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Sex-Abuse Report Shames Ireland, Church

Writer lauds harrowing report of violence against children

By Jason Farago, Newser Staff

Posted May 21, 2009 8:28 AM CDT

(Newser) – The massive report released yesterday documenting the systematic abuse of children in Irish Catholic schools and institutions is "a monument to the shameful nature of Irish society throughout most of the decades of the 20th century," writes Mary Raftery in the Irish Times. The painstaking disclosure of physical abuse and sexual torture is harrowing to read but of "incalculable value"—especially because it assigns blame to the Irish government and the church.

The commission's report makes clear that the Christian Brothers, who remain the largest provider of boys' schools in Ireland, went out of its way "to deny, to obfuscate, and to challenge any and all of the allegations against them." But for all of its value, the report has at least one major failing: it does not name the perpetrators of the abuse. As Raftery writes, the entire terrifying document "is a testament to what happens when discretion prevails."

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Nine years in the making, Wednesday's report sides almost completely with the horrific reports of abuse from former students sent to more than 250 church-run, mostly residential institutions. (AP Photo / Peter Morrison)

Judge Sean Ryan delivers the long awaited Child Abuse Commission report in Dublin, Ireland, Wednesday May 20, 2009. (AP Photo Niall Carson/PA Wire)

The Papal Cross in Phoenix Park, Dublin. (AP Photo/Peter Morrison)

A fiercely debated, long-delayed investigation into Ireland's Catholic-run institutions says priests and nuns terrorized thousands of boys and girls in workhouse-style schools for decades. (AP Photo / Peter Morrison)

Government inspectors failed to stop the chronic beatings, rapes and humiliation. (AP Photo/Peter Morrison)

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One brother moved blithely from school to school, sexually assaulting children in each of them, despite detailed knowledge at senior government and Catholic Church levels that he was a paedophile. - Mary Raftery

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Sex-Abuse Report Shames Ireland, Church