Ireland: After the Ryan Report...The Next Big child abuse Scandal?

The Ryan report into the abuse that occurred in the industrial and reformatory schools – which were run by the religious orders and supposedly under the supervision of the state – has recently been released. At this system’s height there were 7,998 children in the care of the state. Since the release of the report we have heard politicians rushing to condemn this system and saying how shocking it was. I find it incredible to hear the politicians pandering to the press in their condemnation of the old industrial school system when they know that children under their care in 2009 are being neglected still.

by Judy

Considering the gravity of the Ryan Report it would be natural to assume that the government is now doing everything in its power to prevent the abuse of children in state care. You would like to think that considering how wrong the government got it in the past, they would be doing their utmost to protect the children in their care. However that is not the case.



The government has confirmed that 6,500 child protection cases have not been allocated a social worker. There are over 1000 children who have been taken into state care that exist without a social worker: the state has no idea what is going on where they have been placed. No idea if these children are facing neglect, emotional, psychological, sexual or physical abuse [ video]. High caseloads, staff burnout and massive staff turnovers mean that a child can have as many as 6 social workers in the space of a year. That is if they are lucky to have one at all. The reality is that if we intervene at all it’s nearly always too late.

My official title is community care social worker. But no one calls themselves that. We are child protection social workers. This is an indication of where the emphasis in our work lies. That is, to intervene only after the abuse has occurred. There is no prevention, no monitoring, only reaction after a child has been abused.



I’ve seen children move from foster carer to foster carer only to end up in a residential unit or secure unit when they reach ‘crisis point’ with no attempt to intervene before that. I know of a 10 year old boy who has already had 15 foster placements. He’ll end up in a residential unit eventually. The horror of some residential units cause many young people to turn to destructive behaviour as an escape mechanism.

About 800 children leave state care every year with no after care or no statutory right to it. The outcomes for many people who went through the industrial school system were not positive. Homelessness, mental health issues and alcoholism have marred many people’s lives since leaving the system. So what are we doing now to prevent the same happening to children in state care today? The answer is next to nothing. Once a kid hits 18, legally the HSE is covered and doesn’t care what happens to that young person next. A Focus Ireland study on young people leaving care in Ireland indicated that two years after leaving care 68% of those who had been in health board care had experienced homelessness.



One of the most telling signs that the government really does not care about the children in its care is the shocking fact that over 454 migrant children have gone missing from state care since 2000. When Madeleine McCann went missing the outpour of media and emotion was overwhelming. But these children are forgotten about and not even given a column inch in a local newspaper. A report is filled and that’s it. These are the most vulnerable in our society and the government doesn’t appear to care.

The practice of ‘covering one’s own ass’ has become foremost in many social worker’s minds. Meeting and decisions that can cause more damage are carried out so that ‘at least it’s down on paper.’ Bureaucracy has taken over and social workers feel that they are becoming more like administrators that have to record every detail of every conversation rather then actually spend time with the families and child. We are all waiting for the next scandal and want to know that when it hits we cannot be scapegoated.

At a recent conference Prof Pat Dolan (director of the Child and Family Research Centre at NUI Galway) hit the nail on the head when he stated: ‘I sense a panic reaction among professionals, a defensiveness that is going to make things even worse. Early intervention is being done less as professionals seek to protect the system and themselves rather than the children. There’s a tendency to get into form filling . . . making sure they are covered rather than looking at high-risk cases.’

And so the government response is to soberly look at the camera to indicate disgust at the Ryan report and to put increasing pressure on social workers to not screw up. As a result children who would not normally be removed for a home are being removed and why? To cover one’s own ass and that of the government. It would be nice if we had a clearer picture of what they were being removed to. With the “head in the sand” policy the government are taking, only 20 years will tell.



The reality is that another scandal lies in waiting. I know, as do most of my colleagues, as do those that run the country, that it is just a matter of time before it breaks. However those children are not heard or cared about by the politicians – children can’t vote and the media coverage dies away. If we don’t want history to repeat itself, we need a system that values the rights of children more than the profits of bankers.




Download the Executive Summary in PDF format
Download the Commission Report in PDF format



By Joana Morais

http://joana-morais.blogspot.com/2009/07/ireland-after-ryan-reportthe-next-big.html

One of the most telling signs that the government really does not care about the children in its care is the shocking fact that over 454 migrant children have gone missing from state care since 2000. When Madeleine McCann went missing the outpour of media and emotion was overwhelming.

We have alot of migrant childrens photos here.....when I've googled them to see what I can come up with....

