The God Squad

PATSY McGARRY Irish Times 26/06/09

THE ABUSIVE conduct of priests, nuns and brothers in residential institutions for children, as disclosed in the Ryan report, “is a matter which demands forensic probing and explanation,” President Mary McAleese has said. It also demanded “a fresh focus from all of us as a civic society on what we need to do to truly cherish the children of this nation equally”.

Speaking in Trinity College Dublin last night at an event to mark the UN International Day in Support of Victims of Torture today, she said “it is only a few weeks since the Ryan report exposed the extent to which vulnerable children in institutional care were subjected to sexual and physical abuse which was cruel, inhuman and degrading.

“Much of the abuse took place in the professional care of men and women committed to Christianity.

“Their systemic betrayal of the great Christian commandment to love one another is a matter which demands forensic probing and explanation.”

She continued: “All of the abuse took place in the care of the State which, as far back as the Proclamation, was envisioned as a republic which would cherish the children of the nation equally. The betrayal of that vision demands a fresh focus from all of us.

“It is right that we support and care for the victims of that abuse, that we pursue offenders and it is also right that we do what it takes to prevent children from enduring such suffering today or tomorrow whether in their own homes or elsewhere. It is said that what is learned in childhood is engraved on stone.”

She said that “if good is ever to come from the misery catalogued in the Ryan report, it has to be in a mature and caring society looking very carefully at those who engrave on the lives of little children and doing what it takes to ensure they are skilled at engraving well and profoundly conscious of the risks attached to careless engraving and their responsibility for the consequences.”

Referring more generally to the use of torture, she said: “It is the weapon of the bully, of the person without compassion or care, the person whose sensibilities are so skewed that torment endured by another human being means nothing to him or her.”

She said history was “littered with the cancerous effect on the very fabric of society of the self-preservation in the face of public or private tyranny which leads to complicit silence at best, and collaboration at worst, with the power mongers who rule through brutality”.

Noting that the UN Declaration of Human Rights prohibits torture, she said: “In the past, one of the big enemies of any attempt to tackle torture was impunity – the reality that the perpetrators knew that they could get away with what they were doing and would never be held to account. The days of absolute impunity are over . . .”