Hundreds of Irish Catholic priests 'to be implicated in chil

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Hundreds of Irish Catholic priests 'to be implicated in child abuse report'

Irish abuse report is 'shocking'

[klr]

I've asked for this to be moved to News and Current Events.

In one sense of course, this is not news (even though I am listening to it on the radio news right now). It's like Groundhog Day, so much of this have we heard in the past 20 years or so.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

I've asked for this to be moved to News and Current Events.

In one sense of course, this is not news (even though I am listening to it on the radio news right now). It's like Groundhog Day, so much of this have we heard in the past 20 years or so.

Moved.

[klr]

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/bre ... aking5.htm

Children exposed to 'daily terror' in institutions

Sexual abuse was "endemic" in State-run institutions for boys and children lived in "daily terror" of being beaten over more than five decades, the long-awaited Commission into Child Abuse report has found.

The report, that runs to thousands of pages, outlined a harrowing account of the emotional, physical and sexual abuse inflicted on young people who attended schools and institutions from 1940 onwards.

It found that corporal punishment was "pervasive, severe, arbitrary and unpredictable" in the institutions where "children lived with the daily terror of not knowing where the next beating was coming from."

...

[Animavore]

The paedophiles have been forced to leave the Catholic Church.
They've all moved onto integrated social networking sites.

[Rum]

It seems that they have managed a virtual of immunity. Disgraceful! Read at:-

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/8060442.stm

[klr]

It seems that they have managed a virtual of immunity. Disgraceful! Read at:-

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/8060442.stm

Unfortunately, this is not really news. There would never have been even the level of "cooperation" that there was otherwise.

Neither is it new, in the sense that those congregations involved were somehow able to wring an indemnity out of the state in 2002, something which makes me seethe to this day when I think of it:

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/bre ... king37.htm

Opposition seeks review of abuse deal with Church

JASON MICHAEL

The Opposition has today called for a review of the 2002 deal granting religious congregations indemnity against child-abuse claims.

The Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse yesterday released a report that found endemic abuse in State institutions. The Cabinet will discuss the commission's recommendations next week, and the report is to be debated in the Dáil.

Under the 2002 indemnity agreement between the State and the congregations, the religious orders were awarded indemnity against all future claims if they paid €128 million in cash and property.

Fine Gael education spokesman Brian Hayes said today a review of the entire deal was necessary "if legally possible".

"When the deal was done initially in 2002, without any public scrutiny, I have to say, it was done on the basis that the total liability would be somewhere in excess of €300 million.

"Now, the total liability that we know about currently is about €1.2 billion, and I think it's only fair at this stage from the victims and taxpayers' perspective, that if at all possible to renegotiate this, we should do it."

Mr Hayes said some of the properties involved in the deal had still not been handed over to the State, adding: "The crucial point is that when the deal was done, it was done on the basis of an asset value that has significantly depleted now due to the reduction in property prices.

"The current cost of €128 million is a total misnomer," Mr Hayes said.

He said there were still "substantial question marks" over the 2002 deal done "in the dying days" of that government.

"The Department of Finance clearly expressed reservations over the deal. We know that the PAC [Public Accounts Committee] some years later asked huge questions about the deal, and to this day, we still do not know exactly why that deal was struck by the-then minister for education and his government."

Fine Gael has called for several days to be set aside in the Dáil to debate the report's findings.

Labour spokesman for justice Pat Rabbitte today claimed the abuse report vindicated the party's stance on the "supine" indemnity deal made with religious orders.

"Nine times alone during 2003, I raised the matter on Leaders' Questions with the then Taoiseach, Bertie Ahern. We got little support from any other side of the House at the time, but the extent of the compensation paid and the full details now revealed in the Ryan report vindicate the concerns we raised," the former party leader said today.

"The publication of the report has once again focused attention on the extraordinary deal concluded by the then Minister for Education, Dr. Michael Woods, on his final day in office in 2002. The deal was agreed without a memo being brought to government and with limited involvement of the Office of the Attorney General," Mr Rabbitte said.

"While the original recommendation of the Department of Finance was that the liability for financial compensation for the damage done to these children should be shared 50:50 between the state and the religious congregations. However, the deal agreed by Dr. Michael Woods capped the congregations' liability to €127m, which we know now represents only around 10 per cent of the actual cost.

"There is now an unanswerable case for reopening the indemnity deal. We now need to find an appropriate mechanism to allow the deal to be reopened and recast to reflect the appropriate share of liability between Church and State."

Mr Rabbitte also called for an independent investigation into the circumstances of the deal agreed.

Sinn Féin spokesman on children Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin called for an early debate while speaking in the Dáil today.

