May 10, 2006

Well-fed priests left brutalised school boys cold and hungry

IRELAND
Irish Independent

A RELIGIOUS order admitted yesterday that boys at two of its industrial schools were left cold and hungry while priests dined in comfort.

The clerics further admitted boys in their care were brutally beaten although the State banned corporal punishment in 1982.

Beatings continued at the Ferryhouse Industrial School in Co Tipperary until 1993 despite a letter from the Department of Education sent in 1989 warning that the ban also applied to industrial as well as national schools, the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse heard. The commission was told that the boys lived in an atmosphere of constant fear and anxiety, and were punished excessively, sometimes brutally. ...

And despite the pervasive fear, anxiety and sex abuse that was rife in the institutions at the time, boys who ran away were "dealt with severely".

Posted by kshaw at May 10, 2006 05:51 AM