Hughes Inquiry tapes at issue in Mount Cashel civil trial; church opposes playing Mount Cashel inquiry tapes in court

The Telegram
12-4-2016

It was uncertain Tuesday whether the Mount Cashel civil trial will include evidence entered from videotapes of some witnesses who testified at the Hughes Inquiry nearly 30 years ago.


Lawyer Mark Frederick, who represents the Roman Catholic Episcopal Corp. of St. John’s, on Tuesday argued against an application made by lawyer Geoff Budden, who represents former orphanage residents.

Newfoundland Supreme Court Justice Alphonsus Faour did not rule on the matter as of the end of the court day Tuesday.

Related 

case 11 day 4

klik

Artane boys Een film om nooit te vergeten

 Frank O'Shea   October 23, 2012   
Frank O'Shea is a Canberra writer

Music rising from the ashes of abuse 
During the time of big Irish families in the pre-pill era, boys might be under less parental control than ought to be possible today when the Irish birth rate, although the highest in Europe, is a modest 2.1. So, it was not unusual for boys to get into trouble and be deemed dangers to society or to property or to apple orchards. The result was that they might be sent to the large industrial school run by the Christian Brothers in the north Dublin suburb of Artane.

A frazzled parent might well threaten their child with such an outcome in an effort to frighten the recalcitrant one into conformity. In practice, many of those who ended up in Artane were there because they had been abandoned or because it was the opinion of authorities that their families were unable to look after them.

It was not a badge of honour for the family or a situation fondly anticipated by the child.
I came across the story of one such boy recently.

Danny Ellis was an inner city kid, his father in America for work, his young mother not able or not willing to look after him and his four younger siblings. These were taken away to be cared for by nuns and finally his mother took Danny to Artane, telling him she had to go to hospital and would come back for him at Christmas. He never saw her again. At the time, the school had some 800 boys in close dormitory and refectory quarters. It was no place for the timid or the weak. Discipline was primitive and based around liberal use of the strap, something that was widely known in society if only because it was common in all schools, if not always as enthusiastically.

 Come the first Christmas, eight-year-old Danny opts not to go to a film in the city with the others, deciding instead to wait at the gate for his mother. He is seen by an old brother, long retired and given to praying aloud in the chapel, to the amusement of the boys. He knows Danny's situation and tries to break it gently to him.

 rest artikel 

Zoete koek en zopie; Scheve schaatsen en Oude Klare in de Koepel

Church apologises to child migrants, 100 delegates from five continents taking part in six-day conference

Monday, 15th March 2010
Times of Malta

The Maltese Catholic Church yesterday formally apologised to child migrants who had been abused when they were sent to Australia 50 years ago.
"I would like to express all my repentance for all the suffering the children underwent when they were sent to another country; the intentions might have been good but not implemented," Archbishop Paul Cremona said.
Speaking at the opening of a convention of Maltese who lived abroad, the Archbishop echoed an apology made last week in Parliament by Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi and endorsed by Opposition Leader Joseph Muscat.
Over 300 Maltese children were sent Down Under within a scheme launched by the Australian government. The Child Migrants Programme, which ended 40 years ago, shipped an estimated 150,000 destitute children to a "better life" in Commonwealth countries such as Australia and Canada but many ended up in institutions or as farm labourers.
The scheme, which ran to the 1960s, had left many people emotionally scarred. It was aimed at securing the children a better education and a brighter future.
But, unfortunately, not all went as planned and some of the children were exploited for cheap labour and a number of them suffered physical and sexual abuse.
Mgr Cremona said one should open one's hearts to those who escaped to Malta from their countries and were also suffering. "Using the love we have for our homeland, we should help those who need help."
Foreign Affairs Minister Tonio Borg announced at the conference that the government was looking into setting up a Maltese institute to promote culture, language and traditions abroad.
"There is no doubt that Malta must promote everything that is Maltese: the teaching of the Maltese language, folklore, traditions, our way of life, our cultural heritage," he said. Malta had to emulate what other countries did and set up an institute that would promote Maltese culture abroad, he added. This would be done through cooperation between the tourism, culture, education and foreign affairs ministries so as to ensure an efficient use of human and financial resources.
The convention was also addressed by Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi and Opposition Leader Joseph Muscat.
"I wanted to come and visit Malta again. It will always be my home," a Maltese woman living in Australia said. She was among the Maltese emigrants attending the opening of the convention.
Others, who were second-generation Maltese, took the opportunity to come over to visit their parents' homeland. "I always heard so much about Malta and now I will see all the places my parents told me about," a young Maltese Australian said.
First held in 1968, the conference was held again 32 years later in 2000.
Over 100 delegates from five continents will take part in the six-day conference, which ends on Saturday.

We particularly welcome the contribution from those former child migrants
who related their stark, painful and often horrific experiences to us.

We commend the courage and effort which providing the evidence must have required.

United Kingdom House of Commons
THE WELFARE OF FORMER BRITISH CHILD MIGRANTS , 1996


It was barbaric; it was dreadful. We look back on it in our organisation with shock and horror."