Speaking on RTÉ's Morning Ireland earlier, Minister for Foreign Affairs Micheál Martin said the Government was "considering comprehensively" issues surrounding the indemnity deal. But he refused to be drawn directly on whether the Government would move to redraw its terms.

He said yesterday's commission report was "very clear" about the State's responsibilities.

"The advice would have very much been that people may have gone after the church, the church may have pleaded inability to pay - inevitably those who would be suing would have gone after the State. I think we can look at that again, and in my view the issue is how both the orders and the State continue to support the survivors.

"The Government are considering this comprehensively," Mr Martin said.

"As far as I'm concerned, the key point is the survivors, and the focus should be on the survivors in terms of education provision, all of the various supports the State can give people, and that's something that has been lost sight of terms of all the litigation and so forth," the Minister said.

"I think that sometimes people get into the deal and as if that's the paramount issue. The paramount issue for me has to be the survivors."

"Compared to other countries across the globe . . . what this entire episode represents is that this State, belatedly yes, but did lift the lid on a very dark period of our history where children were committed wrongly in the first instance to institutions," Mr Martin said.

Speaking on the same programme, Mr Hayes also said the notion that €2 million could be cut in the budget of the Residential Institutions Redress Board was "scandalous".

In a statement today, however, the Department of Education and Science said it has "no control or influence" over the Redress Board awards and that the State pays whatever award the board determines.

The department said that money is allocated based on an estimate of the level and number of awards being made, and that the amount set aside this year was reduced because of reduced award patterns. It added the Redress Board is not constrained by the amount set aside.

Green Party MEP candidate Senator Deirdre de Burca urged church authorities to volunteer more funds for redress purposes.

“I’m not a lawyer and I cannot say whether or not this deal can be revisited. But, before we get ourselves into another legal tangle at a time like this, I see a much simpler way forward,” Ms de Burca said.

“To be blunt, I believe they [church leaders] can and should come up with more funds to help provide redress and reparation,” she said.

[klr]

http://www.childabusecommission.ie/

... includes links to the report itself, in both HTML and PDF format. Read it and weep.

[klr]

From last night's (May 20th) Vincent Browne show on TV3:

http://www.tv3.ie/shows.php?request=nig ... centbrowne

FYI: Christine Buckley was featured in an award-winning 1996 TV documentary called Dear Daughter, which detailed her experiences in the Goldenbridge orphanage, and the aftermath. This one documentary probably did more than anything else to wake people up to the reality of institutional abuse in Ireland.

[Trolldor]

It disgusts me.
Everybody knows about it, and yet still nothing is done, why?

[Hermit]

Everybody knows about it, and yet still nothing is done, why?

Something to do with having to acknowledge that holy cows can be evil? Most people cannot do this. They see their religion as essentially good. To them wrongdoings cannot possibly be a result of the system; they have to be occasional aberations perpetrated by the occasional rogue member of such an institution. By refusing to make the right diagnosis they cannot possibly demand the right fix. Thus, the most you can expect is that the good catholics of Ireland in this case demand the removal of the few rotten apples among the priests, nuns and monks rather than to demand that the church stays the fuck out of affairs that are none of its business - any secular matters whatsoever. Until there is a realisation of that by the majority of the population, nothing much will change.

[klr]

Everybody knows about it, and yet still nothing is done, why?

Something to do with having to acknowledge that holy cows can be evil? Most people cannot do this. They see their religion as essentially good. To them wrongdoings cannot possibly be a result of the system; they have to be occasional aberations perpetrated by the occasional rogue member of such an institution. By refusing to make the right diagnosis they cannot possibly demand the right fix. Thus, the most you can expect is that the good catholics of Ireland in this case demand the removal of the few rotten apples among the priests, nuns and monks rather than to demand that the church stays the fuck out of affairs that are none of its business - any secular matters whatsoever. Until there is a realisation of that by the majority of the population, nothing much will change.

Unfortunately, the level of public awareness is still well short of what is required. There is (for want of a better term) a general lack of intellectual maturity in Irish society when it comes to religion. Many of them despise and mock religion and religious institutions, but they just don't think hard enough about the underlying issues. Many others pay lip-service. In fact, there is a strong undercurrent of apathy, and indeed there is also a large overlap between the aforementioned categories. You would think by now people would have had enough wake-up calls about how the whole system is rotten. Of course there are a great many people who are attuned to the realities of the situation, but they are still in the minority. More conciousness-raising required methinks.

[Hermit]

Unfortunately, the level of public awareness is still well short of what is required. There is (for want of a better term) a general lack of intellectual maturity in Irish society when it comes to religion. Many of them despise and mock religion and religious institutions, but they just don't think hard enough about the underlying issues. Many others pay lip-service. In fact, there is a strong undercurrent of apathy, and indeed there is also a large overlap between the aforementioned categories. You would think by now people would have had enough wake-up calls about how the whole system is rotten. Of course there are a great many people who are attuned to the realities of the situation, but they are still in the minority. More conciousness-raising required methinks.

