26 April 2010
AFP – The extent of the unimaginable sexual and physical abuse suffered by thousands of children in Catholic-run institutions in Ireland is becoming clear, but why did it remain secret for so long?
Academics and victims say that the Church itself as well as police, teachers and even victims’ families all helped maintain the veil of secrecy.
This was because of the huge authority wielded by the Church in Ireland which meant that some parents actually blamed children for bringing abuse on themselves.
Until the early 1990s, “it was simply impossible to challenge the Church”, said Kevin Lalor, head of the School of Social Sciences and Law at the Dublin Institute of Technology.
To understand the Catholic Church’s central role in society, you have to recognise its role as an “anti-British force” prior to Irish independence in 1921, Lalor said.
“As the centre of identity, it had an overly inflated status. More so than in any other country, the Church was an official arm of the state,” he added.
The majority of schools and hospitals were managed by the Catholic Church, and it even influenced the composition of governments.
“The Church was extremely dominant. People were living through the Church,” said Dr Helen Buckley, senior lecturer in child protection at Trinity College Dublin.
It set the moral code and victims of abuse committed by priests or nuns who dared to speak up faced formidable obstacles.
“The priest was the ultimate symbol of morality and chastity and was highly respected. The victim might not have been believed by the community, friends and even relatives,” said Sue Donnelly, a sociologist at University College Dublin.
A significant breakthrough came in 1990, when a local newspaper dared to print accusations of abuse against a priest in Ferns diocese in the southeast of the country.
“People reacted in complete disbelief. They gathered in front of the offices of the newspaper, burned some issues and boycotted the businesses that advertised in it,” Donnelly recalled.
But the story sparked a huge investigation which eventually led to the government-backed Ferns report of 2005.
It detailed serious abuse and the failure of senior churchmen to identify and remove paedophile priests.
A fundamental lack of understanding about sexual abuse also helped to keep the lid on what was happening in orphanages and state-run reform schools.
“There was a lack of awareness about sexual abuse. Up to 15 or 20 years ago, people thought it was committed by very strange people, living in remote areas, who had mental difficulties or drink problems,” Buckley says.
Ignorance of sexual abuse and the belief that the Church could do no wrong meant some parents would even say “you must have deserved it if a child would come and say he was punished by his teacher,” according to Lalor.
The police were reluctant to rock the boat. “They felt a quiet word to the bishop was the best option, that it was a moral issue, not a legal one,” Lalor added.
Reports into institutional abuse have repeatedly found that priests found to be abusing children were quietly moved to another parish, where they often started abusing again.
Donnelly stressed that victims also faced the difficulty of talking about sexuality in the extremely conservative Ireland of the 1960s and 1970s, and those who “told tales” faced being accused of not being “a good Catholic”.
Paddy Doyle, one of the first victims to lift the lid on the scandal with his 1990 book “The God Squad”, says that small children also lived in fear of being “punished even stronger” if they tried to denounce their abusers.
“For saying anything at all, you would be seriously punished, beaten, you could be deprived of food, of any kind of social interaction with other children,” he recalls of his childhood in a Catholic-run institution where he was sent as an orphan aged four in 1955.
Then, in the 1990s, people gradually started to talk about their experiences, encouraged by various counselling services set up around that time.
Lalor said that “all of a sudden, we went from a total absence of the subject” to the start of the chain of events that led to the resignations of a succession of Irish bishops for failing to stamp out abuse.
The latest to stand down, on Thursday, was James Moriarty, bishop of Kildare and Leighlin, who recognised that the “long struggle of survivors” had revealed an “un-Christian” culture within the Church.
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I do pity those whose childhood were ruined.i have just finished reading a book by kathy o’beirne and i must say its horrifying
NOPE THE REDRESS COVERED THAT AS WELL.
Is it possible that some one could be taken to court on the facts of today that lives have been ruined?
the Redress Board dealt with the abuse of our childhood but not that lives have been totally ruined because of the destroyed childhoods.
