Jul

30

Institutional Child Abuse Bill 2009

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When one looks at the present position in relation to the Irish State and the Religious Orders including the Redress Board and the Ryan Commission Report and the cost to the taxpayer over the last 10 years.

It soon becomes clear that the Government has shown it is dominated by the Civil Service, has no political imagination or courage of its own and just drifting without direction.

Therefore, it’s quite clear that victims of institutional child abuse and their representatives should fully support the Labour Party’s Institutional Child Abuse Bill 2009.

The Bill sets out to deal with the following main areas.

· Expanding the definitions of ‘child’ and ‘institution’ so that no victim of abuse is denied justice through the Redress Board.
A small but substantial number of people were previously excluded from the Redress Board because of the wording in the 2002 Act. This change ensures that is no longer the case.

· The expanded definitions of ‘child’ and ‘institution’ in the Bill will necessitate a new time period for new applications to the Redress Board.
This recognises that victims of abuse who either lived abroad, or for whatever reason, were not aware of the Redress Board’s work, will have a second chance to apply. We propose that there will be a 3 year period for new applications once the Bill is passed.

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Jul

29

Deference towards Church ‘lost amid abuse scandals’

Filed Under RYAN REPORT - Institutional Abuse of Children in Care | 1 Comment

28/07/2009

Children’s Minister Barry Andrews today insisted Irish people no longer have the deference towards the Catholic Church that allowed institutional child abuse to thrive for decades.

During emotional outbursts by abuse survivors at the launch of a Government plan to make sure the systemic torture can never again happen, Mr Andrews said there had been a sea change in society. “I believe that we have come a long way,” he said.

“The deference that was at the core of the problem is no longer there.”

The Children’s Minister blamed an undue high regard for religious institutions and the State for allowing a decades-long cover-up of sickening abuse in church-run homes, schools and orphanages since the 1940s.

While victims generally welcomed the Government plan, some insisted it was too little too late.

Survivor Bernadette Fahy, who works with the Aislinn Centre for addicts, demanded to know why many inspections of children’s institutions are still announced in advance.

She called for abuse survivors to be put on inspection groups because they would know best the subtleties of how abused children are manipulated and silenced.

“When visits were announced we were left scrubbing and cleaning for weeks before the visit, put in a little dress for the day of the visit, the table set beautifully, and as soon as the inspectors left it was back to the grind,” she said.

Mr Andrews insisted announced visits are needed in some cases to make sure children and staff are available to be interviewed by inspectors.

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Jul

29

Pain and struggle of survivors palpable as questions remain

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Pain and struggle of survivors palpable as questions remain

By Noel Baker

Wednesday, July 29, 2009

FINGERS were jabbed through the air, thick with recrimination and hurt – the only surprise is that for once the Government wasn’t the target.

Michael Waters, the grey-haired spokesman for Survivors of Child Abuse (Soca) UK, had spoken coherently and concisely about his experiences of social work and had questioned Children’s Minister Barry Andrews about plans to boost resources in the area.

Then, suddenly, he stood up and made his way onto the stage at the Government Press Centre.

He pointed first at the screens behind Mr Andrews and his two colleagues, and the words “Report of the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse”.

Then he turned his guns on John Kelly, sitting in the front row, the spokesman for SOCA Ireland.

“Mr Kelly, you boycotted this committee,” Mr Waters said. “You called it a toothless tiger.”

His ardour rising, he said if people had listened to Mr Kelly, little would have been achieved for survivors. “You should be ashamed of yourself,” he said. “You are a coward.” There is little doubt that Mr Kelly strongly disagrees.

Maybe it was no surprise that emotions ran high yesterday.
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Jul

27

Individual voices of abused not being heard in debate

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By Bruce Arnold

Monday July 27 2009

John Kelly is a leading figure among the abused. Few people in the past 10 years can be unaware of his Daingean ordeal, flogged on the staircase of that abominable institution, his cries echoing up through the silent and listening dormitories, his punishment a fearful example.

For the past 10 years he has worked as Dublin spokesperson for Irish Survivors of Child Abuse (SOCA), fully aware of the public debate involving politicians and the Church, and also the behind-the-scenes debate. Irish SOCA stood for the abused and was independent. It spoke against consensus. It condemned the State’s silencing of the abused.