True, and this does not apply to Irish society alone, I am very sorry to say. On average, Australians are a reasonably secular people, and somewhat cynical regarding religious institutions, yet there is no backbone at all when it comes to drawing logical conclusions. On the contrary, should you have the temerity to criticise aspects of religion you are just as likely to get a petulant reply from a non-theist who feels insulted on behalf of a theist as you are to get one from a run-of-the-mill god-botherer. Religious values seem all too pervasive. Even most of us who lack a belief in the sort of god thingies peddled by religious institutions seem to be infused with them to the point where we will refuse to fight that which we profess to be opposed to, or at least are unwilling to actively and effectively oppose.

[klr]

Unfortunately, the level of public awareness is still well short of what is required. There is (for want of a better term) a general lack of intellectual maturity in Irish society when it comes to religion. Many of them despise and mock religion and religious institutions, but they just don't think hard enough about the underlying issues. Many others pay lip-service. In fact, there is a strong undercurrent of apathy, and indeed there is also a large overlap between the aforementioned categories. You would think by now people would have had enough wake-up calls about how the whole system is rotten. Of course there are a great many people who are attuned to the realities of the situation, but they are still in the minority. More conciousness-raising required methinks.

True, and this does not apply to Irish society alone, I am very sorry to say. On average, Australians are a reasonably secular people, and somewhat cynical regarding religious institutions, yet there is no backbone at all when it comes to drawing logical conclusions. On the contrary, should you have the temerity to criticise aspects of religion you are just as likely to get a petulant reply from a non-theist who feels insulted on behalf of a theist as you are to get one from a run-of-the-mill god-botherer. Religious values seem all too pervasive. Even most of us who lack a belief in the sort of god thingies peddled by religious institutions seem to be infused with them to the point where we will refuse to fight that which we profess to be opposed to, or at least are unwilling to actively and effectively oppose.

Part of the problem with being more vocal and proactive is that you get tarred very quickly with the "militant" label (militant atheist = any atheist prepared to speak their mind in public ). People can be infuriatingly perverse. Go too far (in their eyes) with criticism, and you run the risk of being counter-productive. "Why be so strident when there is no real problem?" would be a common response. Except of course there is a problem. Most people still seem to be happy taking the line of least resistance.

But not everyone. A daughter of a friend of mine is now saying she doesn't want to go church any more after this latest round of revelations. Her mother is quite religious (why are rural people usually more religious?), unlike her father, who is pretty much of the same mind as me. The daughter is by all accounts very intelligent and strong-willed, so hopefully she will stick to her guns.

[AshtonBlack]

Unfortunately, the level of public awareness is still well short of what is required. There is (for want of a better term) a general lack of intellectual maturity in Irish society when it comes to religion. Many of them despise and mock religion and religious institutions, but they just don't think hard enough about the underlying issues. Many others pay lip-service. In fact, there is a strong undercurrent of apathy, and indeed there is also a large overlap between the aforementioned categories. You would think by now people would have had enough wake-up calls about how the whole system is rotten. Of course there are a great many people who are attuned to the realities of the situation, but they are still in the minority. More conciousness-raising required methinks.

True, and this does not apply to Irish society alone, I am very sorry to say. On average, Australians are a reasonably secular people, and somewhat cynical regarding religious institutions, yet there is no backbone at all when it comes to drawing logical conclusions. On the contrary, should you have the temerity to criticise aspects of religion you are just as likely to get a petulant reply from a non-theist who feels insulted on behalf of a theist as you are to get one from a run-of-the-mill god-botherer. Religious values seem all too pervasive. Even most of us who lack a belief in the sort of god thingies peddled by religious institutions seem to be infused with them to the point where we will refuse to fight that which we profess to be opposed to, or at least are unwilling to actively and effectively oppose.

Part of the problem with being more vocal and proactive is that you get tarred very quickly with the "militant" label (militant atheist = any atheist prepared to speak their mind in public ). People can be infuriatingly perverse. Go too far (in their eyes) with criticism, and you run the risk of being counter-productive. "Why be so strident when there is no real problem?" would be a common response. Except of course there is a problem. Most people still seem to be happy taking the line of least resistance.

But not everyone. A daughter of a friend of mine is now saying she doesn't want to go church any more after this latest round of revelations. Her mother is quite religious (why are rural people usually more religious?), unlike her father, who is pretty much of the same mind as me. The daughter is by all accounts very intelligent and strong-willed, so hopefully she will stick to her guns.

Let's hope so!