It was not just the Christian Brothers and members of other religious
orders who were culpable of the abuse of thousands of children from the
1930s onwards.
Although they were the perpetrators of the abuse, a whole swathe of
middle-class Ireland – who knew or should have known, but who couldn’t
have cared less – is also to blame.
Judges were among the most culpable. It was they who ordered the
incarceration of children in these institutions, often on grounds they
must have known to be bogus. Other more senior judges who gave legal
backing to the decisions of their judicial inferiors were also culpable.
Barristers and solicitors colluded in this. The media did likewise, by
ignoring it. General medical practitioners must have kept their eyes and
ears firmly shut never to have noticed anything remiss on visits to
institutions where barbarous acts were perpetrated on children as a
matter of routine, and where the evidence of such barbarity must have
been apparent on the bodies of the children.
Bishops, parish priests and many, many more must have known what was
going on, and did nothing; they also colluded in what happened.
Was it because these children were of the ‘‘workers’ class’’, and
therefore of little consequence that the collusion and complicity prevailed?
There are so many things which are simply staggering about the conduct
of the Christian Brothers. Obviously, there is the callous cruelty of
the conduct of so many of its members, the few hundred who inflicted
sexual abuse and the many more who inflicted appalling and criminal
physical abuse.
Then there is the complicity of the entire congregation of Christian
Brothers, which must have known what was going on and either approved it
or remained passive about it.
Most staggering of all, perhaps, is the conduct of the current Superiors
of the Christian Brothers who, in their response to allegations of the
criminality of their confreres and their obstruction of the Commission
to Inquire into Child Abuse, compounded the shameful legacy of their
predecessors.
On March 29, 1998, following a flood of allegations of appalling cruelty
in institutions run by the Christian Brothers, they issued an
‘‘apology’’, which referred to ‘‘complaints’’ they had received from
former pupils about ill-treatment and abuse by some Christian Brothers
in schools and residential centres.
The statement expressed ‘‘deep regret’’ to ‘‘anyone who suffered
ill-treatment, while in our care’’. It implied that the congregation of
Christian Brothers was unaware of the physical and sexual abuse of
children in its care until the complaints had been made and that,
therefore, the congregation itself had no responsibility for what had
happened. The statement greatly diminished, by inference, the scale of
the abuse.
Neither was it an ‘apology’, for the word was not used. Nor was there an
explicit acknowledgement that physical and sexual abuse had occurred.
But then, the congregation of Christian Brothers appeared to retract
even that minimal expression of regret soon afterwards. Following RTE’s
broadcasting of the documentary States of Fear in 1999, the tone
switched to scepticism and suspicion of ‘‘false’’ and ‘‘exaggerated’’
allegations of abuse. There were references to ‘‘false memory’’.
But it emerged during the course of the commission’s investigations that
documents in the files of the Christian Brothers detailed incidents of
child sexual and physical abuse going back to the 1930s, involving 130
Christian Brothers.
They had every reason to believe that the allegations of appalling abuse
were almost certainly true.
The commission, in its report, stated that these files in the possession
of the Christian Brothers ‘‘make it impossible to contend that the issue
of abuse and, in particular, sexual abuse of boys was not an urgent and
continuing concern to the congregation’’.
The commission also said: ‘‘The scale of the problem as revealed in
these document was very serious . . . The (Superiors of the Christian
Brothers) in this country could be in no doubt that sexual abuse of
children in their care had occurred at an unacceptably high level in
their institutions.” The commission said that the Christian Brothers’
scepticism and suspicion was ‘‘unwarranted and unjustified’’.
The Christian Brothers contend that they did not know of these files
until they were ‘‘discovered’’ by an archivist in the order’s offices in
Rome in 2003. It was claimed that these files had been removed from
Ireland in the 1960s and – despite allegations of abuse prior to 2003 –
nobody had thought of looking at the Rome files until they were
accidentally ‘‘discovered’’.
At the commission hearings, specific allegations of abuse were met with
blanket denials by the Christian Brothers. They initially used a tactic
of denying that a brother named as an abuser was ever in the institution
concerned, when a complainant got a name even slightly wrong.
Some of the denials were signed by brothers as if they had personal
knowledge of the matters in question, which was often untrue. Brothers
who signed statements gave oral evidence which contradicted the written
statements. Some statements omitted relevant facts ‘‘while, at the same
time, making assertions that were known to be incorrect or misleading’’.
And this was under oath.
They also made grossly misleading statements about the supposed
inadequacy of state funding of the institutions they managed. The truth
is that they siphoned off a substantial part of this funding, which was
intended for the welfare of the children in their care, to the order’s
headquarters.
They made false claims about the ‘‘culture’’ of the day which, they
claimed, legitimised the level of physical violence they inflicted on
children. However, they knew, or must have known, that such violence was
explicitly prohibited by the rules governing such institutions, rules of
the state (via the Department of Education) and even the rules of their
own order.
Then came the familiar defence that they had no idea that sexual abuse
had such a damaging impact on the victims of such abuse – although it is
true that an internal document on sex abuse made reference only to the
moral depravity of such conduct, and not even an acknowledgement that
such conduct was a crime.
The usual excuses won’t do in this instance. This was not just abuse in
a bygone era – it was sustained deception and misrepresentation by the
Christian Brothers.
The evidence of what they did negates whatever good they did in bringing
education to so many Irish boys for so long. The Christian Brothers
should now take the honourable course. Dissolve
The Sunday Business Post, Sunday, May 24, 2009 By Vincent Browne