John Kelly was helped by Patrick Walsh, from London, and Jim Beresford, in Huddersfield. Beresford knew Father Moore, who exposed the Artane regime in 1962. Kelly emerged in the wake of the Ryan report to tell his experiences yet again.

He took a leading position, speaking on behalf of the abused, notably in respect of the pressure from the Government to get more funding from the Religious Orders.

The plight of the abused took on new impetus after the Ryan report, with the march from Parnell Square to Leinster House. This impetus and focus fell apart as a result of a letter written by Kelly to Labour Party leader Eamon Gilmore on July 8, a week before the tabling of its Institutional Child Abuse Bill. In that letter Kelly wrote: “The Labour Party has Irish Soca’s permission to inform the Dail or other parties of interest that Irish Soca has requested the Labour Party to defer this bill until the outcome of the audit is known and government is better placed to make judgment on the way forward”. The letter supported the Government in opposing the bill. It failed its first reading.

The authority of the statement in the letter is being widely questioned. There was no reported meeting of “the membership of Irish SOCA”, whose numbers and membership are not known to me. The three I do know are named above. Jim Beresford told me he was not party to recent decision-making. Other organisations are not included. Nevertheless, the letter has had an impact far greater than Irish SOCA achieved during its campaigning over the past 10 years. The letter is viewed as having killed the Labour Party bill. This raises important questions that need answering.

Kelly called for cross-party consensus: “support of Government is absolutely vital” and he referred to “government initiatives” and to the Government being “better placed to make judgment on the way forward”.

We should not overlook the fact that Eamon Gilmore and those close to him did offer consensus and did seek government agreement. They said they would withdraw their bill if the Government drafted a similar one. We should also not exclude the culpability of Government on many issues during the past decade and the slow pace of initiatives now.

The Irish State, not just the Government, has been shrewd and skilful in eliminating consensus. Most of the questions that need answering concern representation. Who does John Kelly speak for and is it representative? How do the other voices of the abused make themselves heard?

There are more than 14,000 who have received state compensation. Many of them, some I have spoken with, feel that nothing more should be attempted, since it will go wrong. No one has asked them. There is a mechanism.

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Jul

27

What Turns Our Catholic Priests Into Monsters

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A culture of denial, silence and sexual repression all helped create abusers, who were often sent abroad.
By John Downes, Public Affairs Correspondent

“Worse than the ordinary miserable childhood is the miserable Irish childhood, and worse yet is the miserable Irish Catholic childhood.”

At the end of the week when Frank McCourt finally succumbed to illness, the above quote, taken from his best known work, Angela’s Ashes, has rarely been more relevant.

Less than 24 hours after news of his death emerged last Tuesday, the long-awaited report of the commission set up to investigate clerical child abuse in the archdiocese of Dublin was sent to government.

More than three years in the making, the report is expected to outline a litany of abuses by Dublin priests, and repeated failures by their bishop superiors to put a stop to their actions.

But what is it about Irish priests that made them so prone to become abusers? And why, then, do such a large number of abusers in countries such as the USA and Australia have Irish origins?

Trying to understand the answers to these questions firstly requires an examination of the world in which both they, and many of the children they abused, grew up.

Repression

As the Ryan report repeatedly charts, Ireland during the majority of the last century was a society where repression and obedience, much of it church-led, was the order of the day.

Dr Niall Muldoon, national clinical director with the Children at Risk in Ireland (Cari) foundation, which counsels victims of abuse, notes that there was a clear emphasis by the Catholic hierarchy on “getting a child early on”.

As a result, you had 12- or 13-year-olds who were brought up to distrust close relationships – for example, always being told to walk in groups of three rather than two.

If you were a recruit for the priesthood, and you were found to be too close to someone, you were often punished.

The effect of this on young personalities still in formation cannot be underestimated.

“Straight away you’re teaching someone to be isolated, closed off, not sharing feelings,” Muldoon believes.

“I think this stunted their growth, and that added enormously to the prospect of someone going off the tracks.

“People thrive on love, companionship… But if you take a child at 12 or 13 years of age, and if their sexuality tries to raise its head against that background, it is hugely problematic.”

