More Clerical Sex Abuse

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Purple

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Fr. Martin Kelly, provincial of the Spiritans Congregation in Ireland, issued a statement today in relation to the rape and sexual abuse of children in the care of their order over a period of decades.
He said (source):
On behalf of the Spiritan Congregation in Ireland, I want to express my deepest and most sincere sorrow to every person who was abused by a member of the Spiritans, or by a staff member, in any of our schools. I sincerely apologise for this. What was done to you as innocent children was cruel and indefensible. We are deeply ashamed of these actions.

“Secondly, failure to act promptly resulted in children being abused who could have been protected had corrective action been taken earlier. I also acknowledge that failure on our part and apologise for it.


“I want to encourage anybody who was abused by a member of the Spiritans or a lay member of staff in our schools, at any time, to come forward and contact us. I want to go further; any notion that those who suffered were ‘weak’ in some way and share some element of blame for whatever happened to them is completely and utterly wrong.

“As the leader of the Spiritans in Ireland today I want to banish any such idea and promise all victims that the full process we’re announcing today wants to hear from you.”

“I would like to assure everyone that there are in place, and have been for many years, all the appropriate policies and procedures for the safeguarding of children in all Spiritan schools to ensure, as far as is humanly possible, that such abuse will not happen again to children in our care. We would like to assure everybody that all our communities apply rigorous standards for child safeguarding as laid down by the Child and Family Agency (Tusla), the Department of Education and Skills, the Catholic Church in Ireland, and the Congregation’s own policy.

“We always cooperate with the statutory authorities (An Garda Síochána and Tusla) in their investigation of any reports of abuse that we receive.”

What I find utterly amazing is the notion that the perpetrators of these crimes should be asking their victims to contact them and think that they should be involved in any investigation. How on earth could they even countenance the notion that they should be part of that process?
They knew about these accusations for decades and did nothing so to say that they are sorry and to issue apologies now shows a level of delusional hubris that is staggering.

What else to the RC Church have to do to show that they have no place, no role and no right to be involved in the education of children?
 
That’s certainly one viewpoint. If I had been abused by a member of the spiritans I don’t think I be too quick to get in touch with them now to help sort the whole thing out. I’d probably just report it to the Gardai.

There’s no doubt that the spiritans have a lot to be sorry about and it’s hard to know where to begin. They ruined countless lives.

It doesn’t necessarily follow however that religious orders shouldn’t be involved in the provision of education. A lot of parents are comfortable with their children having some sort of faith-based approach to their education, even if they’re not practising churchgoers themselves.

It’s also worth remembering that children were vulnerable in nearly all settings in previous decades. Corporal punishment in schools wasn’t just tolerated. It was actively encouraged and this pretty much set the tone for what a child could expect in a wider society.

I was in school for all of the 70s and was taught by the Marist brothers. I never once heard of any suggestion of any abuse. My recollection is of committed, generous teachers who dedicated their lives to what they believed was God’s work. Some of the lay teachers by comparison were sadistic in their treatment of pupils, in terms of the physical and emotional abuse they heaped on vulnerable children. Should we also exclude this cohort as well in the future?
 
Salvadore said:
I was in school for all of the 70s and was taught by the Marist brothers. I never once heard of any suggestion of any abuse
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Scotland
https://www.childabuseroyalcommission.gov.au/case-studies/case-study-13-marist-brothers (Australia)
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/crime/129463095/the-shocking-scale-and-impact-of-decades-of-abuse-by-multiple-marist-brothers-and-fathers (New Zealand)
Ireland
USA

Australia stands out though.
 
Salvadore said:
Some of the lay teachers by comparison were sadistic in their treatment of pupils, in terms of the physical and emotional abuse they heaped on vulnerable children. Should we also exclude this cohort as well in the future?
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I don't get you point. Is it that we should exclude people from teaching who heap physical and emotional abuse on children? If that's the question then yes, we should.
If there is a non governmental organisation which runs schools with State money which has shown a consistent practice of covering up the rape and abuse of children, of sheltering and enabling child abusers and of withholding evidence of serious criminal acts from the Gardaí then they should be excluded as well.
 
I went to a boarding school in the 80's, run and taught by priests and to the best of my knowledge, there was never an issue. What it did do for me was to allow me to see priests as human beings, some were fantastic and I would have the utmost time and respect for them, and some were totally eejits and gobdaws but I could have said the same about lay teachers as well. I well remember a lay female teacher in primary school who put more than one child in A&E and whose favourite punishment was to literally bang kids heads together or off the desk.

What was interesting, looking back, was that the boarding school was run by the diocese and staffed by diocesian priests, as opposed to an order of priests. From talking to a couple of people who work for the church, they've said that the bishops had and have virtually no control over these orders and the likes of the Jesuits, Spiritans etc were almost like their own "country" within the broader church. I detect a certain arrogance amongst the leaders of those orders.

Incidentally, I'm not saying the diocese was perfect, I grew up in Cloyne diocese so know well what happened there and knew one of the priests mentioned in that report and he was someone we all were told to avoid. I also know of one group of Dads who metted out their own justice to the lay principle of a Christian Brothers school after the Gardai refused to take any action and a senior Garda almost threw then out of the station.

I have a perception, rightly or wrongly, that the orders, especially those led from overseas, were more "out of control" then those local. What is really scary is that it was very easy for those orders to send a priest out in the missions and I dread to think what happened in some cases as a result.
 
