There is still a sense that the ‘holy’ fat cats will be allowed to escape with their riches intact, writes Emer O’Kelly
Sunday May 31 2009
ARCHBISHOP Diarmuid Martin doesn’t know; Father Sean Healy of the Conference of Religious of Ireland doesn’t know; Sister Marianne O’Connor director-general of the Conference of Religious of Ireland doesn’t know; the Minister for Justice doesn’t know; the Christian Brothers’ Superior doesn’t know.
None of them knows, they claim (correctly in the Minister’s case) how much money and assets belong to the religious congregations in Ireland, the criminals who tortured children and profiteered from their unpaid labour for generations. But even now, they will not easily give them up; that is clear after the revelations and statements of the last terrible week
We have something called the Criminal Assets Bureau in Ireland. It has the powers to freeze assets, access bank accounts, and confiscate the proceeds of crime. It was never imagined that the CAB would have to carry out its work in such sickening circumstances.
But there is the machinery to swoop on these criminal organisations (the religious congregations) and ensure that they are never again in a position to live off the backs of little children, children who in many cases had those backs laid open to the bone with whips, flails and leather belts.
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