Irish Catholic Church Sexual Abuse Reports of Children in Ireland--2009

Irish Catholic Church Sexual Abuse Reports of Children in Ireland--2009 [Neale Sourna: And yes this has happened with that church's sanctioning all over the world; including Canada, US, Africa, Mexico, Central and South America, everywhere it would seem. Go Inquisition, it lives on.]

Murphy Report
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Murphy Report is the result of the public inquiries conducted by the Republic of Ireland into the sexual abuse scandal in Dublin archdiocese. It was released a few months after the Ryan Report, the report of the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse chaired by Seán Ryan, a similar inquiry which dealt with abuses in industrial schools controlled by Catholic religious orders.

The report was publicly released on 26 November 2009.[1] As charted by the Murphy commission, the complaints of parents and their children were ignored and other families placed in immediate danger as prelates from John Charles McQuaid onwards suppressed scandals and took refuge in canon law to protect offenders at the expense of innocent children. The vast majority of uninvolved priests turned a blind eye.
Contents
[hide]

* 1 Status of the Garda investigation
* 2 Release of the report in November 2009
* 3 Public reactions
* 4 See also
* 5 References
* 6 External links

MORE Murphy Report


Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse (published 20 May 2009)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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 commonly known in Ireland as the Ryan Commission (previously "the Laffoy Commission"), after its chair, Justice Seán Ryan. Judge Laffoy resigned on 2 September 2003 due to a departmental review on costs and resources. She felt that: "...the cumulative effect of those factors effectively negatived the guarantee of independence conferred on the Commission and militated against it being able to perform its statutory functions." The Commission's work started in 1999 and it published its public report, commonly referred to as the Ryan report, on 20 May 2009.

The Commission's remit was to investigate all forms of child abuse in Irish institutions for children, the majority of allegations it investigated related to the system of sixty residential "Reformatory and Industrial Schools" operated by Catholic Church orders, funded and supervised by the Irish Department of Education. ,[1]

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 some religious officials encouraged ritual beatings and consistently shielded their orders amid a "culture of self-serving secrecy", and that government inspectors failed to stop the abuses.[2]

Among the more extreme allegations of abuse were, beatings and rapes, subjected to naked beatings in public, forced into oral sex and even subjected to beatings after failed rape attempts by brothers[church monks].[3, The Irish Times] The abuse has been described by some as Ireland's Holocaust.[4][5] The abuse was said to be "endemic" in the institutions that dealt with boys.[6] 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".[7]

The Report's conclusions section (Chapter 6) supports the overall tenor of the accusations without exception.[8] However, the Commission's recommendations were restricted in scope by two headings imposed by the Irish government, and therefore do not include calls for the prosecution or sanction of any of the parties involved.[9]

Contents

* 1 Background
* 2 Continuance by Irish Free State
* 3 Reform starts in the 1960s
* 4 The CICA legislation, 1999-2000
* 5 Establishment and functions
* 6 Public report
o 6.1 Conclusions
o 6.2 Limits of Scope
o 6.3 Allegations and their extent
* 7 Reactions to the report
o 7.1 Irish reaction
o 7.2 Westminster controversy
o 7.3 International reaction
* 8 2002 Compensation deal and the question of blame
* 9 See also
* 10 References
* 11 External links
* 12 Other published sources

MORE: Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse (published 20 May 2009)

The Irish Times - Saturday, May 23, 2009
The abused - in their own words
In this section »

* Brothers, priests and nuns were our siblings, uncles, aunts
* Shocking to think that nobody spoke out about abuse
* Government may need more up-to-date data
* Fianna Fáil hopes counter-attack can avert disaster
* European elections should focus on policies, not personalities
* This week they said

The voices of the abused emerge raw and bleak from pages 113 to 119 of Volume V of the Report of the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse . They told their stories to an interviewing team. In an introductory note to the section, the team acknowledged their courage: “We were deeply moved, inspired and humbled by our contact with you. Although we spent only a few hours with you, meeting you and listening to your stories was a moving and enriching experience for all of us. We felt privileged and honoured that you trusted us with such intensely personal and private experiences. . .” Here are sample extracts – unedited – of what the team heard.

Statements of “worst thing” that happened to participants while living in an institution

– Severe physical and sexual abuse.

– Stripped naked by a nun and beaten with a stick and given no supper and humiliated.

– After running away having my hair cut off to a very short length and was made to stand naked to be beaten by nun in front of other people.

– At 6 I was raped by nun and at 10 I was hit with a poker on head by nun.

– When I told nuns about being molested by ambulance driver, I was stripped naked and whipped by four nuns to “get the devil out of you”.

– Sexual and physical abuse, no education, and not enough food.