In this regard, Muldoon says the idea that young, inexperienced trainee Irish priests could freely commit to a life of celibacy is also difficult to comprehend.

“The concept of celibacy has to be considered in the context of someone who understands their sexuality in the first place,” he says.

“But a kid at 12 or 13… It’s like asking someone to give up chocolate having never tasted it. Celibacy has to be a mature, informed choice.”

So the trainee Irish priest was frequently faced with a type of ‘double whammy’ – the forced repression of their emotions, both in society and within the church structures to which they devoted their lives.

They were then expected to be outgoing and sociable as part of their work – something which served only to heighten their sense of isolation when they returned to an empty house.

Many priests found a way around the problems which celibacy can throw up – for example, through maintaining strong relationships with family members. Unfortunately, others did not.

But repression of sexuality, and the development of a culture of obedience, does not in itself explain why so many priests chose to express their frustrated desires in the particularly appalling form of child molestation and rape.

Clearly, the abusers have a large degree of personal culpability for the choices they made, regardless of their background.

In fact, the way in which the products of such a strictly Catholic Irish society chose to express their rage, anger and even sorrow varied hugely. This included alcoholism, gambling and depression, Muldoon notes.

Maeve Lewis, executive director of the victims group One in Four, also emphasises the impact of the strict authoritarian structures in place both in civil society and the Catholic church in Ireland.

She believes this was largely based on disempowering certain groups, for example on the basis of their class, gender or age.

“I think this also generated a complete culture of obedience, or non questioning, and a ruthless suppression of dissent… The response to those who tried to challenge the system was often to simply ridicule them,” Lewis says.

As a result, there was a huge lack of transparency or monitoring. And experience tells us that anywhere that has happened, abuses of power take place.

“I do agree that the formation process for priests involved no expression of intimacy within their lives,” she says. “They were completely cut off from their family and friends, and were people who had to suppress their emotions while at the same time operating at a very high intellectual level. There was such an emphasis on obedience.”

But she argues strongly that the priests were not operating in a vacuum.

“I think as a nation, our attitude to sexuality was, and perhaps still is, very very unhealthy indeed… This was bolstered by a church with a repressive attitude to sexuality. So sexuality was something to be tolerated rather than celebrated.”

Export

Another dominant feature of the Catholic church’s approach to child abuse has been the hierarchy’s practice of ‘exporting’ its abusing priests to other countries such as the US and Australia.

In his book, An Irish Tragedy: How Sex Abuse By Irish Priests Helped Cripple the Catholic Church, veteran Minneapolis investigative reporter Joe Rigert charts numerous examples of Irish-trained priests who continued their abuse once they reached the so-called land of the free.

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Jul

25

‘I put my faith in Bertie Ahern . . . I couldn’t have been more wrong’

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Andrew Madden — the bestselling author of ‘Altar Boy’ — anxiously waits to see what comes of this week’s report into Church sex abuse in Dublin . . . and wonders will his years of patience be justified

By ANDREW MADDEN

Saturday July 25 2009

Back in early 1998 I naively thought that all I needed to do was write to then Taoiseach Bertie Ahern pointing out that there was by then enough information in the public domain to justify an inquiry into the practice within the Catholic Church of moving paedophile priests onto new parishes in Dublin.

I couldn’t have been more wrong — Taoiseach Ahern was not in the slightest bit interested, telling me that the Church was not an organisation that the State could investigate and that the State could only have inquiries into matters of urgent public concern.

I remember being so disappointed that our relatively young new Taoiseach could have such a backward out-of-date reaction to an issue I was sure would never go away until it was properly addressed. Once I had gone public about my experiences as a child and had also told everyone in Ireland that I had been compensated, surely others would come forward to reveal similar experiences and demand similar redress — I wasn’t wrong about that.

I wrote to everyone I could think of then, the INTO, Amnesty International, the Rape Crisis Centre, to name but a few, asking them to write to the Taoiseach supporting my call for an inquiry. I felt, then, that as a child I had not stood up for myself, defended myself against a grown man who had abused me and his position, and as an adult I had just about enough of taking bullshit from people.

Turning things around had begun in 1991 when I found a solicitor to represent me in seeking compensation from Father Ivan Payne. This was the first step in saying that what had happened to me as a child was not okay and I was going to do something about it.

