Sunday Newsletter

Masses Today

6.30: (Vigil): Jackie & Annie Nee, (Anniv).
11.00: Ellen & Patrick Wade, (Anniv).
6.30: Jack Melvin, (Anniv).

As I Was Saying...

Between 1936 and 1970, about 170,000 children entered the gates of the 50 industrial schools. The average stay was more than seven years. During that same time, a total of 2,000 to 3,000 children (mostly young offenders) spent some time in a reformatory. The average stay here was one year. These institutions were staffed by Religious personnel.

Without doubt, this is the most shameful chapter in the long history of the Irish Catholic Church. Innocent children had their young lives destroyed before they had really begun. If the Church (with its many components) has to bankrupt itself in compensating the victims, it will be money well spent. Otherwise, monuments and apologies mean nothing.

What I want to say now should neither 'explain away' the suffering of the victims, or excuse the crimes of their tormentors. But three important points have been lost in the understandably angry aftermath. (1) Sexual abuse was (and is) widespread in society. Only this weekend, a HSE report stated that 90 per cent of sexual abuse goes unreported today, in 2009.

The Ryan Report is obviously a window into the abusive practices of some Religious and Clergy. But the Report should serve society, not just as a window, but as a mirror too. Webs of complicity existed in the past to cover up this abuse. (If you have any doubts on this score, I refer you to Ryan, Volume I, Chapter 14 which details the complicity that permitted a notorious predator to abuse his way through schools for 40 years! He received a glowing reference from his P.P.: "Mr. Dunne at his own request and greatly to my personal regret leaves to devote his wonderful gifts to the Secondary branch of Education. He brings with him my gratitude for his wonderful service to the pupils and ... the parish." This fellow was being moved on because of persistent violence and sexual abuse.) But these webs of complicity continue in society today.

(2) It may be a glaringly obvious thing to say, but loving men and women served selflessly in these institutions. Judge Ryan acknowledged this: "Many witnesses wished to emphasise positive aspects of the care they received in Industrial and Reformatory Schools. They commented that memories of kindness remained with them for many years. There were several religious Sisters and Brothers mentioned with affection by witnesses from different Schools." (Ryan, Vol. III, Chapter 10). You won't read this in the general media! That too is unjust.

(3) The vast majority of these children were committed by the District Court or the Health Authority, both agents of the state. These acted on behalf of the People of Ireland! Society used these institutions as dumping grounds for needy children. For these agencies now to present themselves as the last barriers between children and abuse is rich indeed!

No one can ever undo the suffering of the children unveiled in the Ryan Report. But we can do everything in our power to ensure that it never happens again. The best way to do this is to insist on a comprehensive mandatory Child Protection Programme for every parish in the country. Through this avenue, may we arrive at a position where we can say with confidence that the Catholic Church is the safest place in this country for our children? We owe the victims this, and more.

-Dick Lyng

Child Abuse

The question on everybody's mind is why and how could they do it? And especially because they were religious and their commitment to follow the way of Jesus ought to have attuned them to the needs of the vulnerable children with whose care they were entrusted.

The absence of specific statistics in the Ryan report makes it impossible to answer these questions with anything other than educated guessing. Firstly sexual and physical abuse should be distinguished since these ordinarily have different underlying causes. Secondly, the actual prevalence per institution per decade is not addressed - all we know is that over 800 individual religious and nonreligious carers were named as both physical and sexual abusers over a time span of 40 years in 216 institutions.

Accurate data is vital to understand the underlying reasons for these behaviours. If, for instance, the number of clerical sexual abusers reached 20, over a 20 year period in all institutions, then the focus would be on these as individuals. On the other hand, if the number reached 200 then the focus ought to shift to the dynamics within the specific religious congregations or institutions that may have promulgated such terrible behaviour. This distinction, between the individual and the institutional, and between physical and sexual is, in my opinion, crucial.

Over and above the individual and congregational considerations, the role of the authorities in responding administratively when these activities became known must be examined as must the custom of the day, especially with regard to corporal punishment. Thus a multi-layered approach is essential if the victims of these abuses are to find answers to the questions that still haunt them.

However, there should be no doubt in anybody's mind but that human beings can behave with cruelty and depravity against those who are vulnerable. Sexual assaults, particularly against women and children, have been documented during war for centuries and in the very recent past we have been made aware of sexual humiliation as a weapon at Abu Ghraib prison.

A fascinating experiment, known as the Stanford Prison Experiment (1971), highlighted the potential of seemingly compassionate people to behave with unprecedented cruelty to those in their charge. Psychology students were divided into two groups, one as prison guards and the other as prisoners and isolated from their class. The experiment had to be terminated after only 6 days because of the sadistic behaviour of the "guards" towards the "prisoners", who because depressed and showed signs of extreme distress.

So the terrible examples of "mans' inhumanity to man" recounted in recent days may be no less than what history already tells us. We should not be too arrogant in 2009.

Prof. Patricia Casey is Professor of Psychiatry at University College Dublin and the Mater Hospital, Dublin.

Ryan

1.

They gathered, as we did,
In draughty chapels,
Offering their weakness humbly,
Praying, as we did, For light.
How did You not, Lord,
Listen?

2.

In our story,
We imagined ourselves
Facing fire and anger staunchly,
Suffering in the cause of gentleness.
Never did we number ourselves
Amid the afflicters.

3.

Besides the sin
That is my own sin,
There is that black sin
Running like a gash
On the fair skin
Of our humanity.

-Padraig J. Daly.

In denial then, in denial now

The filigreed letter of these horrors has been met by ritualistic expression of shock, horror and disapproval. In a strange reversal of earlier cultural responses, the details have been greeted with ostentatious shows of outrage. Now that these events are safely in the past, Irish society has become enthusiastic in their condemnation. It appears to be a characteristic of such phenomena that the level of outrage becomes an almost precise replication of the earlier denial. It is not, however, that the scales have been lifted from the eyes of society, but that, as a result of the easing, by the passing of time, of collective guilt and powerlessness, a new generation feels able to ventilate and excoriate the sins of its predecessors.

-John Waters, The Tablet, 30 May, 2009.

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