish Government to investigate the extent and effects of abuse on children from 1936 onwards. It is generally known in Ireland as the "Ryan report" or "the Ryan Commission" (previously "the Laffoy Commission"), after its presiding judge, Justice Seán Ryan. The Commission's work started in 1999 and it published its public report on 20 May 2009.

Though the Commission's remit encompassed all forms of child abuse outside the family, the majority of allegations it investigated related to the system of residential "Reformatory and Industrial Schools" operated by Catholic Church orders, funded and supervised by the Irish Department of Education.

The Commission's report said testimony 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, that church officials encouraged ritual beatings and consistently shielded their orders' paedophiles from arrest amid a "culture of self-serving secrecy", and that government inspectors failed to stop the chronic beatings, rapes and humiliation.

Those abused were, amongst other things, stripped, beaten and raped by nuns, subjected to naked beatings in public, forced into oral sex and even subjected to beatings after failed rape attempts by brothers. One person described how they attempted to tell nuns they had been molested by an ambulance driver only to be "stripped naked and whipped by four nuns to 'get the devil out of you'". Another described how they were removed from their bed and "made to walk around naked with other boys whilst brothers used their canes and flicked at their penis". Yet another was "tied to a cross and raped whilst others masturbated at the side".

The abuse has been described by some as Ireland's Holocaust. The abuse was said to be "endemic" across Irish educational institutions. The UK based Guardian newspaper, described the abuse as "the stuff of nightmares", citing the adjectives used in the report as being particularly chilling: "systemic, pervasive, chronic, excessive, arbitrary, endemic".

[To read about the Ryan Report in details, click here.]

[Thanks to Sagnik for the link to the article.]