– Forced oral sex and beatings.

– A brother tried to rape me but did not succeed, so I was beaten instead.

– Taken from bed and made to walk around naked with other boys whilst brothers used their canes and flicked at their penis.

– Tied to a cross and raped whilst others masturbated at the side.

Severe physical abuse

– I was polishing the floor and a nun placed her foot on my back so I was pushed to the floor. I was locked in a dark room.

– Having to empty the toilets and being lifted off the ground by my sideburns.

– Put in bath of Jeyes fluid with three others.

– They used to make my sisters beat me.

– Having my head submerged in dirty water in the laundry repeatedly by a nun.

Being beaten regularly

– Physical abuse and segregation from other children for no reason.

– A severe beating by two nuns for a trivial misdemeanour until I was bleeding.

– Being beaten for wetting the bed and allocated to do worst work like cleaning potties and minding children

– Tied to a bed and physically abused by three carers.

– I was beaten and hospitalised by the head brother and not allowed to go to my father’s funeral in case my bruises were seen; also the head brother threatened to kill me.

– Being accused of sexually interfering with other boys and being beaten until made to write down the names of boys I had touched. In the end I wrote down two names to stop the torture.

– They made me change my surname and beat me until I accepted it. They took my identity from me. The put me through mental torture which is still with me now. They separated me from my sister and sent her to another institution.

– Being physically beaten by nuns and referred to as a number. My head was pushed under water in the bath. The nuns threw food into a group of children and I would have to struggle to get some food.

– Being told at 6.30pm on way to bed that I would be beaten next morning at 6.30am. It was torture waiting for it.

– Being stripped and thrown into nettles and sleeping with pigs for a week.

– I was left hanging out of a window for hours with finger stuck in it, and was guaranteed to be beaten every day.

– Having my hair cut off in spite and being beaten on the floor.

– Being locked in a furnace room and left, bitten by rats, found by coal delivery man, removed, washed in cold water, bites cleaned and then put back there.

– Being punished when tired and no one listening to me about the abuse.

– Starving and beatings like a concentration camp. There were so many worst things. Every day was a nightmare.

– My hair was cut short as punishment and I was beaten very badly in front of everyone when I came home late.

– We were all lined up naked and slapped in the face a lot. We all had to drink water from toilets and were all washed in same dirty bath water.

– Receiving a severe beatings and witnessing my younger brother returning from a severe beating.

– Lashing; name calling (the name “good for nothing” is still with me today); starving while watching pets being fed.

– Being beaten until knocked out and my head split. Having my finger placed in boiling water until all feeling was lost; the finger swelled up, skin wore away, and the nail fell off.

– Being thrown and ducked in scalding hot baths; being taken to hospital and anaesthetised with ether when getting my tonsils out. I have awful memories of feeling like being smothered with ether, similar to being ducked in the bath; I came as near death as you can imagine.

– Being whipped and humiliated in front of the other children.

– Being abused; once my tongue was almost cut out.

– Constant beatings; I was forced to sit on potty until my rectal muscle popped out.

– Beaten by nuns with cat-o-nine-tails that left deep cuts.

– Beaten and scarred with hurley.

– Kicked down the stairs.

– Being hit on my back by a brother and sustaining a lifelong injury.

– I was beaten in the shower naked, and not allowed to say goodbye when leaving.

– Whipping.

– Beaten until I had bones broken.

– Being stripped and flogged and locked in room for 2-3 weeks.

– Beaten.

Severe sexual abuse

– Sexual abuse – molested at night.

– Oral and anal sexual abuse on one occasion.

– Molested and masturbation.

– Rape.

– Sexual abuse and made to feel so insecure.

– Sexual abuse, starvation and secrecy in an institution that wasn’t fit for habitation.

– Gang rape.

– Sexually molested by a priest visiting the institution on 6-8 occasions.

– Sexual abuse perpetrated by gardeners, a social worker and other male convent employees.

– Being left out in the cold one winter and staying out near the boiler where older boys who had been sent by the courts tried to molest him and I had to fight them off.

– A Brother sexually abused me.

– Child sexual abuse by older boys (not the brothers).

– Sexually abused in a toilet twice, and mental abuse, shown horror movies.

– Sexual abuse and witnessing violence. I had a rubber hose stuck up me and I had to watch my carers beating the youngest most vulnerable children.

– Being raped by the director of the school.

Severe emotional abuse

– When my mother first came to visit after six months, she cried lots at how much weight I and all the kids had lost. She cried lots saying “I didn’t put ye here.”

– Watching other boys who had just been beaten for wetting the bed coming out of the office in pain, hearing the crying and seeing other boys trying to help.

– Father prevented from seeing me.