[1] This was the comment on the child migration programmes made by the Chief Executive of Barnardo's when he, along with representatives of other sending agencies, gave evidence to us on 11 June 1998.

Child migration was a feature of British social policy for many years.
Legislation allowed children in the care of voluntary organisations to be transported to Commonwealth countries.

In total it is estimated that some 150,000 children were dispatched over a period of 350 years—the earliest recorded child migrants left Britain for the Virginia Colony in 1618, and the process did not finally end until the late 1960s.

[2] Exact statistics are difficult to come by. Today many former child migrants continue to face serious difficulties in establishing their actual identities and contacting members of their natural families who are still alive.

The absence of a medical history is also a significant problem for some. In many cases child migrants suffered emotional and physical hardship and abuse, of a kind which has had damaging consequences for their health and well-being for the remainder of their lives.

2. Responsibility within the British Government for matters relating to the welfare of former British child migrants now rests with the Department of Health (DoH).

This is therefore an issue which falls within the Health Committee's order of reference. At our first meeting in the present Parliament, in July 1997, we decided to inquire into aspects of child migration, a subject which until recent years has received shamefully little attention. One explanation for this seeming disregard is that until the advent of the Child Migrants' Trust in 1987, individual former child migrants had no organisation to represent their interests or co-ordinate their activities.

They were, and are, widely dispersed across Australia and other Commonwealth countries, and often lack any ready means of gaining access to opinion-formers or to the media. Mr Tom Luce, Division Head of the Social Care Group at the DoH, commented that:

"We have a very strong impression that before the middle to late 1980s
there were very few inquiries, complaints, applications for records".[3]

The agencies involved in child migration appear at this time to have been less than co-operative in dealing with requests for information. Former child migrants were a group whose fate had largely been forgotten.



,,Ik bied mijn excuses aan voor een misplaatst beleid dat voortduurde tot in de jaren zestig'', verklaarde Brown. ,,Wanneer je mensen ontmoet die hierdoor zijn getroffen, zie je dat voor velen van hen geldt dat het hun leven heeft verwoest.''

Veel van de kinderen werden in hun nieuwe omgeving misbruikt en eindigden in instituten of als arbeiders op boerderijen. Ze kregen vaak te horen dat hun ouders waren overleden, terwijl dit niet waar was. Veel ouders wisten niet dat hun kinderen naar Australië of Canada of een andere kolonie werden gestuurd. Het Kinder Migratie Programma werd veertig jaar geleden gestopt.

September 9 2009 Remembrance Day Former Residents of Institutional Care in Queensland

The Annual Remembrance Day service for Former Residents of Institutional Care in Queensland will be held on Wednesday September 9 2009


foto's: MicahInc
HAN

Clan Care Leavers Australia Network

...

By the end of 2009 the Australian Government will issue a formal statement of acknowledgement and apology, on behalf of the nation, to Forgotten Australians and former child migrants. In the spirit of the bipartisan nature of the Senate Inquiry reports, the Government will work with the Opposition to develop the remembrance event.

This is a significant national step in the healing process for Forgotten Australians and former child migrants.

Many former child migrants and other children who were in institutions, their families and the wider community have suffered from a system that did not adequately provide for, or protect children in its care.

In June this year, a further Senate Inquiry reported on progress since the 2001 and 2004 reports. This report said more needed to be done. The apology will address recommendations 1 and 2 of this recent report and the Government will table a full, formal response in coming months.

To further help the healing process, the Government is also providing $300,000 each to both the Alliance for Forgotten Australians (AFA) and the Care Leavers Australia Network (CLAN), over the next two years. We will work with these organisations to make sure that care leavers can get the practical support and information they need.

We will also be consulting broadly with state and territory governments, past care providers and those affected by these practices to develop the apology and the path ahead.

We have also begun a dialogue with mothers and children separated by past adoption practices which were inappropriate or unethical. The Government recognises that the pain and suffering of these women also endures.

We will work with the National Library of Australia, the National Museum of Australia and those who have suffered in the past on how to best to record, for the historical record, the experiences of the Forgotten Australians, former child migrants, and women and children affected by past adoption practices.

Redress to pay deceased victims $5K
8th September 2009
ABC News

The West Australian Government has announced ex gratia payments of $5,000 will be made to victims of child abuse in state care who have died before their application was finalised.

Redress WA was set up under the previous Labor government to compensate people who suffered abuse in Australia's orphanages, children's homes and in foster care.

Last month, the State Government cut the maximum payment for victims from $80,000 to $45,000.

The Minister for Community Services, Robyn McSweeney, has now announced payments of $5,000 will be made to the estates of deceased victims.

Ms McSweeney says Redress WA has identified 21 cases where victims have died before their claim was finalised.

She says victims who are terminally ill can apply for an interim payment of up to $10,000.

This afternoon a West Australian Federal Liberal MP joined about 100 people at State Parliament protesting against the Barnett government's changes to the Redress WA scheme.

Today's protest was the second in two months.

The Federal Member for Swan, Steve Irons, told the crowd his state Liberal colleagues had made the wrong decision.

"As I said before I am a Liberal and a strong supporter of the Barnett Government, however they have got this one wrong," he said.
"I ask Colin Barnett to reconsider.

