Posted on 05/20/2009 7:39:08 AM PDT by gitmogrunt
DUBLIN — A fiercely debated, nine-year investigation into Ireland's Roman Catholic-run institutions says priests and nuns terrorized thousands of boys and girls in workhouse-style schools for decades — and government inspectors failed to stop the chronic beatings, rapes and humiliation. High Court Justice Sean Ryan on Wednesday unveiled the 2,600-page final report of Ireland's Commission to Inquire Into Child Abuse, which is based on testimony from thousands of former students and officials from more than 250 church-run institutions.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
This is BS! Another attack on Christianity by the liberal media. Why did they study religious schools rather than secular ones? All of these “victims” are getting $90k. Look for hundreds more to crawl out of the woodwork to say the nuns slapped their knuckles with a ruler.
Was this based on anecdotal reports or do they have any actual evidence to back up the accusations?
Remember, The Catholic Church is of God, run by man and man is fallible.
AM: The one comment that got my attention was this:
...until the last church-run facilities shut in the 1990s...
AM:If I'm reading the article right, that means the Church stepped in and removed the Christian Brothers' control of the schools, ending the abuse in the 1990s (either that, or the government itself shut down the schools entirely). If it's the former, this squares nicely with what I've been told elsewhere, namely that changes implemented by the Vatican caused the American Catholic Church's abuse problems to end by 1990.
Me: I would hope so, but I'm not ready to give the Catholic Church the credit, yet. I am not ready to concede the veracity of the claims, in the first place, or give the Catholic Church credit for solving the problems if they were real. And that comes from the lead herald around here for getting the word out that JP2 had fixed the American "pedophilia" crisis before the news media comes on. I'd have to do a little more research, before I suppose anything.
The American pedophilia case taught me not to let anyone get away with evil because it's too unthinkable. Around the early 1990s, when progress had been made in the American crisis, there were scattered allegations of widespread sexual abuse. Like many others, I considered it attack on the Catholic Church by the news media.
I actually taught for a year at a Christian Brothers school, in an infamous diocese. The lay leadership was definitely pro-abortion. I'm pretty sure the headmaster was a poofter. But then again, from what I've read about elsewhere of these allegations (the Magdeliene Sisters, for example), they are *not* about poofters.
Also: My mom attended an American Catholic boarding school that was, for her, practically an orphanage. There was a lot of very bad stuff going on that could inspire a lot of bitter anger... but not the sort of abuse alleged in the Magdeline Sisters or this article. My suspicion is that the smoke doesn't necessarily mean there's fire, but that there may be plenty of heat smoldering.
I hope everyone’s cool with my transplantation of AM’s comments on a thread which was pulled for being a duplicate of this.
The investigators said overwhelming, consistent testimony from still-traumatized men and women, now in their 50s to 80s, 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.
...
More than 30,000 children deemed to be petty thieves, truants or from dysfunctional families — a category that often included unmarried mothers — were sent to Ireland's austere network of industrial schools, reformatories, orphanages and hostels from the 1930s until the last church-run facilities shut in the 1990s.
If the abuse continued into the 1990s, then the victims would include many in their 20s, not just those in their 50s through 80s. If the youngest complaintant is 50, then the abuse ended in the 70s at the latest. Most likely, then, the end of the abuse had nothing to do with them closing, which, Alex, I wondered whether that was due to lack of demand or lack of nuns and clergy. If it ended by the 70s, it was probably due to internal reforms of the Church.
It is interesting that the report covers 86 years and involved interviewing 1090 witnesses. I have to wonder just how much of a percentage 1090 is of the overall students cared for in those schools. Not that it excuses any abuse which I do not doubt occured but it might help put things in perspective.
If this is a low percentage how can this report prove the problem is endemic? If not how does it compare to state run schools of the era which were not affliated with any religion?
It seems like much of it happened from the 20's to the late 50's, when the custom was to spank kids who were behavior problems, and yet, some would get beaten, by their parents as well as some teachers, or other authority figures. That doesn't mean the priests, nuns and brother should have sexually abused, or even beaten the kids beyond a mere spanking. It does make me wonder why this information hadn't come out years ago.
Because in Ireland there were virtually no secular schools - the entire education system was run by the Church.
I am Irish and I can tell you that it is not BS. Americans may find these facts hard to believe, but no one in Ireland doubts it. If you don’t believe me google ‘Artane’. These schools were not ordinary schools comparable to American public schools - they were institutional schools where children who were orphans or were delinquents were locked up for their entire childhood, from the time they arrived until being kicked out the gates at 16. The evidence is overwhelming and stomach-turning.
I bet there was a fair amount of rape, but I bet it wasn’t the girls who were raped. Christian Brothers are definitely high on the ick factor. That said, the reporting of this seems sensationalist and filled of sweeping generalizations.
I bet there was a fair amount of rape, but I bet it wasn’t the girls who were raped. Christian Brothers are definitely high on the ick factor. That said, the reporting of this seems sensationalist and filled of sweeping generalizations.
Not surprising, since the Church in America got the same media treatment.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.