– They told my brothers I had died. I was hit for crying in response and told to stop.

– Not being loved.

– Neglect. Craving love but getting none.

– After a disagreement with a nun, my long hair was cut off in my sleep as they knew I loved it.

– Living in fear.

– Being painted with a paint brush.

– The night I entered the institution, my clothes and teddy thrown away.

– Getting chilblains, frostbite, and sores so deep I could see my bones on my hand from working in the fields was worse than the beatings.

– The fear, starvation and hard labour.

– Deprived of chance to go to my grandmother’s funeral.

– The first day I was told my mother didn’t want me.

– Seeing a young boy die. He was 12 years old, beaten by brothers on landing and fell over bannister.

– Told to say I was the devil and had to wear a “devil’s tongue” hat.

– I had my identity taken away. I was known by a number only.

– Having pubic hair shaved off and a nun telling people about it at dinner. She said “I shaved the monkey”.

– I can take any abuse, but the worst thing was having no one. Seeing other kids going out with their families and not knowing why I had no one. I was lied to: told that my parents were dead. I only found out in my 50s that they were alive.

– I could stand the beating. The worst thing was the mental abuse: being put in there in the first place and not understanding why.

– At age nine I was sent to pluck turkeys in a coal shed in the cold and had freezing fingers.

– The worst thing was the emotional removal of self: it still has a huge effect on my life.

– Lack of education: not being taught how to read or write. That’s the most hurtful thing.

– It was threatened that my father would lock me in a mental institution if I didn’t stop causing trouble.

– Punishment was meted out repeatedly for the same misdemeanour. Constantly being threatened with punishment.

– Listening to them talking badly about my mother and being taunted about my physical appearance. I was called “four eyes”.

– Loneliness at Christmas time.

– Public humiliation about my mother being unmarried.

– Loss of finger through gangrene due to lack of medical attention. She loved to play the piano and this meant loss of hope to become a music teacher.

– We were children and we did so much hard work. We were up at six o’clock in the morning. We have no childhood memories. We knew no better.

– The worst thing was the overall effect of breaking my spirit; the violence; and the constant blanket of terror.

– The constant fear. I was called into the office and told my mother had died. I actually felt relief that it wasn’t a punishment.

– Feeling alone and unloved.

– Witnessed my sister being whipped until she bled, then made to kneel in refectory for three months.

– The worst thing was the sense of being an orphan and being incarcerated and criminalised: the monotony; the ball-aching mind-aching hopelessness.

– Feeling like a “nobody” and that everyone was better. Always feeling insecure.

– Constantly being told I was worthless and shouldn’t have been born.

– Seeing my brother being beaten.

– Being taken into the office and told my foster mother had died and then immediately sent away again.

– I overheard someone say that my mother had died the night before. When I asked about it I was ignored and dismissed. My friend was beaten so badly for wetting the bed that I watched her die. I was constantly starving. I had to bribe my carers with bread so I wasn’t beaten.

– I was put naked into a coffin as punishment.

– Fear of everything. Fear of God. Fear of the Christian Brothers. Fear that I would go to hell.

– It was all bad.

* Comments Feed

43 Comments »

Anthony B
All this and no one gets named or charged with an crime?????

Only in Ireland, huh?
Friday, May 22, 2009, 9:31:45 PM

Anon
The report begins a process of healing that can only end when justice is provided. Obviously, none has been. The fact that none has been proivded proves that the country is still obsessed with organised religion. It needs to get over it and prosecute, name, jail, close iinstitutes, etc., whatever it takes. Otherwise, victims will remain trapped in psychological prisons and the country will go into shock.
Saturday, May 23, 2009, 3:43:17 AM

Christine Daly
I feel ill. This concentration camp was set up by the State and the Church...it is beyond depravity, beyond grotesque...there are no words to describe what this is...perhaps evil is the most suitable word. As a mother I feel repelled, frightened, disgusted, traumatised...and I feel as though my own sexuality has been assaulted. I was a child of the Fifties and this could have been me.

This abuse was not reserved for just to these institutions alone, it went on in boarding schools and day schools and it was exported to Africa on the "Missions".

From the bottom of my heart I would like to express my sincere, deep, deep anger at the appalling treatment of our most vulnerable children, children who were often forcibly removed from their famiiles...slavery. This has a long way yet to go...the story is only beginning.

This State was founded on corruption...it set up a concentration camp with small children used in hard labour camps to fund schools and hospitals through the revolting method of capitation grants. Everyone in power colluded, the judges, the senior civil servants, government ministers, the Dept of Health, the Dept of Justice, the Dept of Social Welfare, the gardai, the nuns, the priests and the "Christian" Brothers.

