(IRELAND)
Irish Examiner [Cork, Ireland]
August 1, 2024
Victims in schools with a Church of Ireland (or Protestant) ethos require an opportunity to report what happened to them
If, as reported, the scoping inquiry report into abuse in schools proposes a statutory investigation also confined to Roman Catholic schools, that is disappointing.
Victims in schools with a Church of Ireland (or Protestant) ethos require an opportunity to report what happened to them. Those schools should be subject to the same official investigation as Roman Catholic schools.
I hope, for the sake of secular Irish democracy, that the reports are mistaken about a sectarian limitation on any recommended statutory inquiry.
Abuse of pupils in King’s Hospital, Wilson’s Hospital, and St Patrick’s Cathedral Grammar schools is documented. King’s Hospital School pupils were abused by school swimming pool manager Derry O’Rourke.
In Deep Deception (2010, pp124-7, 136-7), Justine McCarthy detailed examples of such abuse. It included a 1980-81 King’s Hospital boarder who told a teacher what had happened. The information was not acted on. Had it been officially pursued, 10 years of misery inflicted on countless other children could have been avoided.
St Patrick’s Cathedral School pupils were subjected to abuse by a cathedral worker. When alerted, school authorities failed to pass on warnings to parents. They were told by parents of one child who had Patrick O’Brien prosecuted, with no assistance from the school or cathedral. O’Brien, who was not named in court, received a suspended sentence. Like O’Rourke, he went on to abuse more children.
Astonishingly, O’Brien was allowed again to work in St Patrick’s. Other abused children and their parents knew nothing about O’Brien then — so successful was the school/cathedral cover-up.
A culture of secrecy surrounding abuse in Protestant schools should end. Roman Catholic schools, that once protected themselves with silence, were forced to change by a justified public demand for transparency and accountability.
The policy of omertà in Protestant schools was demonstrated when a newspaper wrote last year to Roman Catholic and Protestant schools for information on abuse and how they dealt with it. The Catholic schools responded with information, the Protestant schools uniformly ignored the request.
The State (and the media) should pursue this issue in an even-handed manner. Doing so gives all victims the impression that they will be supported. Not doing so creates second-class, voiceless victims based on sectarian criteria.
Niall Meehan, Journalism and Media faculty, Griffith College, Dublin