US clergy sex abuse victims react to Irish Catholic report

Statement by David Clohessy of St. Louis Missouri (USA), director of SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (314 566 9790 cell, 314 645 5915 home)

Harsh consequences, not mere publicity, deter crimes against children. Greater public awareness and carefully-crafted church apologies aren't enough. Regardless of what does or doesn't happen in the legal arena, no one should donate a nickel to the Christian Brothers, who used their legal clout to keep the names of serial criminals hidden from the public even now.

It's important to remember that many of these crimes continued into the 1990s. While many perpetrators are deceased, there must be dozens, if not hundreds, who are not.

We are deeply grateful for the courage of the hundreds of deeply wounded victims who found the strength to report their suffering to this inquiry. They should be applauded by every Irish citizen and every Catholic worldwide for helping to shed light on such a horrific scandal. We desperately hope that this report will give them some comfort and solace and ease their devastating pain.

(SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, is the nation’s oldest and largest support group for clergy abuse victims. We’ve been around for 20 years and have more than 9,000 members across the US & the globe. Despite the word “priest” in our title, we have members who were molested by religious figures of all denominations, including nuns, rabbis, bishops, and Protestant ministers. Our website is SNAPnetwork.org)

Contact David Clohessy (314) 566-9790 cell, (314) 645-5915 home),
Peter Isely (414) 429-7259
Barbara Blaine (312) 399-4747

Dear friends,

If anyone, who dares to read this investigation report, (that took nine years to complete), is still choosing to live in denial about the sex abuse by catholic clergy and the cover-up by the church leaders, ...I feel you must be at least 6 feet under...or brain dead.

This epidemic is world wide... the church leaders' system of secrets, protection from scandal, covering their own asses, and knowingly committing crimes against kids... is almost too much for my heart and soul to take.

I am so angry that kids have been treated worse than livestock, and I have no idea why all of you are not angry too.... please wake up.. we need your help, because kids are still not safe....

tks, Judy Jones, SNAP Director Southeastern Ohio, 636-433-2511

The report and more articles are posted on 'Abuse Tracker'.. http://www.bishop-accountability.org/AbuseTracker/

This is AP article below:

Thousands beaten, raped in Irish reform schools

By SHAWN POGATCHNIK – 1 hour ago ----

DUBLIN (AP) A fiercely debated, nine-year investigation into Ireland's Roman Catholic-run institutions says priests and nuns terrorized thousands of boys and girls in workhouse-style schools for decades and government inspectors failed to stop the chronic beatings, rapes and humiliation.

High Court Justice Sean Ryan on Wednesday unveiled the 2,600-page final report of Ireland's Commission to Inquire Into Child Abuse, which is based on testimony from thousands of former students and officials from more than 250 church-run institutions.

More than 30,000 children deemed to be petty thieves, truants or from dysfunctional families a category that often included unmarried mothers were sent to Ireland's austere network of industrial schools, reformatories, orphanages and hostels from the 1930s until the last church-run facilities shut in the 1990s.

The report found that molestation and rape were "endemic" in boys' facilities, chiefly run by the Christian Brothers order, and supervisors pursued policies that increased the danger. Girls supervised by orders of nuns, chiefly the Sisters of Mercy, suffered much less sexual abuse but frequent assaults and humiliation designed to make them feel worthless.

"In some schools a high level of ritualized beating was routine. ... Girls were struck with implements designed to maximize pain and were struck on all parts of the body," the report said. "Personal and family denigration was widespread."

Victims of the system have long demanded that the truth of their experiences be documented and made public, so that children in Ireland never endure such suffering again.

But most leaders of religious orders have rejected the allegations as exaggerations and lies, and testified to the commission that any abuses were the responsibility of often long-dead individuals.

Wednesday's five-volume report sides almost completely with the former students' accounts. It concludes that church officials always shielded their orders' pedophiles from arrest amid a culture of self-serving secrecy.

"A climate of fear, created by pervasive, excessive and arbitrary punishment, permeated most of the institutions and all those run for boys. Children lived with the daily terror of not knowing where the next beating was coming from," the report concluded.

The commission said overwhelming, consistent testimony from still-traumatized men and women, now in their 50s to 80s, had demonstrated beyond a doubt that the entire system treated children more like prison inmates and slaves than people with legal rights and human potential.

The report proposed 21 ways the government could recognize past wrongs, including building a permanent memorial, providing counseling and education to victims and improving Ireland's current child protection services.

But its findings will not be used for criminal prosecutions in part because the Christian Brothers successfully sued the commission in 2004 to keep the identities of all of its members, dead or alive, unnamed in the report. No real names, whether of victims or perpetrators, appear in the final document.

Irish church leaders and religious orders all declined to comment Wednesday, citing the need to read the massive document first. The Vatican also declined to comment.

The Irish government already has funded a parallel compensation system that has paid 12,000 abuse victims an average of euro65,000 ($90,000). About 2,000 claims remain outstanding.

Victims receive the payouts only if they waive their rights to sue the state and the church. Hundreds have rejected that condition and taken their abusers and those church employers to court.

Wednesday's report said children had no safe way to tell authorities about the assaults they were suffering, particularly the sexual aggression from church officials and older inmates in boys' institutions.

"The management did not listen to or believe children when they complained of the activities of some of the men who had responsibility for their care," the commission found. "At best, the abusers were moved, but nothing was done about the harm done to the child. At worst, the child was blamed and seen as corrupted by the sexual activity, and was punished severely."

The commission dismissed as implausible a central defense of the religious orders that, in bygone days, people did not recognize the sexual abuse of a child as a criminal offense, but rather as a sin that required repentance.

In their testimony, religious orders typically cited this opinion as the principal reason why sex-predator priests and brothers were sheltered within the system and moved to new posts where they could still maintain daily contact with children.

But the commission said its fact-finding which included unearthing decades-old church files, chiefly stored in the Vatican, on scores of unreported abuse cases from Ireland's industrial schools demonstrated that officials understood exactly what was at stake: their own reputations.

It cited numerous examples where school managers told police about child abusers who were not church officials but never did this when one of their own had committed the crime.

"Contrary to the congregations' claims that the recidivist nature of sexual offending was not understood, it is clear from the documented cases that they were aware of the propensity for abusers to re-abuse," it said.

Religious orders were chiefly concerned about preventing scandal, not the danger to children, it said.

The commission also condemned Ireland's Education Department for aiding the abusive culture through infrequent, toothless inspections that deferred to church authority.

Inspectors were supposed to restrict the use of corporal punishment and make sure the children were adequately fed, clothed and educated ­ but the report called those inspections "fundamentally flawed."

It said a lone inspector was responsible for monitoring more than 50 industrial schools, schools were told about the visits in advance and inspectors rarely talked to the children.

Wednesday's report also highlighted the rarity of human kindness in the institutions.

"A word of consideration or encouragement, or an act of sympathy or understanding, had a profound effect. Adults in their 60s and 70s recalled seemingly insignificant events that had remained with them all their lives," the report said.

"Often the act of kindness, recalled in such a positive light, arose from the simple fact that the staff member had not given a beating when one was expected."

Copyright © 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.