"I will continue to support the remembered Australians in pursuing a positive outcome."

Why I joined and left the Christian Brothers; sensus catholicus

(Contribution)

CW

I joined the Christian Brothers at 12.

I don't mean I first went to the CBS at age 12; I signed up to become a Christian Brother.
It was 1973, I wasn't long out of short trousers having just made my Confirmation.

No one could stop me, not even teary pleas from my mother and stern looks from my soldier father who simply asked, "Are you sure you know what you're doing?"

I wasn't taken screaming and kicking, I volunteered. I had a vocation. Even at the age of 12 I thought I knew everything. I am not sure if I wanted to save the world or to see the world, as the Brothers had schools everywhere.

In Monasterevin CBS I met my share of Brothers who believed in corporal punishment, some of them embraced it with such enthusiasm you'd think they were the east coast distributors.

There were variations on the theme from the weapon of choice, the infamous leather. A ruler across the legs or palms would sting, a blackboard duster cut the knuckles off you but it was six of the best on each hand from the fat rung of a chair which was most feared.

"Come up here you Arab", would be the summons as you were grabbed by the locks or your ear lobe and lifted from your tubular desk to your tippy toes for your punishment to be administered at the top of the class.

Why anyone in their right mind would want to join such a band of Brothers is hard to explain now in hindsight. What seems ludicrous today was the norm back then. Corporal punishment wasn't just legal it was popular.

Difficult kids were not spoken about as children with emotional and challenging behaviour, but as delinquents.

While I was not coerced, or even encouraged, to join the Christian Brothers I know of boys who were forced in that direction.

I have been as shocked by the revelations in the Ryan report as anyone else, but quite honestly not at all surprised. If you take a coterie of young boys away from home and school them in a surreal, sexually suppressed environment over a period of years the dangers seem obvious.

The Christian Brothers were cradle snatching and in later life these boys-turned-men in black, armed with leathers and rungs of chairs were fundamentally flawed and potentially dangerous.

With many Christian Brothers, the air of menace was never too far from the surface.
Putting them in charge of hundreds of young boys in an enclosed environment without adequate supervision was begging for trouble.

The manner in which the Christian Brothers inducted and indoctrinated their personnel was a recipe for disaster and the outcome, which has now finally been laid bare, inevitable.

Because of the authoritarian and domineering culture which prevailed, the foundation was in place for what was to follow.

Some Christian Brothers did not join the order of their own free will and were forced into the clergy by their families. Put that pent -up anger, sexual frustration, and corporal punishment into the mix and you're asking for big trouble.

But there was another side to the Brothers. They were for everyone and affordable. So when the Christian Brother recruiters, Bro Hutton and Bro Flannery, came around when I was in sixth class, I signed up. I wanted to be a Christian Brother. My desire and idealism drove me on for almost five years, pulling up just short of getting the sutane in the novitiate in Booterstown.

When I arrived in Carriglea Park in Dun Laoghaire it was a world apart from my home in St Evin's Park -- four large dormitories named after saints, a massive refectory, recreation halls, playing pitches, a church, big kitchens with Aga cookers and a farm. We were fitted out in our black blazers with their facere et docere crests, To Do and To Teach.

I met boys from everywhere, Mount Sion, the North Mon, O'Sullivan's Quay, Tralee, Callan, Limerick and other Christian Brother strongholds in Dublin, Synge Street, Drimnagh Castle and James Street, and lads from places I had never heard of until then, Two-Mile-Borris and Ballyea.

I learned a lot and I prayed a lot. We were preparing to take vows of poverty, chastity and obedience. The latter two were later to prove the deal-breakers.

The average day ran from 7am to 10pm, punctuated by a lot of study, St Thomas Aquinas and silence to permit reflection. The only woman in my life was Our Lady of Perpetual Succour.

My favourite times were the Sunday walks to Dun Laoghaire pier, the obelisk in Killiney or along the Vico Road in Dalkey and back then for tea and buns. There were the occasional trips into town on the 46A or Croke Park for the big matches.

Each term there were the hikes to Three Rock, the Sugar Loaf and the Scalp, followed by a big nosh-up at the foot of the mountain and a movie back in the study hall. You were allowed one visit from your family a term and we went home for holidays, with a note to our parents urging them to keep us out of the cinema and away from girls.

In all my years there I never heard of anyone being sexually abused or even approached, though there were whispers of two particular brothers being 'queers'.
There were regular 'talks' about 'special friends' not being allowed, and at first I hadn't a clue what they were talking about.

There was plenty of bullying and physical abuse both from the Brothers and fellow students. You just took your medicine and got on with it.

Even though I had never kissed a girl with intent, even back then I thought the whole idea of a celibate life was stupid and unnatural. But in the end I parted ways with the Christian Brothers, not over a woman but two Cork men.

An easy-going Bro Healion from Mayo had been replaced as superior by a more hard line Bro Long. His nemesis was Joe Hyde, who had a mad smile and the stocky build of the classic nippy corner forward.