Now that all has been made known in the reports.
I just wonder if this is the question of all questions.
Seanie “the Thrush”.
It is NEVER – TOO – LATE.
‘Information’ is crucial, if it is True, Real and Factual and Up-to-date. More if you want at raymondlambert@eircom.net
and for all the other birds: Why fly like turkeys, when we can soar like eagles…!
Raymond
My Education has been learned After I got out of the child prison I had to survive outside in the world alone that was hard, I don’t need an education now at my age I have a great one in LIFE and Survival which I had to learn myself the hard way, as for the education panel WHO is on it and been paid. I did try ringing several times for a member of my family but it was such a mountain of silence it was deadly deafening from the board, many times NO answer at all. The stress was to much to continue. I am sure they make it as difficult as possible for any of us to access that funding, imagine how difficult it could be to access any trust fund I wouldn’t TRUST any of them as far as I could throw them >That’s not far. So called group leaders get your Ego’s self interest out of your backsides. The powers that be just tolerate you for their own aims >Divide and RULE. They did the same thing in the child prison to pick out one as favourite and separate that person from the rest of us totally the rest of us could only get a sighting of that person having meals with the Head staff while the rest of us out in the yard waiting for the staff to open the window to throw the scraps at us which we all starving fought for those scraps from the staff leftover table which gave them a good laugh as starving neglected young children fought for the scraps which was not enough to feed a bird.
We need a strong voice. Would Paddy Doyle be that voice?
a message to the government do the right thing and take responsibility for the damage you and the church have done.
stop using illegal groupies who you claim are representing us.
as this is another form of abuse called neglect.
there are many issues in our lives that need addressing, fully compensation is one after the reports came out and support in all government buildings. regarding homes, welfare where redress is seen as savings, health, etc, etc.
your counseling and education funds are not working they have a longer waiting list than the whole dole cue and tied up fully in red tape. never paid out in time yet this money is the money you claimed to have paid out by the tax payer.
again not reaching the same as in our history.
these funds have not been made very clear in layman’s terms so we could understand.
as when you say the educational funds, there are funds in place already for everyone in mainstream society.
this seems to be mixed up with the sum you say is put aside for survivors.
who do we see if we are not happy with your so called funds?
or are we to stay quiet yet again.
Dear Paddy,
I am saddened at every turn in the conflict of our religion, the reality of the story of Ireland and our deep devotion to the Church has rocked the world. Personally, I drew away from the Church shortly after being released from the Institution in 1951, the year you were born, the letter which I still have to this day is a reply from Bro. Murphy, my mentor, who took the place of a missing father, in my letter to him I questioned the Catholic religion, this was in 1953, his reply is three pages long, what he told me before I was released from Glin, was Sean, if ever in your life you doubt the Catholic religion, don’t hesitate, leave it. I will send you the copy of the letter if you wish, I believe he died in the Khyber Pass in India some years later, he was a Dublin man, music teacher, and he said I was the Thrush. I told the redress of this very special man. I was diagnosed with PTSD at age 70, so I wish that the few that have tainted our beliefs, and there are many whom I encountered in my childhood in Limerick and in Glin, would apologise to God himself for the damage they have done to all of us. That being sexual, mental, and everything else to cause us to abandon the Church and her teachings.
Seanie.
when you really think about it can anyone possible believe any man or woman can go through their whole life and not have sexual feelings? it is just not human. so they either denied, lied or they are the so called god.
even jesus was tempted so what is going on here? how can a government be so stupid to actually believe this crap.
and if they did not believe, then this is an other issue.
it just proves they did not give a hoot about the children the tax payer paid for back then, to be housed to be fed to be clothed to be educated. no instead of the money being spent on the children, they were left to the cruel abuse in every area in their little lives. and the church got richer with the money and by the sweat blood and tears of children.
there is no fairy tales here thats for sure.