THE RYAN REPORT

THE RYAN REPORT

Thousands of children suffered physical and sexual abuse in residential care centers run by various religious orders over several decades in Ireland. The abuse was endemic and was perpetrated in over fifty locations throughout the twenty- six counties.

The types of abuse included flogging, starving, sexual abuse and all kinds of humiliations. Children with a bed wetting problem were often made stand naked in the cold, outside the building, and in one reported case a nun dealt with this problem by forcing the young girl’s face on to the stained underwear.

What were the children in these reformatories guilty of ? What did they do to deserve this horrible treatment? Some were orphans; others had a poor attendance record at school. All were needy kids from marginalized families, where, for instance, the mother could not cope financially or the father was a drunk. These were all very vulnerable children.

The extensive report on these institutions cost over 100 million dollars to complete, and nobody is saying that it exaggerates the extent or the severity of the physical and sexual abuse that innocent children suffered. Judge Ryan and his team of researchers listened to stories from over a thousand "graduates" of these reformatory schools, and his report is replete with stories of terror and intimidation.

The Soviet gulags could scarcely match the level of abuse and deprivation inflicted on these young children. The report speaks of the "pathetic gratitude response" from the kids when even the slightest compassion was shown by anyone in authority. One girl recalled how she was so delighted when she got a piece of candy from a nurse that she held on to it as a reminder that someone actually noticed her and thought she was important enough to be given a gift.

How did this happen that the most vulnerable members of Irish society, young children, were systematically mistreated in institutions owned and mostly staffed by priests and religious brothers and nuns? The finger of disgrace and blame points in a number of directions.

Each religious order has its own charism, the special spiritual perspective that, supposedly, sets it apart from the others. However, they all share a commitment to gospel values, to the teachings of Jesus Christ. To help them advance these values, they all attend mass every day and engage in various community rituals and prayers that focus on personal spiritual growth.

Yet, these are the people from all these Orders, people who claimed a special charism for childcare, who turned these reformatory schools into corners of hell for the young children they were supposed to serve. We are not talking here about occasional breaches of proper behaviour by " a few bad apples;" the report makes abundantly clear that the abuse was systemic and endemic.

How can we explain the vice and corruption that permeated religious communities of men and women in all parts of the 26 - county state for more than 50 years? That question cries out for some kind of an answer. Judge Ryan mentions that the Rosminian Order conceded that the revelations had led them to a serious examination of why their members engaged in or tolerated such awful behaviour. The other Orders are still offering grudging apologies or vague rationalizations about their despicable behaviour.

The children who were abused shared one common characteristic; they were all poor. To be more precise, they came from dirt poor families, who could fairly be described as destitute. Unfortunately, these vulnerable kids were blamed for their terrible predicament. They "deserved" to be treated like – well, dirt. This outlook gave the men and women, wearing crucifixes and touting rosary beads, permission to treat the children in their care as sub-human. First and foremost, the way these kids were treated was a terrible abuse of power.


The institutional Catholic Church, led by the bishops, pastors whose first obligation was supposed to be to the poor, must have known about the goings-on in these "schools." Not one bishop or priest spoke out against the pandemic of abuse, not even one called for some kind of an investigation. Actually, Fr. Flanagan of Boys’ Town fame did hear in the United States about the abuse in Ireland and tried to intervene. He was told where to go by the authorities of Church and State, and, unfortunately, he died before he could investigate the situation further.

The inspectorate in the Department of Education disgraced themselves by writing reports that all was well in these institutions, where the children were being whipped and starved. By contrast, their counterparts in Northern Ireland insisted on humane treatment for the children, who were housed there in similar Catholic or Protestant reformatories.

So, we have the amazing situation, for instance, of tyrannical Brothers working in the South, who had to behave themselves when they worked in their Order’s reformatories in the North where the British had jurisdiction. In fact, prior to 1922, when the laws for Ireland were made and implemented by Westminster governments, poor Irish children had a much better chance of humane treatment than when they depended on Dublin governments for protection.

The Irish people who tolerated this awful and outrageous abuse of power by these male and female religious cannot be excused of some responsibility for the evil in their midst. Irish culture allowed anyone with a clerical garb to do as they liked. This was a fatal flaw in the Irish people, resulting in unspeakable behaviour against children, who had nobody on their side, nobody to speak for them.

One woman in Dublin, responding to this damning report was quoted in the Irish Times as saying "I am deeply, deeply ashamed of being Catholic and Irish." So am I!



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