In 1994 I started to move information about my case into the public domain because I was concerned that Fr Payne was still a priest in Sutton and I also felt that other people who may have been abused by him or others were entitled to know that a precedent had been set.

That was a big step but I was becoming stronger as a person albeit starting from a very low point. Even as an adult I hadn’t been great at standing up for myself in work situations, for example, and being an active alcoholic didn’t help — it further robbed me of the ability to develop good interpersonal skills and develop and mature properly as an adult.

But I was finding the strength somewhere and I liked it. In 1997 I went into recovery for my alcoholism and haven’t had an alcoholic drink since.

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Jul

25

Religious orders miss deadline to submit financial statements

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PATSY McGARRY, Religious Affairs Correspondent

ANOTHER DEADLINE has been missed by religious congregations in presenting a report on their financial position to Government, as agreed by them following publication of the Ryan report last May.

Neither the Government nor all 18 of the religious congregations which managed institutions named in the report have met the mid-July deadlines they themselves set last month concerning reports on the financial position of the congregations. Though some congregations have presented such reports, others have missed a second agreed deadline.

At a meeting with the Taoiseach and senior members of the Cabinet on June 5th last, representatives of the 18 congregations which were party to the controversial 2002 redress agreement with the State, agreed that an independent report on their financial position would be presented to Government on June 24th.

They also agreed at that June 5th meeting to contribute to a trust the Taoiseach proposed be set up, so that further financial and other supports could be provided to people who, as children, had been in institutions they managed.

The congregations further committed themselves to identifying resources, “both financial and other, within a transparent process with a view to delivering upon commitments made today”.

However some of the larger congregations missed the June 24th deadline for presentation of details of their financial position and requested that they be allowed until September to do so.

They were given until mid-July and accepted that deadline which they have now missed also.

Following that June 24th meeting between representatives of the congregations, the Taoiseach and members of the Cabinet, a statement was issued by the Government stating that the congregations were expected to have submitted reports, “signed off by their financial advisers”, to Government “by mid-July when a further meeting will be held.”

It was also stated then that the Government would now move “to appoint a panel of three eminent independent persons to assess the material submitted by the congregations and report to Government as to the adequacy of these statements as a basis for assessing the resources of the congregations”.

Despite the passing of the mid-July deadline a week ago, some congregations have yet to submit a report on their financial position to Government; no further meeting between Government and the congregations is currently being planned; and the Government has yet to appoint the three person panel it promised to independently assess financial reports from the congregations.

A Government spokesman yesterday would only say that “dialogue [with the congregations] was ongoing” and “a process was working through”. It now seems unlikely that further progress will be made in any of these matters before September.

The Government is to announce its plans for implementation of the Ryan report recommendations at a press conference in Dublin on Tuesday. All 20 recommendations have been accepted by the Cabinet, including a memorial to victims of abuse in institutions which should bear the words of the apology made by the then taoiseach Bertie Ahern in 1999 and that the State should admit its failures and take steps to avoid a repetition.

It also recommended that religious congregations examine how their ideals became debased by systemic abuse and advised that more counselling, education and family tracing services should be provided. It said that childcare policy should be child-centred with the development of a national childcare policy, with rules and regulations enforced, breaches reported and sanctions applied.

It called for proper supervision and inspections, including unannounced inspections, objective national standards and follow-up of complaints. It said full personal records of children in care must be maintained and called for the Children First guidelines on child protection to be uniformly and consistently implemented throughout the State.

The Irish Times 25th July 2009

Jul

20

Four members of Ryan commission still on payroll

Filed Under RYAN REPORT - Institutional Abuse of Children in Care | 4 Comments

PATSY McGARRY, Religious Affairs Correspondent

TWO MONTHS following publication of the Ryan commission report on May 20th, four members of that commission remain in situ, in unexplained circumstances.

All four are being paid fortnightly at department assistant secretary levels, between €150,000 and €160,000 annually.

Current estimates indicate that the overall cost of the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse, to give the Ryan commission its proper title, could be between €89 million and €99 million. By the end of 2008, that figure was €59.3 million, with further costs being estimated at between €30 million and €40 million.

The commission had six members, together with its chairman Mr Justice Seán Ryan.

