Thousands Abused In Catholic Church Care

9:18pm UK, Wednesday May 20, 2009

Enda Brady, Sky News reporter
An investigation into decades of alleged abuse at schools and orphanages run by the Catholic Church in Ireland has described how children were "terrorised" by nuns and priests.

Around 2,500 men and women who were abused in schools and institutions across the Republic gave evidence to the government-backed Commission, led by Justice Sean Ryan at a total cost of £65m.

Victims had hoped the publication of its 2,500 pages would finally reveal the truth about the hidden torture they suffered as children.

The Child Abuse Commission detailed a catalogue of disturbing and chronic sexual, physical and emotional abuse inflicted on thousands of disadvantaged, neglected and abandoned children over the last 70 years.

The church was aware long-term sex offenders were repeatedly abusing children, the damning report revealed.

The inquiry found that paedophiles were moved from school to school each time their behaviour was uncovered

"Sexual abuse was endemic in boys' institutions," said the long-awaited official report.

It was known to religious authorities to be a "persistent problem in male religious oganisations", it went on.

"Nevertheless, each instance of sexual abuse was treated in isolation and in secrecy by the authorities and there was no attempt to address the underlying systemic nature of the problem."

The leader of the Catholic Church in Ireland, Cardinal Sean Brady, apologised for the abuse and said he was ashamed by what the report had found.

"It documents a shameful catalogue of cruelty, neglect, physical, sexual and emotional abuse, perpetrated against children," he said.

"I am profoundly sorry and deeply ashamed that children suffered in such awful ways in these institutions."

The inquiry also criticised the Irish Department of Education after discovering Government files on 27,000 children committed to reformatory and industrial schools disappeared, some as recently as 2001.

In an interim report in 2003, it was revealed that hundreds of boys and girls were beaten with a list of weapons, including leather straps, sticks and farm implements.

Maeve Lewis, from the support group One in Four, said victims wanted a well-documented acknowledgement of the abuse suffered in the institutions.

"Over 35,000 children from the 1940s onwards were condemned to live under a regime of physical, sexual and emotional abuse and neglect," she said.

"While these institutions no longer exist people who are now aged 30 to 80 live by day with the impact their experiences had on their lives."

But John Kelly, of the Survivors of Child Abuse (SOCA) group, said: "There is nothing by way of justice in any means significant in this report, nothing."

Victims of abuse "will also feel that the scars are still left open", he said.

"The state doesn't want the world to know... that it abdicated its responsiblity," he went on, adding survivors felt "deceived and cheated".

The commission's findings will make difficult reading for the orders which ran many of the children's institutions under investigation.

The Christian Brothers, Presentation Brothers, Sisters of Mercy, and the Congregation of Religious of Ireland - an umbrella group for orders - again apologised unreservedly for the abuse.

Some of the allegations are more than 60 years old, with many of the perpetrators already dead.

those priests were the sickest. i've heard some stories about them in the past i dont wanna think about again.

Disgusting. And yet they will still get away with it.