The Australian
An abuse of faith
written by David Sharrock
Friday May 22, 2009
PATRICK Walsh was two years old when he was taken to court with his two brothers, aged three and four, and a sister of six months. The crime: their mother was in an unhappy marriage and had left her husband.
"She was viewed as the guilty party by church and state," Walsh says. "My father denounced her because she wanted a divorce, which was illegal. We were put in the dock, charged and sentenced for 'having a parent who does not exercise proper guardianship'."
With that decision, Walsh lost his childhood. His memories of the next 14 years are of physical and sexual assault, hunger, fear and privation at the Artane Boys School near Dublin run by the Congregation of Christian Brothers, a Catholic organisation.
The full horror of children's lives destroyed by sexual, physical and emotional abuse meted out by Catholic religious orders for decades in Ireland was revealed yesterday in an official five-volume report.
A nine-year investigation by the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse concluded that the Irish government colluded in a conspiracy of silence as no action was taken to prevent the sexual abuse of thousands of children who passed through Catholic-run institutions, even though the abuse was known to be endemic.
More than 30,000 children deemed to be petty thieves, truants or from dysfunctional families - a category that often included unmarried mothers - were sent to Ireland's austere network of industrial schools, reformatories, orphanages and hostels from the 1930s until the last church-run facilities shut in the'90s.
"In some schools a high level of ritualised beating was routine. Girls were struck with implements designed to maximise pain and were struck on all parts of the body," the report says. "Personal and family denigration was widespread."
The Irish Times newspaper, in a scathing editorial, says the report "is the map of an Irish hell".
"It defines the contours of a dark hinterland of the state, a parallel country whose existence we have long known but never fully acknowledged. It is a land of pain and shame, of savage cruelty and callous indifference," the newspaper says.
"With a calm but relentless accumulation of facts, the report blows away all the denials and obfuscations, all the moral equivocations and evasions that we have heard from some of the religious orders and their apologists.
"Abuse was not a failure of the system. It was the system. Terror was both the point of these institutions and their standard operating procedure. Their function in Irish society was to impose social control, particularly on the poor, by acting as a threat."
The report's publication was delayed by several years after the Christian Brothers sued successfully in 2004 to withhold the names of all its members, dead or alive. [INSTEAD OF SIDING WITH THE INNOCENT CHILDREN, THEY DEFENDED THE PEDOPHILES!]
Sexual abuse was carried out by religious and lay staff, co-residents and professionals "both within and external to the institutions", as well as members of the public, volunteer workers, visitors and foster parents. [MY GOSH THE CHURCH WAS USED AS A BROTHEL!]
The commission found the worst offender was the Christian Brothers order, which ran most of the institutions for older boys, while the Sisters of Mercy, which was supposed to care for girls, also came in for heavy criticism.
Please click HERE to read the entire article... MUST READ!
An abuse of faith
written by David Sharrock
Friday May 22, 2009
PATRICK Walsh was two years old when he was taken to court with his two brothers, aged three and four, and a sister of six months. The crime: their mother was in an unhappy marriage and had left her husband.
"She was viewed as the guilty party by church and state," Walsh says. "My father denounced her because she wanted a divorce, which was illegal. We were put in the dock, charged and sentenced for 'having a parent who does not exercise proper guardianship'."
With that decision, Walsh lost his childhood. His memories of the next 14 years are of physical and sexual assault, hunger, fear and privation at the Artane Boys School near Dublin run by the Congregation of Christian Brothers, a Catholic organisation.
The full horror of children's lives destroyed by sexual, physical and emotional abuse meted out by Catholic religious orders for decades in Ireland was revealed yesterday in an official five-volume report.
A nine-year investigation by the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse concluded that the Irish government colluded in a conspiracy of silence as no action was taken to prevent the sexual abuse of thousands of children who passed through Catholic-run institutions, even though the abuse was known to be endemic.
More than 30,000 children deemed to be petty thieves, truants or from dysfunctional families - a category that often included unmarried mothers - were sent to Ireland's austere network of industrial schools, reformatories, orphanages and hostels from the 1930s until the last church-run facilities shut in the'90s.
"In some schools a high level of ritualised beating was routine. Girls were struck with implements designed to maximise pain and were struck on all parts of the body," the report says. "Personal and family denigration was widespread."
The Irish Times newspaper, in a scathing editorial, says the report "is the map of an Irish hell".
"It defines the contours of a dark hinterland of the state, a parallel country whose existence we have long known but never fully acknowledged. It is a land of pain and shame, of savage cruelty and callous indifference," the newspaper says.
"With a calm but relentless accumulation of facts, the report blows away all the denials and obfuscations, all the moral equivocations and evasions that we have heard from some of the religious orders and their apologists.
"Abuse was not a failure of the system. It was the system. Terror was both the point of these institutions and their standard operating procedure. Their function in Irish society was to impose social control, particularly on the poor, by acting as a threat."
The report's publication was delayed by several years after the Christian Brothers sued successfully in 2004 to withhold the names of all its members, dead or alive. [INSTEAD OF SIDING WITH THE INNOCENT CHILDREN, THEY DEFENDED THE PEDOPHILES!]
Sexual abuse was carried out by religious and lay staff, co-residents and professionals "both within and external to the institutions", as well as members of the public, volunteer workers, visitors and foster parents. [MY GOSH THE CHURCH WAS USED AS A BROTHEL!]
The commission found the worst offender was the Christian Brothers order, which ran most of the institutions for older boys, while the Sisters of Mercy, which was supposed to care for girls, also came in for heavy criticism.
Please click HERE to read the entire article... MUST READ!
No comments:
Post a Comment