Mr Justice Ryan took his seat at the High Court early in June. Commissioner Norah Gibbons formally resigned from her post on May 20th following publication of the report. However, her work with the commission’s confidential committee ended in March 2006 when she returned to Barnardos, the children’s agency, where she is a director. She has not received payment from the commission since then.

Prof Edward Tempany, a retired consultant paediatrician, had been appointed to the commission to help with its vaccine trials inquiry. This was discontinued in November 2003 following an action in the High Court, as was his work at the commission.
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Jul

20

Compassionate face of an arrogant Catholic Church

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Archbishop Diarmuid Martin is out of place in a disgraced and dishonoured Church, writes Emer O’Kelly

Sunday July 19 2009

HIS Grace Diarmuid Martin, DD, Roman Catholic Archbishop of Dublin, a 64-year-old scholar now in religious charge of his native city, has been much in the news lately. Not least because his is the name which automatically springs to the minds of non-Catholics who want to find some excuse for his Church. They don’t want to believe that the Roman Catholic authorities are vicious, arrogant, uncaring, amoral, power-hungry and often sadistic. And Diarmuid Martin is the one man who seems to offer reassurance.

He offers it consistently and persistently. When the Ryan report into institutional child abuse was published in May, Diarmuid Martin called its contents “stomach-churning”. Prior to the publication, he had uttered dire warnings of expectation that the findings would be shaming and shameful for the Church. And even the faithful thought, if they thought at all, that he might be exaggerating; what could be revealed in the report that was not already known? That the Church — through many of its ordained and consecrated members who chose to desecrate the vows which imposed compassion and decency on them — had abused their positions and the trust Church and State vested in them?

But more, much more, came out. It was deliberately sadistic, vicious, and institutionalised. It was not the actions of a few disturbed or psychopathic men and women. It was the system. Hundreds of thousands of children were subjected to a regime which, under the United Nations definition, amounted to torture: daily torture of years’ duration directed against suffering helpless children who had committed no crime, but were poor or unruly.

Cardinal Sean Brady, Diarmuid Martin’s direct superior, said what he had been saying for several years beforehand, and what we expected him to say: that he was “profoundly sorry and deeply ashamed”.

Diarmuid Martin, on the other hand, called the contents of the Ryan report “stomach-churning”, his usually rubicund, cheery face grey and furrowed, his eyes as haunted as though the children had been his own blood. It was a phrase a father would use.
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Jul

19

Like many children who’d committed the unforgivable crime of being poor,…..

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Head of the family.

Television Review.

Survivors of clerical abuse don’t come much more hard-headed than Paddy Doyle. The 58-year-old’s skull is a mechanical marvel of screws, staples and titanium plates, an armoured helmet of metal and bone.

One of Doyle’s most prized possessions is a cranial scan that reveals what he believes is cast-iron evidence of a succession of experimental surgeries illicitly conducted on his brain while he was a ward of the state. “It’d make a great cover for a book,” he declared, holding the x-ray up to the light. “It should be called Screwed!

With a provocative blend of black humour and cold fury, Doyle offered a guided tour of his head in Flesh & Blood, an impressively unflinching series that explores how familial ties can choke as well as bind.

While deeply disturbed about the hardware that was inserted into his skull, Doyle is even more alarmed by the nuts and bolts that were removed from his consciousness. Institutionalised at the age of four, he grew up knowing little about his parents and was misled about the fate of the man he mistakenly believed was his father.

Paddy and Ann - Flesh and Blood.

Paddy and Ann - Flesh and Blood.

Doyle’s mother died from breast cancer. One afternoon five weeks later, Doyle was playing at the family homestead in Wexford with his two-year-old sister Ann when he saw his “father” dangling from a tree. It was 9pm before the children were removed from the scene of the suicide.

The Doyles had relatives in Ireland and England who were eager to raise them, but these prospective guardians were deemed unsuitable – either too old or too English – by the civic authorities, which claimed superior knowledge about what was best for all concerned.

Like many children who’d committed the unforgivable crime of being poor, the pair were brought to court and sentenced to detention at the state’s pleasure. Doyle was sent to St Michael’s Industrial School, County Waterford; Ann to an orphanage in Wexford. Nobody at either institution bothered to explain to them what had happened.
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