Insult to Injury for Irish Church Abuse Victims

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.

Read more

Flickr / Infomatique

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