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	Irish Report to Detail Catholic-Linked Child Abuse By Padraic Halpin Reuters May 20, 2009 http://uk.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUKTRE54J2JY20090520 DUBLIN (Reuters) - A report into abuse suffered by thousands of children at institutions run by Catholic orders is to be published on Wednesday, ending a nine-year investigation into one of the darkest periods in Irish history. The Child Abuse Commission will present evidence from a reported 2,500 people of the sexual, emotional and physical abuse inflicted at schools, orphanages, reformatories and hospitals from 1940, or earlier, to the present day. In its most recent publication, a 2004 interim report, the commission heard how witnesses had "the stuffing hammered out of them" in one institution where "a sexual predator systematically preyed on and sexually abused vulnerable children." Revelations of abuse, including a string of scandals involving priests molesting young boys, have eroded the Catholic Church's moral authority in Ireland, once one of the most religiously devout countries in the world. Maeve Lewis, executive director of the support group One in Four -- set up by abuse-victim and current Executive Director of Amnesty International in Ireland Colm O'Gorman -- expects the report to "comprehensively document one of the country's darkest episodes." "We are hoping that by placing what has been a very hidden story on the public record, it may bring some consolation to the people who suffered so dreadfully during their childhood," Lewis told Reuters. The Catholic Archbishop of Dublin, Diarmuid Martin, warned churchgoers last month that the report would "shock us all." "It is likely that thousands of children or young people across Ireland were abused by priests in the period under investigation, and the horror of that abuse was not recognised for what it is," he said during an Easter homily. The inquiry, conducted at a reported cost of 70 million euros (61.7 million pounds), was announced in 1999 by then Prime Minister Bertie Ahern after he apologised to victims following revelations made in a series of television documentaries. In the United States, a sexual abuse scandal was uncovered in 2002 and involved mostly abuse of teenage boys by priests. The religious orders investigated in Ireland include the Sisters of Our Lady of Charity of Refuge who ran Dublin's Magdalene Laundry -- the subject of the 2002 film 'The Magdalene Sisters'. Also investigated were the Christian Brothers, who delayed proceedings through a successful court action defending their members' right to anonymity. The action led to the commission dropping its original intention to name the people against whom the allegations were made and only those who have already been convicted can be mentioned in the report. The commission, originally set up for two years, was also delayed by what it described as the "adversarial and legalistic" approach of religious orders and by the resignation of its first chairwoman Justice Mary Laffoy a year later after a clash with the Department of Education. "The way the religious orders and the Department Of Education did not cooperate fully with the commission, where documentation had to be sought through legal means, is very disappointing," One in Four's Lewis said. "Both the church and state have a huge responsibility to bear in what happened to these children and while apologies have been made, the institutional response has not been the open and inclusive response that we would have hoped for," she added.
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