They came forward in small groups at first. And then they spoke out in waves.
Over the past two years, dozens of people, mostly men in their 50s and 60s, have reported being sexually abused at schools run by Catholic orders in Ireland.
Their accounts only hint at the magnitude of a national scandal, experts say. In September, a preliminary government inquiry identified almost 2,400 allegations of sexual abuse in religious schools between the 1960s and the 1990s, and 884 alleged abusers. Norma Foley, Ireland’s minister for education, said the scale of abuse was “truly shocking,” and has ordered a full government investigation.
While Ireland has long grappled with the legacy of abuse within Catholic church institutions, the latest revelations shed light on how dozens of schools allegedly harbored serial abusers for decades.
The fight for accountability has been led by a cohort of older men who are…
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