In a seniors versus teachers GAA match, Joe Hyde was the star and had already knocked over five points when I put him through on goal and he duly obliged.
Turning away in celebration he was bursted by the Bro Superior, who stood over him as he lay stretched on the ground.

I had to be physically restrained as I let Bro Long know what I thought of his bloody Christian Brothers.

I packed up my suitcase for the last time and got ready to go home.

I contacted my folks and my mum simply asked, "Are you okay, did anything happen, do you know what I mean, did anyone touch you?"

No one touched me, but unfortunately the Christian Brothers failed to live up to their name and founding principles.

I have never heard from the Christian Brothers since.

Diarmuid Martin: ’Domme reactie op schokkend rapport’

Aartsbisschop Dublin boos op aartsbisschop Westminster
Geplaatst door onze redactie op zaterdag 23 mei 2009

DUBLIN (RKnieuws.net) - Aartsbisschop Diarmuid Martin van Dublin is boos op het nieuwe hoofd van de RK Kerk in Engeland en Wales, Mgr. Vincent Nichols. Aartsbisschop Martin vindt dat zijn collega-aartsbisschop van Westminster zich “erg onhandig” heeft uitgelaten over het schokkende rapport over seksueel misbruik in Ierland door RK geestelijken, dat deze week werd gepubliceerd.

De Ierse aartsbisschop neemt Mgr. Vincent Nichols kwalijk dat deze in een eerste reactie op het rapport de betrokken religieuzen prees vanwege “hun moed, dat zij hun daden hebben willen opbiechten”.

Moet moeilijk zijn geweest
Letterlijk zei de aartsbisschop van Westminster, Mgr. Nichols, in een interview met de BBC, dat “het voor de religieuzen moeilijk moet zijn geweest om zo voor je eigen zwakheden te moeten uitkomen. Zeker voor diegenen, die vinden dat zij zich vergist hebben en de kinderen alleen maar een beetje slecht behandeld hebben”.

Aan de kant van de slachtoffers
“Ik sta met mijn gedachten en woede allereerst aan de kant van de slachtoffers. Het commentaar van Mgr. Nichols diende op zijn zachtst gezegd nergens toe. De verhalen van de slachtoffers zijn misselijkmakend en hun moed om ze te vertellen is bewonderenswaardig. Dit rapport zal nooit in een la mogen verdwijnen. Het is een schreeuw, dat wij in de toekomst nooit meer zó met onze kinderen om mogen gaan”, aldus de aartsbisschop van Dublin.

Joost Middelhoff

En zonder enige twijfel werd vervolgens die Mgr Nichols ook door die vertrekkende kardinaal Cormac met zijn 'Atheism the greatest of evils" in nog wat sterkere termen aangesproken toen beiden het rapport bekeken hadden en ontdekten wat daar in staat over de spirituele of religieuse kracht en de cadeautjes van die "moedige betrokken religieuzen"!!

Veelbelovend zo'n net benoemde gemijterde die het kennelijk nog steeds niet door heeft.

Sins of the fathers are still haunting Catholic Church

Today the social earthquake unloosed within the Republic in the early 1990s reaches its crescendo when newspapers, television and radio south of the border will be dominated by the first findings of the Government's 3,000-page, five-volume investigation into child abuse by up to 500 priests.

Associated with it is another inquiry limited to the Catholic archdiocese of Dublin, where more than 100 priests stand accused of sexually interfering with children in their care over the two generations between 1940 and 2006.

Today's liberated Irish on the verge of middle age, particularly those in Dublin city and county, have little idea of the Ireland within which their parents grew up; and the Free State of which their grandparents used to speak was not a country they ever could recognise.

Now they are told that, behind that pious cloud of incense, there lurked an evil which at first they did not believe, involving, as it did, the terrorising of destitute, orphaned youngsters by those who had them in their care.

But this was only the outward evidence of an institution collapsing beneath the weight of its own unchecked supremacy; for it is an inveterate law of history, from the days of the Caesars, that — in the words of Acton — power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Lord Acton, in fact, was writing to Mandell Creighton, Victorian Bishop of London.
The current agony at Westminster, quite in keeping, involves an administration grown careless of the privileges of government to which it has had access for too long.

In Eire, as it was in the 1950s, the Catholic bishops effectively were its rulers.

It was the Archbishop of Dublin, John Charles McQuaid, who was the ultimate arbiter of public policy.

When the most notorious collision occurred, in 1951, between a young and inexperienced health minister, Noel Browne, a revealing detail was that, when the bishops took exception to his plans for a free health service, their procedure was not to wait on Dr Browne in his office in the Dublin Custom House to express their views, normal practice in a parliamentary democracy, but to summon him at 24 hours' notice to meet them at the Archbishop's residence.

In the climate of the time, there was no question of his not going. It was well known that the Taoiseach, John Costello, did the Archbishop's bidding in everything. Dr Browne had worked in London hospitals (where his own tuberculosis had been arrested and cured) and his scheme was heavily influenced by the new British NHS of 1948.

But when he had lunch with Archbishop John D'Alton at Armagh and inquired about how it would work in Northern Ireland and why his own scheme was being blocked, the future Cardinal advised, in royal idiom: “We are prepared neither to apologise nor to explain.” Remember, this was to a cabinet minister.

