Sir, – In light of more disturbing and heartbreaking revelations of child sexual abuse in religious-run schools, one is reminded that the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse revealed that thousands of children were raped and abused in Catholic schools across Ireland over decades. The majority of allegations it investigated related to the infamous industrial schools operated by the Catholic Church, which were funded by the Department of Education. The commission’s report stated that the entire system treated children more like prison inmates and slaves.
One is also reminded of the 2009 Murphy report, which concluded that “the Dublin Archdiocese’s preoccupations in dealing with cases of child sexual abuse, at least until the mid-1990s, were the maintenance of secrecy, the avoidance of scandal, the protection of the reputation of the church, and the preservation of its assets. All other considerations, including the welfare of children and justice for victims, were subordinated to these priorities.”
What these children needed was love, support, counselling and justice. Instead, they were met with cold, adversarial treatment by the church, which harboured and protected their abusers, often moving them elsewhere, where many re-offended.
The church also fought tooth and nail against providing compensation to victims, leaving the State to pick up most of the tab. This continues.
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Children suffered similar abuse, and there were similar cover-ups, in church-run institutions across the globe, from Canada to Australia.
Yet this organisation still has a virtual monopoly over Irish primary schools.
There is no separation of church and State in Ireland. What we have is integration of church and State. And this rotten marriage has presided over decades of horrendous abuse of our most vulnerable citizens, our children, on an industrial scale.
In 2009 then Archbishop Diarmuid Martin said the Catholic Church’s near monopoly over schooling in Ireland was untenable and failed to reflect current realities.
A recent poll commissioned by Education and Training Boards Ireland found that 61 per cent of adults expressed a preference for multidenominational education, compared with 9 per cent who expressed a preference for a religious body to provide education.
These latest revelations provide yet more evidence that we need to move to a school system worthy of a modern, democratic Republic. One that values and protects its most vulnerable citizens. – Yours, etc,
ROB SADLIER,
Rathfarnham,
Dublin 16.
Sir, – Reading Carl O’Brien’s proposal that faith formation take place outside the school day brought to mind an incident from my school days (“Secularisation of schools hasn’t worked. Hard to see how it will”, Opinion, September 14th).
In 1972 I was a (rebellious) 17-year-old student and one day I demanded the right to opt out of the daily half hour of “religious instruction”. I was taken aback by the Christian Brother’s response: “You disappoint me, Kerrigan. I thought you were one of the more intelligent pupils and would have figured out that we don’t teach you Catholicism in RE – we do that in history, Irish, geography, English and all the other lessons! Of course you can drop out of RE... but if it’s escaping ‘indoctrination’ you want, well, good luck with that.”
I was flabbergasted by the blatant accuracy of his reply! – Yours, etc,
CATHAL KERRIGAN,
Old Youghal Road,
Cork.