By Breda Heffernan
Tuesday August 16 2011
Irish Independent
The Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse will not re-open its investigation into the Brothers of Charity despite new evidence of horrific living conditions at one of its children's homes.
The Irish Independent obtained hundreds of pages of documents detailing appalling conditions at Lota, a residential school for people with learning disabilities, in Glanmire, Co Cork.
The documents were not handed over to the commission during its investigation into residential abuse at Lota, which has been run by the Brothers of Charity since 1939.
A spokeswoman for the commission said it would not be seeking any more documents from the congregation.
"Our investigation was over in 2009 with the publishing of our report. Our remit was filled once we published the report," she said.
The Brothers of Charity were condemned in the Ryan Report for showing a "total disregard" for the safety of the children in their care by placing known child sex abusers at Lota.
However, Christine Buckley of the Aislinn Centre, and a survivor of institutional abuse, said she had always questioned whether the religious orders had handed over all the documents they had to the commission.
Disclosure
"I think some sort of inquiry needs to come about following the disclosure of these documents and the question needs to be asked to the other religious orders 'so have they anything that they have failed to disclose to the commission?'," she said.
She said any order found to have withheld documents should be "heavily penalised" and suggested they should pay a greater share of the €680m compensation bill.
The Brothers of Charity did not respond to requests for comment on why the documents were not disclosed to the commission.
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