Revealed, six decades of 'ritual' child abuse: Catholic schools and orphanages damned in report
By Tom Kelly
Last updated at 2:33 PM on 21st May 2009
- Safety of children in general was not a consideration
- No abusers will be prosecuted
- Victims banned from launch of shocking report
Church leaders and government watchdogs covered up 'endemic' and 'ritualised' abuse of thousands of children in Roman Catholic schools and orphanages in the Irish Republic, a shocking report revealed yesterday.
For six decades, priests and nuns terrorised boys and girls in the workhouse-style schools with sexual, physical and mental abuse.
Kevin Flannigan, right, and John Kelly, left, from the group Survivors of Child Abuse, protest at not being allowed into the launch of the long-awaited Child Abuse Commission report at the Conrad Hotel Dublin
But officials in Ireland's Catholic Church shielded paedophile staff from arrest to protect their own reputations despite knowing they were serial attackers, according to the 2,600-page report, which took nine years to complete.
Irish government inspectors also failed to stop the chronic beatings, rape and humiliation, it found.
Justice Sean Ryan launches the report at the Conrad Hotel in Dublin today - but refuses to take questions from journalists
About 35,000 children and teenagers who were orphans, petty thieves, truants, unmarried mothers or from dysfunctional families were sent to Ireland's network of 250 Church-run industrial schools, reformatories, orphanages and hostels from the 1930s up until the early 1990s.
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