IRELAND
The Irish Times
GENEVIEVE CARBERY
FERGUS FINLAY: BARNARDOS CHIEF executive Fergus Finlay yesterday spoke about his own childhood physical and sexual abuse by a religious brother.
Mr Finlay said he had not set out to make “a revelation” but was tired of listening to the excuse that the culture had changed.
The head of the children’s charity was speaking in relation to Cardinal Brady’s response to the BBC documentary on the church’s handing of clerical sex abuse allegations.
“It is a complete myth to suggest that everything is excusable on the basis that the culture somehow changed. There has never been a time that abuse wasn’t abuse,” he said on Newstalk radio. “I was sexually abused in 1961 and I was physically abused in 1963; I was 11 and 13 respectively at the time.”
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