Sexual Abuse in Irish Schools

 

Sexual Abuse in Schools in Ireland       Gerry OShea

Here where men sit and hear each other groan;

Where youth grows pale and spectre-thin and dies;

Where but to think is to be full of sorrow;

I thought of these depressing ruminations on life from Keats’ poem “Ode to a Nightingale” when I read that the awful crime of sexual abuse is again on top of the political agenda in Ireland.

A preliminary investigation, named a Scoping  Inquiry, has led the Irish Government to announce that they will appoint a Commission of Investigation to examine and assess in more detail the information about the widespread sexual abuse of children by clerics, male and female, in the schools that they managed.

Mary O’Toole, a distinguished barrister, has led the investigation so far.  The report details 2400 allegations of sexual abuse by 844 alleged abusers in 308 schools run by 42 religious orders across Ireland.

After reading the 700-page report, Irish Times columnist, Jennifer O’Connell, reflected that “the individual stories in the report are unbearable to read, and the scale is dizzying. There is no hierarchy of horror, but the most appalling figure may be the 590 allegations involving alleged abusers in 17 special needs schools.”

A total of 185 allegations of abuse are recorded in the inquiry at Spiritan-run (previously known as the Holy Ghost Fathers) junior and senior schools in Blackrock, County Dublin.

A table from the report provides devastating reading for the Spiritans. Their school in Willow Park, a stepping stone academy for the famous Blackrock College, came out on top of the corruption listing, with 130 allegations against 24 alleged abusers.

Lota, a special school run by the Brothers of Charity in Glanmire, County Cork saw 166 allegations of abuse against 50 abusers. The Carmelite Fathers in their prestigious Primary and Secondary Schools in Terenure College were found to have 89 allegations, and 11 staff members were accused of seriously damaging their students.

 There were 63 allegations against 44 abusers at St. Mary’s School for Deaf Girls in Cabra in Dublin, while no less than 144 claims were disclosed against 36 accused abusers across all St. John of God Hospitaller Ministries schools.

The report highlights the systemic culture of silence that permeated these supposed places of learning. Survivors describe how authority figures turned a blind eye to the abuse taking place. The age-old idea that teachers acted in loco parentis, caring for the children, was missing completely.

One of the 149  interviewees in the Scoping Inquiry described how the school principal was aware of his colleagues’ malfeasance. He would open the classroom door, see the abuse taking place, including various stages of rape, and just head back for his office. Another former student related that a quiet kid was beaten and abused so badly that he died. Gardai investigated this case but no action was taken. Such behavior is reminiscent of Stalin’s Gulags.

The Government is committed to setting up a formal commission of inquiry that will somehow deal with the fact that, up to the 1980’s, Irish schools were places of simmering violence where children were not regarded as sentient beings with rights but as receptacles for whatever adults wished to inflict on them.

 They want to set a time limit for the report from this body because they fear that otherwise, it will drag on and on. The routine nature of physical violence meted out to children makes the task too vast to expect a detailed review of all cases of cruelty and sexual perversion, especially as it seems likely that the investigation remit will be extended to include schools outside the control of religious orders.

There is a broad consensus that redress payments should be made to the people who were sexually abused. One estimate sets the likely cost of this investigation, including significant legal fees, at around five billion euros – a hefty bill for a relatively small economy.

Looking ahead to this aspect of the proceedings, Irish taoiseach, Simon Harris, opined that the cost should be shared between the church and state.  He said that he hoped the religious orders would change their approach on payouts after the Ryan Report when they were notably tight-fisted and ungenerous.

How did ordained representatives of the Catholic Church get involved in such abhorrent behavior with children in their care? Fr. Tony Flannery, a Redemptorist priest who was silenced by the church about fifteen years ago because he wrote articles in favor of ordaining women to the priesthood, spoke out last week against the system that facilitated such awful behavior in church-run institutions.

According to him, “there is something seriously dysfunctional in the clerical world for these things to happen in a widespread way.” He claims that traditional Catholic social teaching, especially the church’s fixation with suppressing natural romantic feelings, thoughts, and desires, damages mature human development.

He urged the authorities in his church to accept the crying need to review its teachings on sexuality, starting with its mandate that compels celibacy for the clergy. He derides the tendency of bishops and other church leaders to issue jaded statements of sympathy for those who were abused while doing nothing to alleviate the wider causes of the problem.

Fr. Flannery is entirely correct. Silencing him for advocating for women’s ordination and other related matters is symptomatic of a wider problem. It highlights the need for major rethinking in the church on attitudes to ethical standards in the area of sexual behavior.

Gerry OShea blogs at wemustbetalking.com