Companions in Hope
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Companions in Hope
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- Featured in May 2009 -
The countryside of Ireland offers some of the Earth's most peaceful and serene images.
Yet, a 2,600-page report, culminating a 9-year government investigation into child abuses by members of Ireland's Catholic religious orders and lay staff members, proves the lives of thousands of Irish children - over a span of nearly a century - were nothing short of pure hell. The Catholic-run 'Care-Homes' were actually Torture Chambers for children, many of whom had no family and nowhere to turn for help.
Said Irish President Mary McAleese upon release of the report, "My heart goes out to the victims of this terrible injustice, an injustice compounded by the fact that they had to suffer in silence for so long. This report utterly vindicates their determination to break that silence."
"The Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse was established in 2000 with functions including the investigation of abuse of children in institutions in the State. It was dependent on people giving evidence which they did in large numbers. The Commission expresses its gratitude to all those who participated and contributed with their testimony and documents. The witnesses who came to the confidential and the Investigation Committees ensured that the Inquiry had sufficient information to investigate the difficult issues that it was mandated to explore. The Commission was impressed by the dignity, courage and fortitude of witnesses who endeavored to recall events that had happened many years ago.
This report should give rise to debate and reflection. Although institutional care belongs to a different era, many of the lessons to be learned from what happened have contemporary applications for the protection of vulnerable people in our society."
Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse Report
Executive Summary of the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse Report
The Institution needs to be Fearlessly Examined - and Dismantled
A Commentary by Thomas Doyle
Executive Summary of the Ferns Report
New! Report by Commission of Investigation into Catholic Archdiocese of Dublin
Canon lawyer criticises archbishop by Patsy McGarry for The Irish Times - December 2, 2009
Irish church obsessively hid child abuse: report by Andras Gergely for Reuters - November 26, 2009
FACTBOX: Roman Catholic Church sex scandals by Reuters - November 26, 2009
Lost souls fled clerical abuse BBC News - September 24, 2009
UK Irish abuse victims 'losing out' BBC News - July 7, 2009
Irish abused 'cheated of justice' BBC News - May 20, 2009
ABUSE REPORT AT A GLANCE
The Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse was established in 2000 to investigate allegations of abuse at Catholic-run children's institutions in Ireland.
The main findings were:
Story from BBC News - May 5 2009
Note: Physical, emotional, verbal and sexual abuse in Catholic-run institutions have not been isolated in Ireland. Please read more about such abuse in the United States, particularly at St. Colman's in New York, by clicking on the link below. Like the vicitms/survivors of Ireland, St. Colman's victims/survivors and family members have also been DENIED JUSTICE.
http://www.justiceforgilbert.com
Rampant Abuse in Irish Schools
Ireland Church School Abuse Report Details
Horrific Report on Child Abuse in the Catholic Church
Endemic Abuse at Irish Catholic Care Homes
Irish Catholic Church Abuse Inquiry
Survivor on Catholic Child Abuse
Ireland's Shame: The Catholic Church and Child Abuse
Catholics abuse, rape, and beat children in Ireland
Child Abuse in Ireland: A Priest's View
Child Sexual Abuse within Catholic Establishments in Ireland - Part 1
Child Sexual Abuse within Catholic Establishments in Ireland - Part 2
Watch other Video Clips linked on our site here.
The abuse in the Catholic-run institutions in Ireland has been well-documented. Below are books and DVDs written either by the survivors of the many forms of Institutional abuse at the hands of Catholic priests, brothers, or nuns, or by authors who studied such abuse.
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Kathy's Story by Kathy O'Beirne Kathy O'Beirne was sexually abused at eight, labeled "troublesome" by a psychiatrist, and sent to reform school. After being raped by a visiting priest, she was transferred to a psychiatric hospital and subjected to electric shock therapy. At 12, she ended up in the Magdalen laundry, the notorious workhouse where thousands of other "troublesome" girls were incarcerated, abused, and forced to slave in horrendous conditions. In unflinching detail, yet illuminated by strength and hope, Kathy's Story recounts her harrowing experiences, remarkable survival, and campaign to help other vicitms of institutional abuse.
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Suffer the Little Children by Mary Raftery with Eion O'Sullivan Between 1868 and 1969, more an 100,000 Irish children were taken from their families by the state and placed in so-called industrial schools run by various orders of the Catholic Church. The conditions in these schools, as documented by Raftery first in her award-winning TV documentary States of Fear and now in this book, were appalling. The documentary so shocked Ireland that the prime minister was forced to offer an apology on behalf of the state. Collaborating here with O'Sullivan, a lecturer in social policy at Trinity College, Dublin, Raftery presents a child welfare system out of control. Most of the children in industrial schools were placed there because of their parents' poverty. Then the state closed its eyes as the children were abused physically, mentally and sexually by nuns and priests who were supposed to take care of them. The testimonials of the former students themselves are heart-wrenching. Mary Norris remembers being remanded because her mother, a widow with eight children, allowed a man to stay the night. Don Baker tells that, when he, aged 12, arrived at his school, the priest pointed at his groin and asked, "Do you play with that?" Baker remembers the school as something out of Oliver Twist old, filthy clothes, terrible food and repeated floggings. Interspersed throughout the testimonials are political details; which government and which minister either ignored allegations or quickly passed the buck. It is noteworthy that Father Edward Flanagan, founder of Boystown, on a visit to Ireland in 1946 condemned the highly abusive and punitive culture within the Irish industrial schools. Raftery and O'Sullivan perform an important service in recording the ugly story of these institutions. (Review from Publishers Weekly)
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Childhood Interrupted by Kathleen O'Malley A deeply moving memoir of a young girl's harrowing abuse in an Irish industrial school run by the Sisters of Mercy.
