Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

Skip to comments.

Thousands beaten, raped in Irish reform schools
Yahoo/AP ^

Posted on 05/20/2009 9:26:48 AM PDT by nuconvert

DUBLIN – A fiercely debated, long-delayed 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.

Nine years in the making, Wednesday's 2,600-page report sides almost completely with the horrific reports of abuse from former students sent to more than 250 church-run, mostly residential institutions.

It concluded that church officials always shielded their orders' pedophiles from arrest to protect their own reputations and, according to documents uncovered in the Vatican, knew that many pedophiles were serial attackers.

(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...


TOPICS: Crime/Corruption; Culture/Society; Foreign Affairs; Front Page News; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: catholic; catholicbashing; catholicchurch; childabuse; ireland; juveniledelinquents
Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first previous 1-20 ... 101-120121-140141-160161-180 last
To: bill1952

These are supposed to be Christians who are beating and raping and allowing the rapes of these children. They should be answering to a higher power than public schools, which have denied the higher power (GOD), and believe me, these people will not stand before a righteous God and go unpunished.


161 posted on 05/22/2009 8:19:16 AM PDT by Marysecretary (GOD IS STILL IN CONTROL.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 27 | View Replies]

To: netmilsmom

Yes, some of them WERE evil, mom. You can’t deny that.


162 posted on 05/22/2009 8:20:35 AM PDT by Marysecretary (GOD IS STILL IN CONTROL.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 32 | View Replies]

To: Cicero

But if those nuns beat you, and some apparently did, what would that do to your view of God? Probably destroy it. I have a friend who was in a Catholic orphanage as a child and the nuns were terrible to her. She remembers having to crawl across gravel on her hands and knees. That kind of thing destroys you. She never really got over it. They’re supposed to have a higher standard than social workers.


163 posted on 05/22/2009 8:23:25 AM PDT by Marysecretary (GOD IS STILL IN CONTROL.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 41 | View Replies]

To: ConservativeMind

They really can’t, but they will deny it. It’s best to open the wound and let it heal than to close it over and let it fester.


164 posted on 05/22/2009 8:28:49 AM PDT by Marysecretary (GOD IS STILL IN CONTROL.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 45 | View Replies]

To: Robe

Christian missionaries did the same to the indian population here and in Cnada.


165 posted on 05/22/2009 8:30:50 AM PDT by Marysecretary (GOD IS STILL IN CONTROL.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 53 | View Replies]

To: happygrl

I know a young man, a teenager or early 20s, in jail now because of false accusations in a nursery school. He refuses to go to a group where he would confess his sins and then be let go, because he never did it in the first place. He will probably spend 15 years there for a crime he never committed just because he won’t confess. Something is wrong here with our system.


166 posted on 05/22/2009 8:38:53 AM PDT by Marysecretary (GOD IS STILL IN CONTROL.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 87 | View Replies]

To: PennsylvaniaMom

And add my husband to the ones who WERE Catholic and saw the light and became born again believers and left the church.


167 posted on 05/22/2009 8:40:07 AM PDT by Marysecretary (GOD IS STILL IN CONTROL.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 91 | View Replies]

To: WVKayaker

My husband left the Church and gained his salvation, hallelujah.


168 posted on 05/22/2009 8:41:46 AM PDT by Marysecretary (GOD IS STILL IN CONTROL.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 100 | View Replies]

To: Marysecretary

Yes, could be. It depends if they were lovingly strict or meanly vindictive.

We had corporal punishment and hard work assignments at the prep school I went to, and as far as I can see, it was basically a good thing. Sometimes it was unfairly administered, but most students could see that the purpose was good. And not a few of those kids needed straightening out.

Among the helpful things it taught me is that life is tough.

Nowadays, there’s no such thing as corporal punishment in the schools. Instead, they send you to a psychiatrist and put you on ritalin, or they send you home for a week, or they just let you go off the rails and do nothing to really try to change it.


169 posted on 05/22/2009 9:01:30 AM PDT by Cicero (Marcus Tullius)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 163 | View Replies]

To: wolfcreek

No, we don’t all worship the same God, wolfcreek. Muslims certainly don’t, Mormons have a different version of God and Christ as do many other cults who call themselves Christians. Most protestants and Catholics do worship the same God. We differ on some of the extra-biblical stuff however.


170 posted on 05/22/2009 9:14:04 AM PDT by Marysecretary (GOD IS STILL IN CONTROL.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 135 | View Replies]

To: Cicero

I agree. Kids get away with murder (literally) in schools these days. If a principal or teacher tries to discipline a child, they get into deep doo with parents (who are wrong). When they took God out of the schools, things only got much worse.


171 posted on 05/22/2009 9:21:05 AM PDT by Marysecretary (GOD IS STILL IN CONTROL.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 169 | View Replies]

To: Marysecretary

Since I belong to no denomination but, consider myself a Christian, do I worship a different God than you?


172 posted on 05/22/2009 10:28:52 AM PDT by wolfcreek ("unnamed "right-wing extremist")
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 170 | View Replies]

To: Marysecretary

Yes, but our children get beaten and raped just the same - and that was my question.

How is it different? The result and the crimes and the victims are all the same.