NOTHING on them...no news....no rich investors coming forward to help...no celebrities...in fact not one press report!

To the whole world Madeleine is the only child who is missing!

Child abuse scandal shatters Irish faith in Catholic ChurchBy Richard Allen Greene, CNN
March 19, 2010 6:26 p.m. EDT


Dublin, Ireland (CNN) -- John Kelly was 14 years old when, he says, he lost his faith in God.

"I was taken down these stairs. I only had a nightdress on. It was pulled over my head. I was left naked. This 6-foot, 4-inch [tall] religious brother stood on my hands... and another guy had a whip that we made ourselves, with coins in it. And he would run from a distance to flog me," Kelly remembers.

Kelly, now 59, spent much of his childhood living in institutions run by Catholic orders in Ireland. The abuse he remembers most vividly took place at a reformatory in Daingean, in central Ireland.

"It was a very significant night for me," he says. "I'd been raped and buggered previously by these religious brothers, and I'd been physically beaten and psychologically tortured for months -- I spent two years in the place."

But Kelly reached a breaking point as one Catholic brother held him down, another whipped him and two others looked on, he says.

John Kelly says he was abused as a teen living at a reformatory run by a Catholic order in Ireland."I begged God to take me away. I just wanted to die to get away from the pain. And God wasn't there for me," he says.

Kelly's "crime" that night, he says, was to have been named by another boy at the reformatory, falsely, as an accomplice in a plot to escape.

But Kelly did manage to escape from Daingean soon after, and spent more than 30 years in London before returning to Ireland. Now he is campaigning on behalf of victims of child abuse.

Those victims number in the thousands -- possibly tens of thousands -- three major investigations in the past five years suggest.

The most recent, the Murphy Report, found the Archdiocese of Dublin and other Catholic Church authorities in Ireland covered up child abuse by priests from 1975 to 2004. Child sexual abuse was widespread then, the report found.

Liam McGlynn, a retired public official, thinks that it was no accident that so many child abusers found their way into the priesthood in Ireland.

The prevalence of the problem, he says, suggests that there were "people who were aware that the best place to abuse children was under the cover of the church. What better cover could you hope for?"

He emphasizes that that's only his personal opinion, but he observes that an entire generation has been turned off by the scandal.

"Virtually no young people go to church. The main churchgoers would be my generation, still, and older," says McGlynn, who is 57. "The church has lost an entire generation."

"I haven't been to church for quite some time. My faith has been seriously damaged," he adds.

He's part of a much broader trend, says Patsy McGarry, religious affairs correspondent for the Irish Times newspaper.

More than 90 percent of Irish people attended mass at least once a week in the 1970s. Today the figure is about half that, he says.

"The church has lost working-class urban Ireland," he says.

The faithful were shocked and disgusted to learn that Irish bishops had covered up abuse in the name of protecting the church and its priests, he says.

For loyal Catholics, the most disappointing revelation, McGarry says, was "to have it exposed that bishops behaved in contravention of canon [church] law -- as was the case -- in contravention of civil law -- as was the case -- but also, and above all, in contravention of moral law. It blew them out of the water."

He saw proof of the change in attitude towards the Catholic Church just this week, he says, when he went to a St. Patrick's Day parade in his hometown in rural Ireland.

"There were two bishops, a retired one and his successor, and there was none of the deference [shown to them] that would have been there when I was growing up in that same small town. Deference to bishops has practically disappeared in Ireland," he says.

That's a very fundamental shift, he observes.

Once, bishops "had a unique status in Ireland, far higher than any government minister," McGarry says.

"The bishop was a supreme being. ... He had an unequaled and unchallenged status in Ireland," he says.

"It'll be quite some time" before the church regains its moral authority in Ireland, McGarry predicts. "I mean, this is a deeply damaged institution because its behavior has been exposed as immoral."

But the church will survive in some form, he says.

"If you're asking me, is this the end of Roman Catholicism in Ireland, it is not. What it is, is the end of a form of the Roman Catholic Church we've had in Ireland for about 150 years," he says.

From now on, the church will need to involve more women and more lay people, as opposed to clergy, in running its affairs, both as a response to the crisis and as a simple matter of demographics, given that a generation has turned its back on the church, McGarry says.

Pope Benedict XVI is due to intervene in the crisis within days.

He is expected to release his official statement on the abuse scandal Saturday, in the form of a pastoral letter to the Irish faithful.

Abuse victim John Kelly says the statement will need to be far-reaching indeed to satisfy him.

