IRELAND
One in Four
The Christian Brothers may have much to be proud of, but we must not allow what happened at Artane to be obscured, writes Diarmaid Ferriter
Last Thursday, giving evidence before the Investigation Committee of the Commission to Inquire Into Child Abuse, Brother Michael Reynolds, a senior leader of the Christian Brothers, defended the record of Artane Industrial School. He insisted that, in the main, it was a "positive institution" which had undeservedly received negative media coverage.
He challenged the idea that his community had engaged in cover-ups and suggested there was an inadequate understanding of sexual abuse in the 1930s and 1940s and ignorance about the long-term psychological damage caused by it.
His comments will have angered many who suffered in Artane and the industrial school system. Brother Reynolds said he did not understand a letter written to the provincial of the Christian Brothers in 1938, which maintained that the person who had abused a child "was more to be pitied than censured".