BishopAccountability.org
	Abuse in Ireland Amounted to Torture, Human Rights Group Says By Carol Glatz Catholic News Service September 27, 2011 http://www.catholicnews.com/data/stories/cns/1103822.htm [In Plain Sight] The abuse of children in Irish institutions amounted to torture and represents an enormous human rights failure, Amnesty International Ireland said. Based on evidence revealed by a number of independent commissions, "children were tortured. They were brutalized, beaten, starved and abused," said Colm O'Gorman, executive director of the Ireland office of the human rights organization. "Much of the abuse described in the Ryan Report meets the legal definition of torture under international human rights law," he said in a statement issued Sept. 26. The kind of abuse documented in the so-called Ferns, Murphy and Cloyne reports also "included acts that amounted to torture and inhuman and degrading treatment," the statement said. "The abuse of tens of thousands of Irish children is perhaps the greatest human rights failure in the history of the state" of Ireland," said O'Gorman, who was abused by a priest in the diocese of Ferns, Ireland, in the 1980s. Amnesty Ireland released the statement following the Sept. 26 publication of a report it commissioned titled "In Plain Sight" to compile and analyze the findings of the four separate government inquiries to date in Ireland: the 2009 Ryan Report on abuse at state-supervised, church-run reformatories and institutions; the Cloyne Report, examining how the Diocese of Cloyne mishandled accusations of clerical sexual abuse; the 2005 report on Ferns Diocese, cataloguing the failure to report abusive priests to civil authorities or adequately protect children; and the Murphy report, looking at the Dublin Archdiocese and how often the reputation of the church was put ahead of protecting children. "The Ferns, Ryan, Murphy and Cloyne Reports tell us what happened to these children, but not why it happened. We commissioned this report to explore that question because only by doing so can we ensure this never happens again," said O'Gorman. Irish Minister for Children and Youth Affairs, Frances Fitzgerald, presented the "In Plain Sight" report Sept. 26 and said the key reason such systematic abuse was able to go on so long was due to "deference." "At every turn, Irish people kept their mouths shut out of deference to state, system, church and community," she said. She said, "We must create a society in which no-one is afraid to speak. In which no-one is afraid to challenge authority and power, because deference to the powerful is a guaranteed way to help that power corrupt."
Any original material on these pages is copyright © BishopAccountability.org 2004. Reproduce freely with attribution.