The Irish State has a vested interest in not providing justice to these victims... their mealy mouthed apologies to the victims and protection for the perpetrators is evidence of that.

The case needs to be taken to the Hague on a case by case basis if that's what it takes. And everyone associated with it should be brought before the courts and compelled to give evidence. My heart and soul goes out to these poor, poor children...they have nothing to be ashamed of...they should be proud that they had the courage to speak up and tell it like it was...and to hell with looking for approval from society.

Society too must take its share of the burden because of its collusion, silence and denial. The Religous Orders are barely able to contain their rage at having lost control of this. There are still those who deny this happened...perhaps they have something to hide!
Saturday, May 23, 2009, 5:12:38 AM

Anon
We must hit the Catholic church where it hurts.... Stop putting money in the collection basket at mass, the leadership will get the message soon enough.
Saturday, May 23, 2009, 7:06:25 AM

RB
Although I believe most of the claims listed, there are a couple statements too lurid for immediate acceptance without the thorough investigation of qualified psychiatrists. In this regard, I hold an open mind.

Luckily, I cannot claim orphan-hood, but I do know what it was like to be repeatedly beaten and humiliated before my classmates. I experienced a year of physical and psychological abuse at the hands of a certain Sister of Mercy, the worst aspect of which was the dismissal at home by my staunch Irish and Catholic mother.

In her view the clergy could "do no wrong". It wasn't until she finally saw the pattern of black knuckle bruises on my back that she finally realized the truth and confronted the offending nun. To their credit, the Order severely reprimanded that sister and she finally left the "religious life".

My experience is mild by comparison, but as we all know, these past years' revelations for the American RCC have been a nightmare, costly in both money and faith.

In hindsight, I don't know who suffered more. Was it me for the obvious reasons? Or was it my mother for her blind belief in the all-goodness of the clergy?
Saturday, May 23, 2009, 9:25:24 AM

Rick Mueller
I can't imagine the mental gymnastics that a Catholic, ordained or laity, will have to perform in order to go to church tomorrow after reading this.
Saturday, May 23, 2009, 10:45:14 AM

Portia
Tomorrow will tell the world whether we Irish condone this abuse of OUR CHILDREN or not.

If the churches are full as usual, then we know the answer.

I have the whole world watching- every continent is on witness alert.

I leave to each Irish adult to decide.

Your actions tomorrow will answer my question.
Saturday, May 23, 2009, 11:00:23 AM

Portia
There is lots more to surface, believe me.

Anyone who thinks this era of abuse of children is over is living in a cloud.

HSE workers use the very same tactics today- mental and psychological torture etc to break the spirit of children in their care.

Children are deprived of seeing their parents unless they submit to control through brainwashing.

Children disappear from HSE care too today.

The cruelty is still alive and well and used by care workers who project their own unresolved issues onto service users.

The eugenics concept is alive and well- the poor and ill are " disposable children " .

Beware, now the Snatchers are in the business of removing children with high IQ for various research projects.

Time to end the secret family courts which collude with the HSE and others- for the sake of the next generation- OUR CHILDREN.

These TDs HSE, etc are our servants- so let them serve not control.
Saturday, May 23, 2009, 11:09:34 AM

Portia
If people knew the real reason for the abuse was, they would be shocked speachless.

All a big experiment on humans using trauma, abuse, soul fragmentation etc while they all sit back and enjoy in a sadistic fashion.

Most humans have no idea how these people think, operate and function.

The Roman Church has been brainwashing us all with lies for thousands of years, and most have no idea that we are all inside a big cult.

Without the trauma and abuse of children they are dead men and women.

Starve them of the energy of our children and us.
Saturday, May 23, 2009, 11:15:21 AM

Middle-aged emigrant woman
My heart goes out to all who have had to endure these horrors, and my deepest contempt goes to all those in authority who allowed it to happen.

However, it seems that some people think that everybody has been getting this out of proportion: see http://www.catholicleague.org/release.php?id=1616

It's disgusting enough that so many people had to go through such horrors, without some eejit suggesting that these institutions weren't so bad after all because only 12% of those imprisoned there were raped ... and apparently claiming that starvation, beatings, broken bones, head shaving and forced labour weren't abuse at all. Can some Irish Times journalist please track down this Bill Donohue of the "Catholic League" and ask him to explain himself?
Saturday, May 23, 2009, 11:55:48 AM

* <>[MORE comments at The Irish Times]

Films, Books:
The Magdalene Sisters (2002) -- watch "The Magdalene Sisters at Hulu at IMDB;
Sinners (2002, UK), also as "The Magdalen Laundry", an indepth TV miniseries;
Ireland's Magdalen Laundries and the Nation's Architecture of Containment (Paperback)