Mary Rafferty en de cristian brothers nav deze week

Brothers' excuses wear thin
By Tom Hayes, May 25, 2006



There is an overwhelming sense of groundhog day about what has been happening at the Commission on Child Abuse during the week, writesMary Raftery.

Eight years after the Christian Brothers' own apology to victims of abuse at their institutions, and seven years after the Taoiseach's apology on behalf of the State, we have again been catapulted backwards into the bad old days of blackening the names of victims.

Br David Gibson, one of the leaders of the Christian Brothers, chose to cast the most serious aspersions on the motivation of those making allegations against his order.

His interpretation of the explosion of complaints (from 12 to 449) concerning St Joseph's, Letterfrack, in the wake of the Taoiseach's apology is that it resulted from an expectation of financial compensation on the part of complainants and was facilitated by the dubious conduct of some solicitors and the Garda.

He produced no evidence to the commission to substantiate these remarkable accusations. In fact, what evidence exists appears instead to contradict Br Gibson's testimony.
A large number of survivors' support groups have now stated that they have no knowledge of meetings in public houses at which solicitors, in order to drum up business for themselves, handed out videos of RTÉ programmes and lists of Brothers who worked in the various institutions.

As to whether people have either fabricated evidence or exaggerated complaints in order to maximise compensation through the redress board, there exist simple and straightforward means for testing this.

The redress board has a mechanism which allows a religious order to contest any allegation made against its members. So far, the board has awarded compensation to over 5,000 victims of abuse, a large proportion of whom suffered at the hands of the Christian Brothers.

Given Br Gibson's views this week that many of them may be making things up in order to get money, one would imagine that the Christian Brothers have been actively challenging the evidence presented to the redress board.

Br Michael Reynolds, who also testified to the child abuse commission this week, was asked about this point.
His answer was revealing. In only two cases have the Brothers mounted any challenge concerning allegations made against them at the redress board.

Pressed on the reasons why there have been so few challenges, particularly in the light of Br Gibson's allegations, Br Reynolds became somewhat incoherent: "Why do you want to - the fact that we didn't challenge them doesn't necessarily mean that - there is a difference."

The scatter-gun denigration of victims is just the latest tactic in the arsenal of excuses which the Brothers have deployed to defend their stewardship of thousands of young boys in industrial schools.

Two main arguments underpin this defence, particularly as regards the extensive allegations of sexual abuse of the boys. Firstly, they contend that they did not understand the nature of child sexual abuse, or the recidivist aspect of the problem.

Secondly, they argue that they did not fully appreciate at the time that these were criminal offences. Br Gibson, for example, had already told the commission that they considered child sexual abuse to be in the category of "moral lapses".

Their contention is that their pattern of moving paedophile Brothers from one school to another and their consistent failure to report anything to the Garda was the result of naivety.

However, their arguments were strongly challenged at the commission during the week. Legal teams for the victims raised case after case where evidence existed of Brothers repeatedly offending against children.

In an excellent piece of forensically precise examination, Karen Fergus SC put to Br Gibson a series of internal Christian Brothers documents which clearly indicated an unambiguous understanding that sexually assaulting a child was indeed a criminal offence.

One incident was even reported in writing to the papal nuncio, who was informed by the Brothers that grave public scandal might ensue were the victims to pursue their entitlement to have the offending Brother summoned before the civilian authorities.

In a highly significant piece of testimony, Br Gibson was forced to concede that his congregation was indeed aware that child abuse was a criminal offence and that this awareness dated back to at least the 1920s.

The repetitive refrain of the Brothers that what occurred in industrial schools must be viewed in the context of the times - times when no one knew anything about child abuse - is finally beginning to wear paper thin, even in their own eyes.

What has now emerged is that they were in fact uniquely knowledgeable about child sexual abuse as a result of the prevalence of abusers among their ranks. That they chose to hide these insights from the rest of society remains one of the great tragedies of 20th- century Ireland.

© The Irish Times