Vatican reports on Irish child abuse scandals

20 March 2012

The Vatican has expressed its "dismay and betrayal" at the "sinful and criminal acts" by Catholic clergy guilty of child abuse across Ireland.

In a report published on Tuesday, it called for a "new focus on the laity" within the Irish Catholic Church.

The scandals had "opened many wounds", it said, and lay people had "lost trust in their pastors".

The report acknowledged "innocent young people" were abused by clerics to whose care they had been entrusted. 

It said that "those who should have exercised vigilance often failed to do so effectively".

'Tainted'

The report also said that good priests felt "unjustly tainted" and not defended by superiors.

"Bishops and superiors have often felt isolated as they sought to confront the wave of indignation and, at times, they have found it difficult to agree on a common line of action," the report said.

It recommended continued support for the victims and survivors of Catholic clerical abuse in Ireland.

The report also sought to bring the Irish Church back into line with the teachings of Rome.

"The Visitators also encountered a certain tendency, not dominant but nevertheless fairly widespread among priests, religious and laity, to hold theological opinions at variance with the teachings of the Magisterium, this serious situation requires particular attention," said the report.

Finally, it also called on the Irish Catholic community to "makes its voice heard" in the media.

It said that the community should establish "a proper relationship" with journalists with the aim of "making known the truth of the Gospel and the Church's life".

Speaking after the publication of the report, Primate of Ireland Sean Brady said it was a "helpful snapshot of a key moment on the ongoing journey of renewal".

He said Irish bishops wished to associate themselves with "the sense of pain and shame" expressed in the findings.

"Innocent young people were abused by clerics and religious to whose care they had been entrusted, while those who should have exercised vigilance often failed to do so effectively," he said.

Cardinal Brady called for a united Church.

Closed doors

He particularly welcomed the Vatican's call for "a new focus on the laity" and the need for a "proper relationship" with the Irish media.

Commenting on the report, Michael Kelly from the newspaper, the Irish Catholic, said: "There is a focus on the victims, a renewal of apologies and an acceptance of the great damage that has been done".

Mr Kelly said the report carried "a very clear warning that says authentic renewal cannot be brought about by dissent from Church teaching."

"There was a feeling that the spirit of the sixties had infected the seminaries too much," he said, adding that there was a sense of the current Pope looking forward to a Church where there might be "fewer but truer" Catholics.

Colm O'Gorman, a high profile campaigner who sued the Catholic Church over the abuse he suffered as a child, called the report "farcical".

He said the Church had to "be dragged kicking and screaming through the courts of opinion and the courts of law".

"The suggestion that they are going to address this by dealing with the whole issue of contamination of seminarians is backward looking and disingenuous," he said.

Margaret McGuckin from Survivors and Victims of Institutional Abuse, (Savia), was abused as a child at Nazareth House in Belfast.

She and other members of her group met Cardinal Brady earlier this month to seek his cooperation in a forthcoming inquiry, ordered by the NI Executive, into allegations of clerical abuse in Northern Ireland.

"We, in the north, have been ignored," she said.

"They have set up a counselling service but many of our people ignore this. They find it hard to trust."

The clerical abuse survivors' group, One in Four, said the Vatican was "still not accepting responsibility for its role in creating the culture of purposeful cover-ups of the sexual abuse of children." 

Executive Director Maeve Lewis said: "While we welcome the findings of the Visitation that the Irish Church now has good child protection practices in place, we feel it is a lost opportunity to address the role played by the Vatican in perpetuating the policy of protecting abusive priests at the expense of children."

"We also welcome the recommendation that the bishops and religious superiors should devote much time to listening to survivors and attending to their needs." 

Ms Brennan claimed the group had noticed "a hardening of attitude on the part of the Church authorities to the question of compensation for survivors". 

"This only compounds the pain and hurt of survivors. It brings into question the authenticity of the Church's repentance," she said.

Seven teams

The report is a summary of what seven teams of Vatican-appointed church leaders observed when they visited four Archdioceses across Ireland over the last two years. 

It looked at the Church' s dealings with survivors of abuse and current child protection policies.

Some of the teams met victims and concerned Catholics in advertised locations, as well as individual survivors behind closed doors.

The report was promised two years ago by Pope Benedict XVI in his letter to Catholics in Ireland.

The Pope expressed horror in the wake of the Ryan and Murphy reports, which revealed a 70-year history of child abuse by a significant number of priests, brothers and nuns and cover-ups by their religious superiors.

[Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-17442603 ]

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.]