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Ireland's Massive Report On Clergy Sex Abuse Released

By Howard M. Friedman

Yesterday Ireland's Commission to Inquire Into Child Abuse released its mammoth 2,600-page report on child abuse at Catholic institutions in Ireland from 1936 to the present. The 30-page Executive Summary and the text of the full report are both available online, as are transcripts of testimony that the Commission took in 2004 and 2005. BBC News summarized the findings:

The report, nine years in the making and covering a period of six decades, found thousands of boys and girls were terrorised by priests and nuns. Government inspectors failed to stop beatings, rapes and humiliation....

The five-volume study concluded that church officials encouraged ritual beatings and consistently shielded their orders' paedophiles from arrest amid a "culture of self-serving secrecy". The commission found that sexual abuse was "endemic" in boys' institutions, and church leaders knew what was going on.

Victims of the abuse-- particularly those who had testified before the Commission --were particularly upset by the fact that the report will not be used as the basis for additional criminal prosecutions. In part this is because one of the largest religious orders involved-- Christian Brothers--obtained a court order in 2004 to keep all its members discussed in the report anonymous. Police were called to the news conference in which the report was released as victims who were prevented from attending began to object. BBC News has reactions of abuse victims, church leaders and political leaders.

Full post as published by Religion Clause on May 21, 2009 (boomark / email).