A price was to be paid for the hubris of the bishops, even if the extent of their arrogance, in the pre-television age, was largely concealed from the people. When rumours of brutal physical punishments in a Christian Brothers' industrial school reached the Evening Herald in Dublin at this time, a former editor has recorded how one of the Brothers burst into the office to demand that the manager withhold the report of a court case involving the Artane School.

Before he got an answer, he pushed open the editorial door to tell the staff that the manager had ordered the case to be spiked, ie, dumped.

The dam burst in 1992 when Annie Murphy contacted the Irish Times to disclose that, as his housekeeper, she had had a long affair with Eamon Casey, the Bishop of Galway, to whom she had borne a son. Casey was no ordinary bishop.

He was popular, often on TV, had been MC for Pope John Paul's Irish visit in 1979 and was chosen as number one in a volume of interviews with ‘Irish leaders' — O'Reilly, Smurfit, Gay Byrne — published in 1987. Some old hands at the Irish Times, interestingly, asked to be taken off the Casey story.

But it was established that diocesan funds had been used for Annie and her son.

Since then, the Church has had to learn how to survive on the defensive.
There is widespread indifference.
Mass attendances have slumped.

So have priestly vocations.

Countless convents have closed.

The young brazenly follow a secularist agenda.

Deprived of its ancient priestly cement, the social fabric in bad spots disintegrates, riven by gang warfare, drug dependence and booze.

Yet Church influence, if more covert, is still powerful in high places.

Bertie Ahern moved smartly to protect the Church's assets in 2006 when he agreed to cap its contribution to the compensation being claimed by the thousands of victims of clerical abuse at €128m.

This is less than 10% of the expected total cost, a bill which the taxpayer must eventually pick up.
Today the tortured story takes another lurch towards that day.

Schools commission to examine 'disappearances of children'

Snow falls on gravesites in the Wabasca Cemetery.

(Ken Armstrong for The Globe and Mail)

BILL CURRY AND JOE FRIESEN
From Tuesday's Globe and Mail
October 27, 2008

OTTAWA and TORONTO — The commission examining Indian residential schools is launching a massive new research project to find out who is buried on school grounds and what happened to the young aboriginal boys and girls who left for boarding schools and never returned home.

Kimberly Phillips, a spokesperson for Canada's Truth and Reconciliation Commission, said the expanded research has been approved by Claudette Dumont-Smith, one of the commissioners.
The “Missing Children Research Project,” as it has been named, will include “an examination of the number and cause of deaths, illnesses and disappearances of children at the residential schools as well as the location of burial sites,” Ms. Phillips said.

Ms. Phillips said researchers will go through all relevant church and federal government records to find information that will help families looking for lost children. They will also prepare a questionnaire, and encourage former students and people who worked at the schools to come forward with their stories.

The commission's plans also suggest possible options for honouring the spirit of those who died.

According to a commission document obtained by The Globe and Mail, one option involves “visiting residential school sites where graves of Missing Children are located or the cemeteries near the schools where Missing Children have been buried.”

Tuberculosis was the most common reason cited for deaths at schools across the country, however, survivors have said that rumours have circulated over the years that some of the forgotten children died of neglect, abuse or even murder.

The project is viewed internally as highly daunting, given the sheer volume of material available and number of former students willing to talk. It will build on preliminary research that The Globe reported on Monday.

That research confirmed that several residential schools had graveyards on site, that children at some schools were tasked with digging graves, and that some of those cemeteries were unmarked or had only anonymous white crosses.

AFN national chief Phil Fontaine said through his lawyer yesterday that the documents featured in The Globe underscore the need for a commission to continue gathering the complete history of residential schools.

“This is the very kind of issue that needs to be raised,” John Phillips said. “It's the reason the Truth and Reconciliation Commission was created.”

That view was echoed by Mike Cachagee, who says he buried the first of four classmates when he was eight years old at Saint John's Indian Residential School in Chapleau, Ont., and then at Moose Factory Indian Residential School in Moose Factory, Ont.

He said he was told the children died of tuberculosis.

Mr. Cachagee, who chairs the National Residential School Survivors' Society, said former students want these graves identified so they can better understand their family histories.

“We can't just have our people planted in the ground and forgotten about,” he said. “That's basically what they did.”

The missing children project has been given the green light as a key meeting is scheduled for Wednesday in Toronto to sort out the controversy over the surprise resignation of commission chairman Mr. Justice Harry LaForme and to map a way forward.

Mr. Phillips will represent the AFN, and lawyers for the federal government, churches and former students will also attend.

There are many differences of opinion heading into the meeting. The federal government wants a legal clarification of the role and powers of the three commissioners. In his resignation letter, Judge LaForme had said there was disagreement over whether the chairman can overrule the two commissioners or whether the three individuals must operate on consensus or majority rule.

Judge LaForme has also claimed that the two other commissioners disagreed with his view that reconciliation should take precedence over digging up truth from the past.

