It was not just the Christian Brothers and members of other religious
orders who were culpable of the abuse of thousands of children from the
1930s onwards.
Although they were the perpetrators of the abuse, a whole swathe of
middle-class Ireland – who knew or should have known, but who couldn’t
have cared less – is also to blame.
Judges were among the most culpable. It was they who ordered the
incarceration of children in these institutions, often on grounds they
must have known to be bogus. Other more senior judges who gave legal
backing to the decisions of their judicial inferiors were also culpable.
Barristers and solicitors colluded in this. The media did likewise, by
ignoring it. General medical practitioners must have kept their eyes and
ears firmly shut never to have noticed anything remiss on visits to
institutions where barbarous acts were perpetrated on children as a
matter of routine, and where the evidence of such barbarity must have
been apparent on the bodies of the children.
Bishops, parish priests and many, many more must have known what was
going on, and did nothing; they also colluded in what happened.
Was it because these children were of the ‘‘workers’ class’’, and
therefore of little consequence that the collusion and complicity prevailed?
There are so many things which are simply staggering about the conduct
of the Christian Brothers. Obviously, there is the callous cruelty of
the conduct of so many of its members, the few hundred who inflicted
sexual abuse and the many more who inflicted appalling and criminal
physical abuse.
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