DUBLIN, May 20, 2009
Irish Report Details Catholic Child Abuse
9-Year Probe Reveals Decades Of Beatings, Rapes Ignored By Government, At Church-Run Institutions
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Play CBS Video Video Victim On Church Sex Abuse Colm O' Gorman, an activist who was sexually abused throughout his teenage years by a Roman Catholic priest in Ireland, discusses a new investigation into widespread clergy abuse of children.
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Video Rampant Abuse In Irish Schools From the 1930s to the 90s, Irish officials sent troubled children to Roman Catholic reform schools, where thousands were savagely abused. Mark Phillips reports on the victims' response to a long-awaited report.
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John Kelly, of the Survivors of Child Abuse (SOCA) group, right, and Kevin Flannagan brother of Mickey Flannagan, victim of child abuse, shout at members of the government-appointed Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse in state-funded Roman Catholic Church-run institutions, for being turned away from a press conference in Dublin, Ireland,Wednesday, May 20, 2009. (AP Photo/Peter Morrison)
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The commission said overwhelming, consistent testimony from still-traumatized men and women, now in their 50s to 80s, 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. (AP Photo/Peter Morrison)
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High Court Justice Sean Ryan on Wednesday unveiled the 2,600-page final report of Ireland's Commission to Inquire Into Child Abuse, which is based on testimony from thousands of former students and officials from more than 250 church-run institutions.
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 1990s.
The report found that molestation and rape were "endemic" in boys' facilities, chiefly run by the Christian Brothers order, and supervisors pursued policies that increased the danger. Girls supervised by orders of nuns, chiefly the Sisters of Mercy, suffered much less sexual abuse but frequent assaults and humiliation designed to make them feel worthless.
"In some schools a high level of ritualized beating was routine. ... Girls were struck with implements designed to maximize pain and were struck on all parts of the body," the report said. "Personal and family denigration was widespread."
For years the church here claimed the abuse was a bad-apple problem, reports CBS News correspondent Mark Phillips. Now that excuse is gone. There were hundreds, if not thousands of bad apples who were systematically hidden by the church so they could abuse again.
Andrew Madden wanted to be a priest until he was abused by one. "It took the form of molestation most of the time," he told Phillips.
Colm O'Gorman's whole life centered around the church. "The abuse and then rape continued for about two and a half years until I fled," O'Gorman' told Phillips.
Christine Buckley tried to tell the world what she was going through. "I received a beating which opened up my flesh on my left thigh," she told Phillips.
Victims of the system have long demanded that the truth of their experiences be documented and made public, so that children in Ireland never endure such suffering again.
But most leaders of religious orders have rejected the allegations as exaggerations and lies, and testified to the commission that any abuses were the responsibility of often long-dead individuals.
Wednesday's five-volume report sides almost completely with the former students' accounts. It concludes that church officials always shielded their orders' pedophiles from arrest amid a culture of self-serving secrecy.
"A climate of fear, created by pervasive, excessive and arbitrary punishment, permeated most of the institutions and all those run for boys. Children lived with the daily terror of not knowing where the next beating was coming from," the report concluded.
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The commission said overwhelming, consistent testimony from still-traumatized men and women, now in their 50s to 80s, 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.
A climate of fear, created by pervasive, excessive and arbitrary punishment, permeated most of the institutions and all those run for boys. Children lived with the daily terror of not knowing where the next beating was coming from.
Ireland's Commission to Inquire Into Child AbuseThe report proposed 21 ways the government could recognize past wrongs, including building a permanent memorial, providing counseling and education to victims and improving Ireland's current child protection services.
But its findings will not be used for criminal prosecutions - in part because the Christian Brothers successfully sued the commission in 2004 to keep the identities of all of its members, dead or alive, unnamed in the report. No real names, whether of victims or perpetrators, appear in the final document.
Irish church leaders and religious orders all declined to comment Wednesday, citing the need to read the massive document first. The Vatican also declined to comment.
The Irish government already has funded a parallel compensation system that has paid 12,000 abuse victims an average of euro65,000 ($90,000). About 2,000 claims remain outstanding.
Victims receive the payouts only if they waive their rights to sue the state and the church. Hundreds have rejected that condition and taken their abusers and those church employers to court.
Wednesday's report said children had no safe way to tell authorities about the assaults they were suffering, particularly the sexual aggression from church officials and older inmates in boys' institutions.
"The management did not listen to or believe children when they complained of the activities of some of the men who had responsibility for their care," the commission found. "At best, the abusers were moved, but nothing was done about the harm done to the child. At worst, the child was blamed and seen as corrupted by the sexual activity, and was punished severely."
The commission dismissed as implausible a central defense of the religious orders - that, in bygone days, people did not recognize the sexual abuse of a child as a criminal offense, but rather as a sin that required repentance.
In their testimony, religious orders typically cited this opinion as the principal reason why sex-predator priests and brothers were sheltered within the system and moved to new posts where they could still maintain daily contact with children.
But the commission said its fact-finding - which included unearthing decades-old church files, chiefly stored in the Vatican, on scores of unreported abuse cases from Ireland's industrial schools - demonstrated that officials understood exactly what was at stake: their own reputations.
It cited numerous examples where school managers told police about child abusers who were not church officials - but never did this when one of their own had committed the crime.
"Contrary to the congregations' claims that the recidivist nature of sexual offending was not understood, it is clear from the documented cases that they were aware of the propensity for abusers to re-abuse," it said.