"We need him to say that he will get rid of all bishops and cardinals who were involved in the cover-up of the abuse of children and start again," he says.

"If it means all the bishops and cardinals have to go from Ireland, so be it," he says. "Ireland would be a better place for it, and the church would certainly be a better place for it."

http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/europe/03/18/ireland.abuse.fallout/index.html


CLICK ON THE LINK ABOVE TO VIEW VIDEO INTERVIEWS.

Catholic Church abuse scandal tackled in Easter sermons
Cardinal Keith O'Brien apologised to abuse victims in his address
Catholic leaders in Britain and Ireland have used their Easter sermons to address the Church's handling of its global child abuse scandal.

The leader of Catholics in England and Wales, Archbishop Vincent Nichols, said "serious sins" had been committed.

The Irish Church's leader Cardinal Sean Brady - who has faced resignation calls - said there was no longer a "hiding place for abusers in the church".

Meanwhile the Archbishop of Canterbury has apologised over previous remarks.

Dr Rowans Williams, leader of the Anglican Communion, had said in an interview that Ireland's Catholic Church was losing all credibility.

He said in a subsequent BBC interview that he was "sorry" for adding to the difficulties being faced by Irish bishops.

He did not tackle the child abuse issue in his own sermon on Sunday.

Talk of sin is not always popular - unless we are talking about other people's sins

Archbishop Vincent Nichols


Cardinal rejects abuse 'gossip'
Pope's preacher sorry for remarks
Cardinal says abusers cannot hide
At the Vatican, Pope Benedict XVI made no direct mention of the cover-up accusations which have engulfed the Church.

He said Easter brought a message of pardon, goodness and truth.

At St Mary's Cathedral in Edinburgh, Cardinal Keith O'Brien, head of the Catholic Church in Scotland, apologised to abuse victims.

He said: "Crimes against children have indeed been committed, and any Catholics who were aware of such crimes and did not act to report them brings shame on us all."

He added that "no comfort" could come from the fact that only a small percentage of priests were guilty of paedophilia.

'Need for forgiveness'

Meanwhile Archbishop Nichols told worshippers at Westminster Cathedral that to appreciate the Easter message "we have to begin with our own sin and shame".

He said: "In recent weeks the serious sins committed within the Catholic community have been much talked about.

"For our part, we have been reflecting on them deeply, acknowledging our guilt and our need for forgiveness."

The head of Ireland's Catholics, who has been facing pressure to resign for his role in mishandling the case of a serial child abuser, admitted to worshippers that he was part of a cover-up culture.

Cardinal Sean Brady: ''My overriding concern will always be the safety and protection of everyone in the Church, especially children''
Speaking on Easter Sunday, Cardinal Sean Brady told the congregation at St Patrick's Cathedral in Armagh the Pope had talked of a "misplaced" concern for the Church's reputation.

He said: "I realise that, however unintentionally, however unknowingly, I too allowed myself to be influenced by that culture in our Church, and our society.

"I pledge to you that, from now on, my overriding concern will always be the safety and protection of everyone in the Church - but especially children and all those who are vulnerable."

Last month Cardinal Brady admitted he represented the Church at meetings in 1975 where children signed vows of silence over complaints against paedophile priest Fr Brendan Smyth.

The global Catholic Church has been rocked by sex abuse scandals - many dating back decades - in Switzerland, the Netherlands, Austria, Germany, the US and Ireland.

Two major reports into allegations of paedophilia among Irish clergy last year revealed the extent of abuse, cover-ups and hierarchical failings.

Dr Williams' comments about the controversy had angered the Catholic Archbishop of Dublin, Diarmuid Martin, who said he was "stunned" by them.

Dr Williams later telephoned the archbishop to express his "deep sorrow" and insist he meant no offence.

Dr Rowan Williams: "Our future is bound up with whether we are able to turn to those we have hurt and seek forgiveness"
Speaking on Aled Jones' BBC Radio 2 show on Sunday, Dr Williams said he did not think he had said anything that had not already been said by others, including the leaders of the Irish Church.

At a Mass in Rome a leading cardinal, Angelo Sodano, said Catholics would not be influenced by what he called the "petty gossip" of the moment.

Meanwhile, the Pope's personal preacher has apologised for comments in which he likened criticism of the Roman Catholic church over child sex abuse to the persecution of Jews.

Last month, the Pope apologised to all victims of child sex abuse by Catholic priests in Ireland.

He has also rebuked Irish bishops for "grave errors of judgement" in dealing with the problem.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/8602675.stm