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	Assembly to Investigate Extent of Child Abuse in North By Gerry Moriarty Irish Times November 3, 2009 http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2009/1103/1224257963870.html THE ASSEMBLY has adopted an SDLP motion prompted by the Ryan report that calls on the Northern Executive to commission an assessment of the extent of abuse and neglect of children in Northern Ireland. The motion was adopted on a day when victims of abuse in Northern Ireland presented a petition at Stormont calling for an inquiry in the North similar to the Ryan report, which exposed widespread child abuse in Catholic institutions in the South. The group, Justice for the Victims of Institutional Abuse in Northern Ireland, alleges abuse in Catholic-run institutions in the North was "endemic". It presented its petition to SDLP South Belfast MLA Carmel Hanna, who proposed the motion which also called on the Executive "to liaise and work with the authorities in the Republic of Ireland and to report to the Assembly". A DUP motion which excluded reference to North-South co-operation was rejected. All the other main parties – Sinn Féin, the Ulster Unionists and Alliance – supported the SDLP motion. Ms Hanna said, as a practising Catholic, it was beyond belief to hear those who perpetrated the abuse had "promised before God to uphold and practise the gospel of love and betrayed the congregations founded to serve the very noblest of ideals". "Because of Ryan, the history of church and State in an independent 20th-century Ireland has to be fundamentally reappraised. Ryan is the gravest indictment of the powerful and the privileged in church and State in Ireland, the religious orders, the hierarchy, successive governments and the Department of Education," she said. "Irish people today and for decades to come will ask how the appalling horrors and terrors that have been documented were inflicted on innocent children placed in the care of religious orders by the State." Michelle McIlveen, proposing the DUP amendment, said people were truly horrified by the Ryan report. No criminal proceedings followed from the Ryan report and it was imperative no immunity from prosecution should apply for anyone implicated in abuse in Northern Ireland, she said. Ms McIlveen favoured an assessment of the scale of abuse in Northern Ireland, but rather than an inquiry the focus should be on addressing the needs of victims. Sinn Féin leader Gerry Adams said victims of abuse need support, care, understanding, love and, most of all, they "need to be believed, especially if the abuser denies any wrongdoing": "The Ryan report is a shameful tale of abuse against children in institutions over decades and there is no doubt that the litany of crimes, beatings and rapes happened also in institutions in this part of Ireland." SDLP leader Mark Durkan said those implicated in the abuse seemed to have majored on the biblical instruction to "suffer little children" and forgot about the rest of the Gospel statement to provide support and love to children. Ulster Unionist deputy leader Danny Kennedy said the findings of the Ryan report were shocking and disgraceful, highlighting the dysfunctional relationship between church and State. Alliance MLA Kieran McCarthy said investigations must go back to the 1930s, and possibly earlier.
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