Religious orders were chiefly concerned about preventing scandal, not the danger to children, it said.
The commission also condemned Ireland's Education Department for aiding the abusive culture through infrequent, toothless inspections that deferred to church authority.
Inspectors were supposed to restrict the use of corporal punishment and make sure the children were adequately fed, clothed and educated - but the report called those inspections "fundamentally flawed."
It said a lone inspector was responsible for monitoring more than 50 industrial schools, schools were told about the visits in advance and inspectors rarely talked to the children.
Wednesday's report also highlighted the rarity of human kindness in the institutions.
"A word of consideration or encouragement, or an act of sympathy or understanding, had a profound effect. Adults in their 60s and 70s recalled seemingly insignificant events that had remained with them all their lives," the report said.
"Often the act of kindness, recalled in such a positive light, arose from the simple fact that the staff member had not given a beating when one was expected."
© MMIX, CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Michelle Obama tells how her role as the First Lady has changed her perspective.
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See all 198 CommentsPosted by Audrey_Dern at 9:27 AM : May 21, 2009
I was brought up in the Pentecostal church. When I was 13, a good friend of mine who was 11 told me that our pastor was her boyfriend. I thought she was making things up.Then in the 1970s and 1980s, it was divulged that this pastor had sexxx with over 20 women in the church and fathered at least 9 babies. My cousin, who was 14 at the time her 'romance' with the pastor began, had a child by this man too. In the end, the man had to step down, though he has a bigger church now--and he married my old friend after fathering 3 kids with her--and the stories she told as a child? In court, it was divulged that this girl had been having sexxx with the pastor since she was 9 and he was almost 30.
And yes, many/most Protestant churches have their sexual demons and problems too, the man who replaced this pastor was found to be having sex with 12 year olds and his cousin, who was from another church had a thing for young boys. Stuff like this is not limited to one religion, it is about men and their ******* and the ability of those in power to exploit others--can happen anywhere, but in churches who specialize in laity and in schools for kids and in celibacy for men--that is the perfect storm for male pedophiles with homosexual tendencies to line up--imagine an entire congregation of potential victims who dote and believe your every word, now imagine the employer doing all he can to protect his worker and shield their crimes--but what do we expect?
What do we think all those young boys do in the seminary--when hormones are raging and the only outlet is themselves or each other? Some may go in as homosexual--but some are introduced to that mindset while in the seminary. Bet on it.
How do memorials and improving child protection services account for and compensate for years of beatings, rapes, humiliation and torture?
Give them each a million dollars straight from the pockets of the Vatican--when it is no longer profitable, the church will stop shielding its abusers.
We do not explain such things. We do not know and are honest enough to say so. We do not fabricate *Daddy In The Sky* myths and lie to children to *explain* such things.
The god myth is YOURS. YOU explain it. We have no such obligation.
Seems to me you have bigger things to worry about than such unanswerable questions as why babies have toenails. Perhaps you might ask yourself how religious nuts can be stopped from abusing children. Work on that one for a while, will you?
Posted by jmcgilvray at 11:27 AM : May 21, 2009
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Funny how every response on everything is just a rebuttal. "We dont explain such things." "The burden of proof is not ours" blah, blah, blah. Sounds to me like you do not have an opinion on anything, but just want to discredit others for their beliefs. This reminds me of those hard-core atheists that do not believe in God until tragedy. They are the first ones to yell "OH MY GOD" or "Help Lord" during these times. Just be honest with yourself. I have a question for you. What are your morals and where does your morality come from?
Posted by openeyes1 at 11:25 AM : May 21, 2009
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Once again inaccurate. The Apostle Paul was very aware of the Gospel of Jesus Christ because he originally was named Saul and would persecute Christians under the guidance of Nero. Ironically when Paul converted to Christianity, it was Nero that had him beheaded. Many of his gospels he wrote himself while in prison in Rome in 62 A.D. Dont take my word for it, read it for yourself.
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I'm sorry but you are the one who has been misled. Go take a real theology course or simply read a few books on the history of the Bible and you find you are mistaken. I never said that the texts weren't written until the 4th century, I said put together but the scriptures that you read in the New Testament were not complete by the 1st century anyway. There were no printing presses at that time and all copies had to be scribed. The original documents had text changed on purpose and accidentally and they even omitted large portions. It is common knowledge that not all Christian texts are included in the canon that was finally official in the 1500?s. As for Paul's knowledge of Jesus there is even evidence in Paul's letters that he was not aware of the virgin birth or the other gospel text. The only gospel that is even suspected to be written by an apostle is the gospel of John; even this evidence is slim at best. It?s hard to believe that the Bible is a perfect representation of God?s words when it is filled with contradictions.
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You need to go back and re-evaluate that time line. 13 books of the New Testament (Covenant in NASB) were written by the Apostle Paul and he was beheaded by Nero in 62 A.D. That's only 29 years after Christ's crucifixion. Those were the last books written in the Bible, every other scribe was collected before then.
Posted by openeyes1 at 5:39 AM : May 21, 2009
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I have plenty of proof, but there is no reason in going into detail with you, because you try so hard not to fathom God's existence, but yet when I ask your reasoning behind your non-belief, you shy away from the question stating "It's not for atheists to prove." Sad. I hope gives you understanding. The bible teaches that God will prove Himself through miracles wonders and signs. Have you seen any lately?
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See all 198 Comments