173 posted on 05/22/2009 10:38:16 AM PDT by bill1952 (Power is an illusion created between those with power - and those without)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 161 | View Replies]

To: ConservativeMind; Alex Murphy; Marysecretary
All Christians would benefit from watching the award-winning documentary by Amy Berg, "Deliver Us From Evil." You'll never view this topic the same again. The evil is so embedded and some people are so blind to what is happening. Sadly, those who have been subjected to this pain eventually see and understand and are nearly destroyed by it.


174 posted on 05/22/2009 10:43:16 AM PDT by Dr. Eckleburg ("I don't think they want my respect; I think they want my submission." - Flemming Rose)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 153 | View Replies]

To: Dr. Eckleburg

We will definitely rent this.

Thanks for the referral. Sad.


175 posted on 05/22/2009 11:08:04 AM PDT by ConservativeMind (The UN has never won a war, nor a conflict, but liberals want it to rule all militaries.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 174 | View Replies]

To: wolfcreek

If you’re a Muslim, yes. If you’re a born-again Christian or of the usual protestant or Catholic persuasion, no. It’s the same God. I don’t know your background or if you’re a Mormon,Jehovah’s Witness or whatever. But I’m wiling to venture that it’s no.


176 posted on 05/22/2009 12:31:29 PM PDT by Marysecretary (GOD IS STILL IN CONTROL.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 172 | View Replies]

To: Marysecretary
It breaks my heart to hear that.

I get what you're saying about the conditions of his incarceration: no way can he get early parole unless he "confesses."

Terrible,terrible that he got prison time over a crime for which there was probably no real evidence, except an accusation.

I had a friend who had a similiar accusation by someone who was in his mother's child-care, in her home.

He did not want to put his mother through a trial, so he pled guilty: no time, but it was on his record and his name appeared in a sex-crime registration base, for which he was run out of a neighborhood years later when he was married with children.

He was eventually able to get it expunged, after he had no further accusations, some twenty years after the original crime.

I agree: what ever happened to guilty without a shadow of a doubt?

177 posted on 05/22/2009 6:09:02 PM PDT by happygrl (Hope and Change or Rope and Chains?)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 166 | View Replies]

To: happygrl

It’s been so hard on his family. They’re fine Christian people and so was this young man. He’s doing very well in spite of it all. He’s done college courses and began a Christian Bible Study there. He’s made the most of it, all that he could. Problem is everyone believes the so-called victims because they’re young, even though they may have been coached to say the things they did. So many accusations eventually prove incorrect but by then many lives have been ruined.


178 posted on 05/23/2009 12:24:04 PM PDT by Marysecretary (GOD IS STILL IN CONTROL.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 177 | View Replies]

To: Dr. Eckleburg

Where can you get ahold of a copy.


179 posted on 05/23/2009 12:25:06 PM PDT by Marysecretary (GOD IS STILL IN CONTROL.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 174 | View Replies]

To: Marysecretary; wmfights; 1000 silverlings; pillut48; blue-duncan
It's on DVD. You can rent it from Netflix or possibly Blockbuster. You can also buy a used copy from Amazon for around $6 and a new copy for $12.

It's a great documentary. Not only does it show the lengths the RCC went to in order to protect a particular priest, but it also provides some of Archbishop Mahoney's deposition in Los Angeles. His evasive non-answers and obvious squirming manage to outdo even Bill Clinton's ("depends on the meaning of 'is' is") testimony.

The Amazon editorial review of the DVD says...

A devastating investigation into the pedophilia scandals tearing apart the Catholic Church, Deliver Us From Evil begins by looking into one priest, Father Oliver O'Grady, who agreed to be interviewed by journalist/filmmaker Amy Berg. O'Grady's genial calm is at first ingratiating, until he begins to describe his crimes with an unsettling sociopathic detachment. But O'Grady's blithe interview is only half of the story, as the documentary also unveils how church superiors covered up O'Grady's crimes and shuffled him from diocese to diocese in northern California, finally placing him in an unsupervised position of authority in a small town, where he sexually assaulted dozens of children; the video deposition of Los Angeles Cardinal Roger Mahoney is a grotesque portrait in brittle denial. What makes Deliver Us From Evil crucial viewing, however, are the remarkable interviews with a few of the victims (now adults) and their parents, whose stories are wrenching and riveting. With the support of a priest seeking to reform the church, two of the victims actually go to the Pope, seeking some form of help in addressing O'Grady's crimes. This stunningly potent documentary combines raw feeling with lucid and persuasive discussions of the reasons for--and disturbing breadth of--this crisis within the Church. --Bret Fetzer

The saddest thing is to see the victims' agony that continues to this day, and their families who suffer tremendous guilt for permitting the abuse to continue. One father says he's so ashamed and angry that he's lost his faith in God completely. Complete devastation.

Doesn't it ever occur to anyone that perhaps this kind of covert abuse is in part responsible for the growing number of homosexual men in this country? Ask around. See how many homosexuals went to parochial school or spent a lot of time at the rectory after school. While it's only anecdotal, it's still pretty amazing. I'm not holding my breath for any government-sponsored survey soon. Too bad. It might be eye-opening.

180 posted on 05/23/2009 12:56:11 PM PDT by Dr. Eckleburg ("I don't think they want my respect; I think they want my submission." - Flemming Rose)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 179 | View Replies]


Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first previous 1-20 ... 101-120121-140141-160161-180 last

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.

Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson