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Ear to the Ground

Insult to Injury for Irish Church Abuse Victims

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Posted on May 20, 2009
St. Annes
Flickr / Infomatique

A statue at St. Anne’s Church in Portmarnock, Ireland.

Although the Commission to Inquire Into Child Abuse found some 2,000 people who described the abuse they suffered at the hands of Catholic church officials in Ireland, resulting in a five-volume study (download the PDF version here), the alleged perpetrators have been shielded from prosecution, thanks to a successful lawsuit that protects their identities.

BBC:

The report, nine years in the making and covering a period of six decades, found thousands of boys and girls were terrorised by priests and nuns.

Government inspectors failed to stop beatings, rapes and humiliation.

John Walsh, of Irish Survivors of Child Abuse, said he felt “cheated and deceived” by the lack of prosecutions.

The findings will not be used for criminal prosecutions—in part because the Christian Brothers successfully sued the commission in 2004 to keep the identities of all of its members, dead or alive, unnamed in the report.

No real names, whether of victims or perpetrators, appear in the final document.

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By boggs, June 17 at 11:42 pm #

There is nothing more disgusting then priesthood and the Catholioc Church unless it would be religion in general.
So the catholics don’t like to punish their priests for crimes committed. Where have we heard this before?
Does this sound like they practice what they preach? There is no “eye for an eye” here. Just a settlement for holy dollars.
These holy dollars came from people who have been sold a bill of faith.
All you religious neer do wells, the Vatican is laughing at you!

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By Leefeller, May 21 at 7:01 pm #

Rollzone, what do you mean by “and not categorized in a racist composite.”?

Your discouraging intercourse comment leaves an opening for interpretation. Playboy many years ago posed this question:  What is another word for intercourse?  Answer: Talking!  What did you mean?

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By Chris Ronk, May 21 at 6:38 pm #
(Unregistered commenter)

And these are the people who are against two people that love each other getting married.

These people make me sick.

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By rollzone, May 21 at 3:58 pm #

hello. nondisclosure of identities must be reviewed on individual basis, and not categorized in a racist composite; that wrongly equates everyone: in individual misbehavior. the purpose of the founding fathers in the separation of church and state was the promise of exercising religious freedom; which includes the unenviable participation with equality of atheists. contrarian views encourage improvement wherby insults discourage intercourse.

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By Leefeller, May 21 at 1:20 pm #

I resent calling Catholics dim witted people. Dim witted yes, people no! A couple of JuJU beads and five hail yes’s and problem absolved. It may be safe to say Catholics believe in fornicating or abusing anything as long as one tries their best not get caught, and if one does get caught, it is the victims fault anyway, means they were women or children, so what does it matter?  After all popey lives in a house of gold and has a direct line to the big guy. 

Seems using fantasy to define reality has a few short comings in the end.

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By photoshock, May 21 at 1:16 pm #

Here again is another example of the principle of the ‘separation of Church and State!’
The Roman Catholic Church is Ireland’s government and has been for many centuries. The Church is the most powerful and all-pervasive institution and will stay that way until the people rise up and change the system.
Why do the people of Ireland tolerate and even support an institution that has proven itself unworthy of respect? Only the people of Ireland can answer that question, yet they continue to admonish their younger generations to give way to the wishes of ‘the’ church, which is the most corrupt and abominable system imaginable.
This is the prime reason that in writing the Constitution, the founding fathers sought and fought for the separation of church and state. No other country, has that enshrined in their founding documents and if they do, it is not followed in any form which would lead one to believe that ‘the’ church has no power over the rights of that countries
citizens.
Given this abomination it is high time that the power of the church and its coffers are opened to the very people that need it most, the victims of its
oppression and the victims of its systemic abuse. To compensate in some measure the abuse the people have endured at the hands of its adherents, the church should be bankrupted and made to give up its prominence as an arbiter of moral and ethical mores.
There is no situation that is worse than the church, the voice of G-d, on the earth, giving succor to people who have abused and killed those that are the most vulnerable, Children!
It is for this and many other reasons that I am considering the abrogation of organized religion in my own life. Faith I have in abundance, trust and respect for organized religion, ABSOLUTELY NONE!

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By NYCartist, May 21 at 12:37 pm #

Administrations of religious groups and governments hide their crimes as much as possible, and delay delay delay the truth coming out, in any form, for as long as possible.  I am thinking of the abuse of indigenous children in Canada and the US also in “schools”, where kids were taken from their families to be “de-indianized” where they were forbidden to speak their languages. And, there’s abuse of kids in US correctional facilities…etc etc.

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By PSmith, May 21 at 12:05 pm #

AN IRISH SOLUTION TO AN IRISH PROBLEM

The famous solution to problems in Ireland is a variation of the ‘Bart Simpson’ defence -  “I didn’t do it, you didn’t see me do it, you can’t prove a thing!”

Used successfully by those in power for decades, if not centuries—the government, Church, individuals—it ensures that problems are not examined - everyone pretends that they don’t exist - ‘It never happened’. If it did happen it was a regrettable accident and no one’s fault. If it was someone’s fault, then it was single occurrence and the man (usually it _is_ a man) is a ‘family man’ and he deserves another chance. This covers everything from the buggery of small children to bank robbery and murder (See Malcom McArthur - GUBU - below). If it turns out that it was multiple occurrences of some particularly heinous offense and it is public and it can’t be ignored, swept under the rug, or the outcome ‘fixed’, then the man involved is a bad apple. And a token penalty is assessed. If too much publicity attends the incident and/or the offender is not ‘connected’ sufficiently, a real penalty may be assessed. Should the offender be a ‘working man,’ ie working class or poor, the book will be thrown at him and he will be publicly crucified. Often metaphorically, by the press.

This process is known, mockingly, as “An Irish solution to an Irish problem.”

It has been applied successfully to sexual abuse by priests and others, the battering of women, contraception, abortion, adoption, planning permission scandals, bribery of politician scandals and on and on.

Google ‘Ireland tribunal’ for about eight simultaneous ‘coming of age’ Irish public inquiries into the scandals of the last four decades that have only now seen the light of day, as Ireland steps out of the shadow of its contempt for the coloniser’s laws. Colonisation ended in 1921; the contempt for the law has _still_ not entirely ended. Eight hundred years of occupation will do that.

The GUBU affair is the archetypal example. It involved everything the Irish find salacious, in spades - homosexuality, those in government, Charles Haughey - Prime Minister (Taoiseach) at the time. The Wikipedia entry leaves out the bugging of journalists phones by the Attorney General and the suggestion that British Intelligence might have had a had in publicising the four separate scandals. If so, it didn’t do any good. Charles Haughey survived quite handily to fight another day where a lesser man might have been sunk by any one of the scandals. Which is how the Irish like their heroes to triumph against perfidious Albion. Effortlessly.

(Charles Haughey was not British Intelligence’s favourite Irishman, having been acquitted of charges that, as Minister for Finance, he provided the funds to purchase 68,000 handguns for use in Northern Ireland when the ‘Troubles’ broke out there in 1968. Some people think that verdict was “an Irish solution to an Irish problem”. But given what the British were up to, and Margaret Thatcher’s later Dirty War there, most people are glad that someone on “our side” was doing something to protect the Northern civilian population from crowds of protestant ‘Hutus’ trying to implement a Rwandan genocide on the minority Catholic community).

The GUBU Affair- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GUBU

Irish tribunals - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_Inquiry#_List_of_selected_Irish_public_inquiries

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By Big B, May 21 at 11:21 am #

No wonder the world is so fucked up!

For centuries, a huge religious cult has been preaching abinstinence and sexual responsibility to their throngs of followers. The only reason you should ever have sex is to make babies, and the more babies you make the better off the cult is, because they outnumber the other cults. Lets face it, the catholic church has always been a giant pyramid scheme with a man at the top that has never had sex, and talks to an invisible man in the sky, and relays his messages to the cowering hoards of followers. Those messages being of course, to always obey what the man behind the curtain says, and to produce as many followers as possible, so as to always outnumber the enemy, You know, any one else who isn’t catholic.

These dim witted people(catholics) are then forced to enter their countless children into the catholics system of indoctronation/education, where they were taught that everthing they see was created six thousand years ago by the invisible man, that the jews mocked the invisible man by building a golden calf and killing Jesus, and, above all, never question anything that the church tells you. Of course that includes never telling anyone that a church representive stuck things into you that should not normally be stuck into an eight year old. And of course, that what he did to you and your friends is a secret penance to be paid to the invisible man because he saw you touch yourself.

If any person gives money or property to the catholic church, they are aiding and abetting the molestation of countless children, and should be treated as such.

And always remember this, any all powerful invisible man who stands idly by and watches children be defiled, does not deserve you worship.

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By Jim Yell, May 21 at 9:26 am #
(Unregistered commenter)

What does this episode reveal and why are they trying to cover it up?

The church wants us to believe that being open and up front about sex and abuse have enlarge the frequency of both, but in fact what is proved by this sorry episode is given the opportunity to lie and hide crimes the church has made it appear that the abuse has increased in the modern times, when in fact it was just as bad and worse in that it wasn’t acknowledged in the past and if they had their way it wouldn’t be acknowledged in the present if the church is involved.

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