IRELAND
The Kerryman
The Ferns Report, delivered to the Minister for Health and Children, makes for shocking reading. Story after story of innocent victims — whose lives were devastated at the hands of more than 20 vile human beings — is compiled in a document that has rocked the Catholic Church like never before.
Through persistent media exposure, we have almost become accustomed to the issue of child sexual abuse within the Church.
Yet so harrowing was the detail and the meaning of the Ferns Report that it forced an entire nation to sit up and listen to people who, for years, were never heard.
The fallout from the report and the lessons and actions that follow in every diocese in the country have now come in for close scrutiny.