A source close to the process said one of the principal questions to be addressed is whether commissioners Jane Brewin Morley and Ms. Dumont-Smith should be replaced, in light of Justice LaForme's acrimonious departure.

“You'd have to be crazy to step into the remnants of such a dysfunctional situation,” the source said.


Comments

Related Articles
Recent
Hunt begins for long-missing students
Judicial independence key to LaForme's resignation
AFN meddling blamed for exit of commission's chairman

Another lesson in apology politics

Are the Tories getting too good at grovelling?
Don Martin, National Post

Published: Monday, June 09, 2008

Tuesday's half-hour statement from Prime Minister Stephen Harper to a hushed House of Commons will be the greatest grovel in Canadian history, completing a ten-year process of parliamentary remorse for the residential schools tragedy and starting another five years of reconciliation.

On a Commons floor filled with dignitaries, native leaders and survivors of the notorious school system, a formal apology will drag on for thousands of words, every syllable agonized over to ensure it was sufficiently contrite and conveying suitable gravitas.

The government, Parliament, indeed every Canadian will be apologizing without exception for every student's experience, be it positive, negative or abusive.

But there are still high-level concerns it won't be enough and, while unlikely, could be rejected by native leaders as a political stunt that isn't sufficiently sincere. One senior government official involved in drafting the apology acknowledged in mid-gulp on an Ottawa beer patio: "Of course, we're still not sure they'll accept it."

Beverage splattered. Excuse me?

Native leaders have not been allowed to view an advance draft of the statement and Assembly of First Nations chief Phil Fontaine was not involved, as he requested, in authoring the apology.

Now, I'm not sure how involving the victims in writing their own apology adds to the sincerity of the script, but this remorse-filled statement will dramatically dwarf other acts of regret that have gone before.

Still, Indian Affairs Minister Chuck Strahl allows there is "nervousness" at the potential reaction. "There's a lot of anxiety because people are asking themselves the ‘what if?' questions. What if he backs off or doesn't say the right expressions?"

That seems unfathomable given the unprecedented attention it's been given. The Commons will shut down for the entire day to focus all political attention on speeches by all political parties before native leaders participate in ceremonies in nearby rooms.

Compared to the Chinese head tax or Japanese internment camp apologies, this will elevate grovelling to an art form by a Parliament that has already had plenty of experience pleading for forgiveness on this file.

It's been 10 years since Parliament first heard a government minister apologize for the residential schools debacle. "To those of you who suffered this tragedy at residential schools, we are deeply sorry," said Jane Stewart, Indian Affairs minister in 1998.

The RCMP apologized for its role in the federally funded program in May, 2004.

The United Church of Canada weighed in as well, describing the students as "victims of evil acts that cannot under any circumstances be justified or excused."

The federal government apologized in every manner possible to some B.C. First Nations in 2000.

Finally, last year the House of Commons voted unanimously to apologize for the federal role in establishing and funding the schools.

And yet, Wednesday's televised ceremonies will be doomed to disappoint in some quarters.

Ted Quewezance of the National Residential School Survivors Society, for example, insists the government describe the students as "kidnapped" and "imprisoned" while being "beaten, humiliated, starved, introduced to contagious diseases like tuberculosis and sexually abused." Sorry, that's not expected to happen.

There's also (always) the demand for more money. "The Settlement Agreement does not compensate the pain and suffering, but it is only a small token to acknowledge this travesty," Mr. Quewezance says.

At $2-billion-plus, that's some "token." And that doesn't include the $60-million to launch a five-year search for tragic recollections by the truth and reconciliation commission or the $400-million total for aboriginal healing approved in 1998 and 2005.

There are whispers the Harper Cabinet is sick of saying it's sorry for ancient events and feels if it starts saying it often enough, apologies will be debased to the point there's no compensation liability or political risk attached.

That might explain why the Conservatives unexpectedly supported an official apology for turning away 376 Sikh passengers aboard the steamer Komagata Maru in 1914, pushed through by Liberal MP Ruby Dhalla last month.

One fed-up Liberal MP is quietly musing about proposing a Day of Apology so MPs can rise in the House to seek forgiveness from the victim of their choice.

Polling suggests the public hasn't quite reached the point of being flippant or fed up with the government response to the residential schools tragedy.

But if money doesn't talk and tomorrow's glitzy apology doesn't work, the mood may sour. Sincerity can't be bought, but cynicism can.

National Post
dmartin@nationalpost.com


Rodney A. Clifton: For many aboriginal children, residential schools were a positive experience

........Finally, some aboriginal children had been physically and sexually
abused in their home communities, and residential schools actually saved some of
them from continued abuse.Even though this evidence has been available for some
time, it is obvious that Michael Ignatieff did not consider it before saying:
“Another illusion is that the intentions behind the [residential] schools were
good.”

....In Stringer Hall, for example, I was responsible for 85 senior boys
between the ages of 12 and 21 for 22 hours a day, six days a week. The work was
difficult, even for a strong 21-year-old. Yet today, the reward for former
residential school employees is denigration in the national press by people such
as Mr. Ignatieff — and, more surprisingly, by the churches they served. I pray
that the Commission will hear a variety of perspectives. Unfortunately, I do not
think this will happen because of the hostile climate that now exists.