Peanuts20 said:
I went to a boarding school in the 80's, run and taught by priests and to the best of my knowledge, there was never an issue.
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I presume it wasn't Newbridge or Castleknock so.
All reports of sexual abuse had to be reported to the Vatican. They then decided whether or not the civil authorities were informed. This was handled by the Office of the Doctrine of the Faith, run by the then Cardinal Ratzinger, who was the final arbiter. In effect Irish citizens were instructed to give Papal Law primacy over Irish Law. The same was true of all priests worldwide. Some Irish bishops were very angry about that but were forced into line. The disgusting and shameful letter from the Pope blaming failings within the Irish Church for the abuse that happened here must have been particularly hard to read from the Pulpit but in the end they all had to toe the Vatican line.
 
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My point was that it wasn’t evident in the school I attended. Some of the lay teachers by comparison should have been imprisoned.
 
Salvadore said:
My point was that it wasn’t evident in the school I attended. Some of the lay teachers by comparison should have been imprisoned.
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I went to a Christian Brothers school in the 80's but they were all gone (retired/dead/hidden/locked up) by the time I was in second year. I was an ugly child anyway so I was safe enough.
I was only beaten in primary school. Corporal punishment was banned by then but that didn't stop my teacher throwing 9 year old me to the ground and kicking me in the Kidneys. In fairness I wasn't paying attention so must have deserved it. He never raped me though, he didn't set himself up as a moral arbiter and his colleagues didn't cover up for him and lie about it.
 
Salvadore said:
Ah good. So they reported him to a higher authority.

How did that go?
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I won't get into that here.

Your view seems to be that lay teachers were worse then religious teachers and sure it's alright due to a smorgasbord of whataboutery.
Do you find the behaviour of the CR Church in our education system over the last 100 years acceptable?
Do you think that the various apologies over the last 2 decades were sincere?
Do you think those apologies remain sincere in the context of the subsequent waves of revelations, accusation and admissions, leading to more apologies?
 
What’s your next question? Do I believe in Satan?

My view is that children generally were very exposed to abuse in all corners of society and that it wasn’t confined to religious orders.

We live in much more enlightened times where reports of abuse are taken much more seriously. I’d like to think that children attending school these days are no longer exposed to any form of abuse.

I don’t know whether the current apologies and commitments to restorative justice will prove to be sincere. I certainly hope so.
 
Salvadore said:
What’s your next question? Do I believe in Satan?
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No, that's of no consequence in real life discussions.
I certainly hope so.
Salvadore said:
I don’t know whether the current apologies and commitments to restorative justice will prove to be sincere. I certainly hope so.
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To me the issue is that there have been plenty of apologies but I find it impossible to believe that the religious orders and RC Church in general were not already aware of the current accusations. If their apologies were sincere then they would have proactively disclosed that information to the Gardaí years ago. Given that I conclude that they are only sorry that they were caught. Therefore they have no place having any role in the education of children.
 
Most of the students who were educated by the spiritans seemed to have a very positive experience. The past pupils union (the ones who actually went there and saw things first hand rather than the ones who just read the paper) clearly don’t think it’s worth pulling the plug on the entire arrangement.
 
Salvadore said:
Most of the students who were educated by the spiritans seemed to have a very positive experience.
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Does that in any way mitigate the abuse?
Salvadore said:
The past pupils union (the ones who actually went there and saw things first hand rather than the ones who just read the paper) clearly don’t think it’s worth pulling the plug on the entire arrangement.
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Have they said that?
Do you think that the involvement of the Holy Ghost Fathers is so positive that it balances out the abuse that they facilitated and enabled?

Do you think that it is appropriate that organisations running schools are primarily answerable to a foreign state?
 
Salvadore said:
Of course not but it shows they have the capacity to provide good education and that they don’t exist solely for the purpose of facilitating child abusers.
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Nobody claimed otherwise but they knew about the accusations and didn't alert the Gardaí or make them public so that others might come forward. That tells me that protecting their institution was more important to them than protecting the children in their care. That tells me that their institutions are rotten and should not be involved in the education of children. The individual teachers can of course continue to teach but the schools shouldn't be run by institutions whose first loyalty is to a foreign country.
It's not an anti Catholic thing, I don't think schools which regard themselves as answerable to Saudi Arabia should be allowed either.
 
I went to school in St Michaels from the start in 72/73 to the end in 85 and I never witnessed or heard of any type of sexual abuse from the priests
and this was also during the tenure of Fr Alo Flood as principle until he was replaced by Fr Aidan Lehane in and around 83/84
Now while I don't recall any sexual abuse by the priests I do recall a couple of things that might viewed in a different light now,
one of which was the traffic light system

There used the be a traffic light system on Principles door and when I was twice sent there to see Fr Flood you knocked on the door and if you got a green light you entered and closed the door behind you, a red light meant you waited outside until he was finished with whatever he was doing behind the closed door. Fr Lehane had a different approach, the one time I was sent to his office there was no traffic light system and his door was open and stayed open while you were with him and all the other times that I passed his door it was mainly open even when he had people other than students in there

I have over the past twenty years run into many past pupils of Michaels and more than a few times the subject of clerical abuse would be raised and never once have I heard anything untoward about the priests until last week, quite amazing and shocking at the same time that it has remained hidden or obscured till now
 
It's hardly surprising that people didn't talk about it.
 
Was anyone actually surprised at the scale of the abuse reported yesterday?
 
Purple said:
Was anyone actually surprised at the scale of the abuse reported yesterday?
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To be totally honest, and not trying to be dramatic here, I read some reports in the Examiner this morning, and it has really upset me. The fact that this was facilitated by men of the cloth is just despicable. On so many levels, this was just so, so wrong, and I hope that those who suffered get the just rewards.
 
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