In 1950, Kathleen O'Malley and her two sisters were legally abducted from their mother. The rape of eight-year-old Kathleen by a neighbor triggered their removal. Kathleen's mother successfully prosecuted the man, but it was her daughters who received a much harsher sentence when they were committed to Mount Carmel Industrial School in County Westmeath, Ireland. It was run by the Sisters of Mercy order of nuns, who also ran the notorious Magdalen Homes. Kathleen and her sisters were subjected to beatings, humiliation, hard labor, and near-starvation, until they were finally permitted to leave at the age of sixteen. Childhood Interrupted is her inspiring, profoundly affecting story.
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The God Squad by Paddy Doyle By the age of four, Paddy Doyle's mother had died of cancer, and father had committed suicide. He was detained in an industrial school for 11 years, where he was viciously assaulted and sexually abused by his religious custodians. After 3 years, he was taken to a hospital and left there, never to see his custodians again. So began his long round of hospitals, mainly in the company of old dying men, while doctors tried to diagnose his condition. This period of his life, culminating in brain surgery at the age of 10, left him permanently disabled. This title is the true story of a survivor, told with a lack of bitterness for one so shockingly and shamefully treated.
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Irelands Magdalen Laundries by James M. Smith The Magdalen laundries were workhouses in which many Irish women and girls were effectively imprisoned because they were perceived to be a threat to the moral fiber of society. Mandated by the Irish state beginning in the eighteenth century, they were operated by various orders of the Catholic Church until the last laundry closed in 1996. A few years earlier, in 1993, an order of nuns in Dublin sold part of their Magdalen convent to a real estate developer. The remains of 155 inmates, buried in unmarked graves on the property, were exhumed, cremated, and buried elsewhere in a mass grave. This triggered a public scandal in Ireland and since then the Magdalen laundries have become an important issue in Irish culture, especially with the 2002 release of the film "The Magdalen Sisters".
Focusing on the ten Catholic Magdalen laundries operating between 1922 and 1996, Ireland's magdalen Laundries and the Nation's Architecture of COntainment offers the fist history of women entering these institutions in the twentieth century. Because the religious orders have not opened their archival records, Smith argues that Ireland's Magdalen institutions continue to exist in the public mind primarily at the level of story (cultural representation and survivor testimony) rather than history (archival history and documentation).
Addressed to academic and general readers alike, James M. Smith's book accomplishes three primary objective. First, it connects what history we have of the Magdalen laundries to Ireland's "architecture of containment" that made undesirable segments of the female population such as illegitimate children, single mother, and sexually promiscuous women literally invisible. Second, it critically evaluates cultural representations in drama and visual art of the laundries that have, over the past fifteen years, brought them significant attention in Irish culture. Finally, Smith challenges the nation -- church, state, and society -- to acknowledge its complicity in Ireland's Magdalen scandal and to offer redress for victims and survivors alike.
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The Magdalen by Marita Conlon-McKennaIn the 19th and 20th centuries, the Holy Saints Magdalen Home for Wayward Girls and Fallen Women was a prisonlike institution in Dublin where unmarried pregnant women were sent in shame until they delivered, after which, without exception, the church took their babies away for adoption. In 1951, Esther Doyle of rural Connemara has no thoughts of such a place when she escapes her grim home life, her drunken fisherman father is drowned, and her mother can't cope with Esther's young retarded sister for a brief romance that leaves her pregnant. In desperation, she turns to the Home, where she soon discovers that living conditions are nearly unbearable. The mostly unsympathetic and even cruel nuns oversee a sweatshop-like laundry in which women slave every day except on Sunday's. The nuns refer to them as "penitents", but the women sardonically called themselves "Maggies". Through it all, the women are bolstered by their camaraderie. After Esther has her baby, reluctantly surrendering it, she leaves but refuses to return to her family, which has rejected her. The first half of the book, telling of Esther's beginnings, rings true, but it is familiar and overlong. The real tale is the story of the Magdalen Home, a cruel institution the church maintained into the mid-20th century. The straightforward writing is without flourish, but the story is powerful and moving and Esther's unhappy experience will remain with the reader. The same story was dramatized by Patricia Burke Brogan in a popular play, Eclipsed, first performed in Great Britain in 1992. (Review from Publishers Weekly)
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Do Penance or Perish by Frances Finnegan Frances Finnegan traces the development of Ireland's Magdalen Asylums-homes that were founded in the mid-nineteenth century for the detention of prostitutes undergoing reform. The inmates of these asylums were discouraged - and many forcibly prevented - from leaving and sometimes were detained for life. Put to work without pay in adjoining laundries, these women were subject to penance, harsh discipline, enforced silence, and prayer. Their hair was cropped, and they were made to wear drab and shapeless clothing. Forbidden to mention their past lives, their children taken away, the inmates themselves were referred to as children and forced to address the nuns as "Mother". As the numbers of prostitutes began to dwindle, the church looked elsewhere for this free labor, targeting other 'fallen' women such as unwed mothers and wayward or abused girls. Some were incarcerated simply for being 'too beautiful', and therefore in danger of sin. Others were mentally retarded. Most of them were brought to the asylums by their families or priests. Unbelievably, the last of these asylums was closed only in 1996. Drawing on previously unpublished material, Finnegan presents case histories of individual women and their experiences in Magdalen homes, which claimed some 30,000 women in all. She looks at the social consequences of such a system, and ponders how it was able to survive into the late twentieth century, right through the feminist campaign for women's rights. Do Penance or Perish is the first study of this shameful episode in Irish history.
