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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