agentX
Joined: 12 Oct 2007
Location: Jeolla province
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 Posted: Wed May 20, 2009 11:19 pm Post subject: Irish Reform School: Worse than your school |
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I'm short on time so I'll just quote/link dump for now.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/05/20/irish-reform-schools-thou_n_205719.html
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DUBLIN � After a nine-year investigation, a commission published a damning report Wednesday on decades of rapes, humiliation and beatings at Catholic Church-run reform schools for Ireland's castaway children.
The 2,600-page report painted the most detailed and damning portrait yet of church-administered abuse in a country grown weary of revelations about child molestation by priests.
The investigation of the tax-supported schools uncovered previously secret Vatican records that demonstrated church knowledge of pedophiles in their ranks all the way back to the 1930s.
Wednesday's five-volume report on the probe _ which was resisted by Catholic religious orders _ concluded that church officials 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," Ireland's Commission to Inquire Into Child Abuse concluded. |
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A government-appointed panel has paid 12,000 survivors of the schools, orphanages and other church-run residences an average of $90,000 each _ on condition they surrender their right to sue either the church or state. About 2,000 more claims are pending. Irish Catholic leaders cut a controversial deal with the government in 2001 that capped the church's contribution at $175 million _ a fraction of the final cost.
Some victims emphasized, even as they began thumbing through the report, that nothing _ not even criminal convictions of their long-ago tormentors _ will ever put right their psychological wounds and make their nightmares go away.
Tom Sweeney, who spent five years in two Christian Brothers-run institutions where he was placed for truancy, says he suffered sexual abuse and beatings. He also has bitter memories about more everyday humiliations _ such as being forced to wrap his urine-stained sheets around his neck and parade in front of other children when he'd wet his bed.
"It's something you'll never forget, the way you lived in these industrial schools," he said. |
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