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Beyond Belief: Abused by His Priest. Betrayed by His Church. The Story of the Boy who Sued the Pope by Colm O'Gorman'I was living in a world where a priest who spoke the words of God used me for sex, and there was no-one to tell. The world where this horror happened didn't exist for anyone else.' As a boy in Ireland where everyone -- from among his own neighbours to the powers of church and state -- chose to deny that a priest could sexually assault a child, Colm O'Gorman felt only shame, guilt and fear at the regular rape and abuse he suffered. But Colm would go on to make history, successfully suing the Roman Catholic Church, asking questions of the Pope himself and creating a watershed in history as hundreds more victims found the courage to report their abuse. Beyond Belief is a powerful story of a young man's shame turning to outrage, and demonstrates that -- whatever our past hurts -- there is hope for the future if we are prepared to stand for truth.
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The Magdalen Sisters DVD released 2002 A stirring, must-see motion picture critics called one of the best films of the year, The Magdalen Sisters is the triumphant story of three extraordinary women whose courage to defy a century of injustice would inspire a nation! Abandoned by society and cast out by their families for crimes they did not commit, these women found themselves stripped of their liberty and dignity and condemned to indefinite sentences of manual labor. Within the church-run Magdalen Laundries, these women were forced into unbearable institutional servitude in order to cleanse themselves of their "sins" of which they had been accused. From acclaimed director Peter Mullan, this award-winning powerhouse not only reveals the truth behind one of the great tragedies of our time, but celebrates the bravery that would bring it to an end!
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The story of how Irish immigrants helped to build the American Catholic Church is well-known. But the sad tale of how Irish priests later undermined the Church has gone untold, until now.
Investigative reporter Joe Rigert's search for the roots of the Catholic sex-abuse scandals led him to Ireland. There, he found that rigid sexual repression in both society and the priesthood had the opposite of its intensified effect, fostering bizarre and criminal sexual expression.
Though a tiny country, Ireland has been a chief exporter of abusers to America. The cases Rigert documents range from a priest who as a youth was molested by priests in Ireland and then went on to abuse up to 50 girls and boys in America, to a bishop who had never dated a girl in his home country and later turned to boys for sexual satisfaction in an American seminary.
Ultimately, Rigert reveals the abuse by Irish priests mirrors a sexual disorder in the Vatican itself. The late Pope John Paul II looked to Ireland to maintain his strict view on sexual morality, but could not enforce it even in his own nation state.
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Our Featured Quote:
"The Catholic Church has run organized pedophile rings. I don't think any organization or institution in our society would be tolerated that operated in our society the same way."
"There is news today that Pope Benedict might be coming here. I don't think that's anything to be welcomed. Pope Benedict has actually said media coverage of the child abuses is undermining the Catholic Church and I think he should hold his head in shame."
Both Quotes from a citizen of Ireland in a May 2009 interview regarding the Child Abuse Inquiry Report.
In November 2002 the United States Congress and President George W. Bush established by law the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, also known as the 9/11 Commission. This independent, bipartisan panel was directed to examine the facts and circumstances surrounding the September 11 attacks, identify lessons learned, and provide recommendations to safeguard against future acts of terrorism.
The Commission's final report was published and sold in bookstores nationwide.
We ask:
When is Congress and the President of the United States finally going to mandate a National Commission to Investigate the Catholic Church Clergy Sexual Abuse Scandal that has left tens of thousands of American Children raped or sexually assaulted by their priests or religious order members while many of the church officials who participated in the scandal are still at work without accountability or so much as being hauled in front of a Congressional hearing to answer to the public for their actions.
Congress has questioned under oath many Major League Baseball Players regarding steroids but not a single Roman Catholic Bishop regarding thousands of child rapes on their watch.
In this sense, Ireland's government is light years ahead of the government of the United States.