Few former school employees — both non-aboriginal and aboriginal — will acknowledge that they worked in residential schools, and even fewer will appear before the Commission. They already know that the “truth” has been pre-determined, and that “reconciliation” means financial compensation, which is already being distributed in any event. Few people will praise the residential schools — their administrators, their teachers or their supervisors. Fewer still will dare publicly admit that their residential-school experiences were
positive.

by Rodney A. Clifton

Nuntius: Pope feels the 'pain' caused by abusive priests in Ireland

Blijkbaar na Ferns de eerste uitspraak van het Vaticaan nav het Ferns onderzoek en de dramatische werkelijkheid die daar in een paar dagen eindelijk geopenbaard werd.
Da's dan niet slecht voor dat land, waar nog maar 3 maanden geleden 1/4 van de priesters vond dat kardinaal O'Conell best alle juridische trucjes mocht

By John Cooney
Monday May 12 2008

Pope Benedict XVI realises that Irish society has been "deeply pained" by the sexual abuse of children by paedophile priests, the new Papal Nuncio revealed yesterday.

In his first public statement since arriving in Ireland last month Archbishop Giuseppe Leanza (65) said he regretted "the injury inflicted on innocent people and their families, by churchmen whose conduct has been in stark contrast to their priestly calling and religious obligations".

Blessings
Recalling a private audience with the Pope on April 11, the Sicilian-born archbishop said that the Pontiff asked him to convey his apostolic blessing as well his concern that Ireland should remain ever faithful to the Catholic faith.
Archbishop Leanza was delivering an homily at a liturgical reception in St Mary's Pro-Cathedral in Dublin on Saturday, during which he quoted the instructions given by Pope Benedict to the Irish bishops two years ago.

At that time, Pope Benedict had said: "It is important to establish the truth of what happened in the past, to take whatever steps are necessary to prevent it from occurring again, to ensure that the principles of justice are fully respected and, above all, to bring healing to the victims and to all those affected by these egregious crimes."


Da's niet slecht dus voor een land waar nog geen 3 maanden geleden 1/4 van de priesters meende achter kardinaal Desmond Connell te moeten staan in diens pogen de burgerlijke overheid en de rechtspraak te kunnen gebruiken om nóg steeds te kunnen blijven zwijgen.

Nadat eerst slachtoffers de Ierse revolutie al mogelijk maakten, het Vaticaan Diarmuid Martin moest inzetten, ziet een schop onder een kardinaal zitvlak er kennelijk zo uit.Het kon, ná de uitspraken van de B XVI in de VS natuurlijk nauwelijks anders.
Naar de rest van het artikel.

Maar, hernieuwd, geen woord over het residentieel misbruik, dat kan de kassa kennelijk niet aan.
Dus draaien door die schok van het ongeloof, en de uitermate domme deals die daardoor de Ierse overheid met de Congregaties sloot, de slachtoffers en de belastingbetaler op.
Een hele hoop klinklare munt voor de Kerk om daarover nog steeds liever te willen zwijgen.Op de uitspraken daarover wordt dus nog even gewacht op Australie met de wereld-jongeren dagen, het recente Sorry, en het komende pauselijk bezoek aan Ierland.

Er zijn tenslotte nog wat vragen en parlementaire onderzoeken over dat verleden, die inmiddels steeds meer gesteld worden.
Ook over kinderen die verdwenen uit Ierland en Engeland, en verscheept werden naar Australie, en de betrokkenheid van de RKK hierbij.
Niet alleen priesters blijken grenzenloos.
Die Kerk had haar wereldwijde net al.
Slachtoffers inmiddels ook. Iedere week meer.

Het grootste probleem van die Kerk uit haar verleden dat is, stapje voor stapje, boven water aan het komen.
Maar, zo is inmiddels wereldwijd gebleken, dat is niet afhankelijk van de (h)erkenning van de Kerk of wie dan ook in die kerkelijke hierarchie.
Zelfs niet (meer) van de bereidheid kerkelijke archieven te openen!

Dat was en is -naast tijd - en wetgeving in parlementaire democratien slechts afhankelijk van slachtoffers en hun moed hun mond open te doen.
Over (vroegere) kinderen.
Daar staat die Ierse revolutie voor.

Dankzij dat wereldwijde netwerk - niet meer alleen van die Kerk - is het zelfs niet meer afhankelijk van nationale parlementaire democratien.
En dat is, zélfs al stelt die RKK hier in Nederland nog maar erg weinig voor, heel goed nieuws voor Nederlanders.

Dáár staat de Ierse revolutie óók voor. Net als sex in an other climat.

Ottawa paying out $1.9 billion to aboriginal former students

Special Report
The Schools settlement
Sun Jan 6 2008
Alexandra Paul

BY the end of January, $1.9 billion should be in the hands of people who had to attend residential schools set up for status Indians. Aboriginal leaders say children who were forced into the schools under federal law were also systematically stripped of their aboriginal identities, languages and culture under a misguided government assimilation policy. Hundreds of survivors reported sexual, physical and emotional abuse in the institutions. The court-supervised compensation is the first official recognition of the toll the schools exacted on the aboriginal population in Canada. It's also believed to be the largest compensation package ever to First Nations.
The Indian Residential Schools Resolution office, handling the distribution of cheques through Service Canada, had estimated the number of eligible recipients at 80,000 coast to coast, but more have filed for cheques. Some will be eligible and some won't be.

The deadline for compensation applications was Sept. 19 for former students at 130 schools in Canada that operated from the 1870s through the 1970s and 1980s.

Last year, a total of $82.6 million in advance payments of $8,000 each was paid out to recipients aged 65 and older.
The fund represents years of negotiations by the Assembly of First Nations with the federal government that funded the schools and churches that ran them.


Payment can be reviewed
SURVIVORS who disagree with the size of their compensation cheque can question it directly with Indian Residential Schools Resolution Canada, which is distributing the court-supervised $1.9-billion settlement.

Reconsideration is the first step. It's an internal review within the agency. ...
Following reconsideration, individuals can go to the National Administration Committee.
An appeal form is included in letters mailed to applicants with the reconsideration decision and it must be filed within 12 months of a response.
The NAC is a seven-member board of representatives from all the parties that signed the settlement agreement. It includes the federal government, the Assembly of First Nations and legal counsel for the survivors who attended the schools and the churches that ran many of them.
Compensation recognizes the experience of residing at Indian Residential School, including the impacts of the loss of language and culture. There is a lump-sum payment of $10,000 for the first year plus $3,000 for each subsequent year.
In cases where compensation is less than expected, explanatory letters are being mailed separately from cheques.

Where gaps exist in the historical records, survivors are being contacted to provide more information or documentation to help assess residency or duration of stay at a school.

There is a list of 132 schools recognized under the settlement;
Day schools are not recognized, nor are applicants who died before May 30, 2005.
Families can collect benefits for survivors who died on or after May 30, 2005.

The settlement agreement is court-supervised and the final step in the appeal process is to one of nine Canadian courts that approved it.Minimum payment under the so-called common-experience settlement is $10,000 for the first year of residential school, plus $3,000 for every year of attendance after that. The average cheque is $21,125.

...........
So far, in Canada, there have been 81,000 claims; 42,649 of them processed and $712.2 million paid out.

naar het hele artikel

Indrukwekkende recenscie van Leon Podles, Sacrilege: Sexual Abuse in the Catholic Church « Oak Leaves

Hohoho!

Publisher: Crossland Press
Pub. Date: January 2007
ISBN-13: 9780979027994
Sales Rank: 96,864
676pp

En een indrukwekkende recenscie op een vaker verassend en interessant blog .
En dat is, vlak voor de kerstboom, bij een niet zo makkelijk verkrijgbare studie (TIP) van maar liefst haast 700 pagina's natuurlijk nooit weg. En dat op een blog waarvan ook de reacties, alweer, ook interessant zijn.

Net als Podles eigen weblog, orthodox katholiek met een aantal zeer uitgesproken meningen wo over kerk en politiek en zeker over man/vrouw en de op zijn weblog beschikbare artikelen
dat zeker doen.

Hohoho Steeds meer goed nieuws vanaf het groeiend-front-misbruik-'t-is-welletjes-geweest!

It’s not a sin to be angry. This is evident from the scriptural injunction to “Be angry and sin not” (Eph. 4:26), as well as references to God being angry. For Thomas Aquinas, anger is a necessary element of the virtue of fortitude—fortitude isn’t a matter of just putting up with evil, or of enduring sorrow, but includes actively resisting evil, bravery in the struggle, and anger at the evil which has led to sorrow. Summa Theologica, IIa-IIae, Q. 123, Art. 10.

Leon Podles is angry, and wants us to be angry, too. He wants us to be angry at the sin of sexual abuse of children by Catholic clergy. But more than that, he also wants us to be angry at the bishops and pope for not being angry at that same sin. That’s what irks him about this crisis more than anything else—never have the bishops or popes expressed any anger that priests molested kids or that other bishops covered it up and transferred the predators to new hunting grounds.

Podles had done his work well—as I read, I felt a surge of anger at both the system and my own participation in it as a chancery bureaucrat for nine years. I decided I needed to take a breather before writing this review. I wanted to get some perspective.
I read two other books on the sexual abuse crisis, Jason Berry’s 1992 chronicle of the Gilbert Gauthé case in Lafayette, Louisiana, Lead Us Not into Temptation: Catholic Priests and the Sexual Abuse of Children, and Berry’s 2004 book with Gerald Renner, Vows of Silence: The Abuse of Power in the Papacy of John Paul II, which concentrates on the Legion of Christ.

I’m still angry, but I’m now better able to see what is unique about Podles’ book.

These other authors give us great detail about particular epicenters of the crisis and their own journeys as they covered the stories, but Podles’ work stands out as a masterful portrayal of the big picture, linking the stories Berry and Renner reported with stories from other times and places. He paints with broad strokes in places, but gets into some very fine detail in others to help us to grasp the magnitude of some truly horrendous cases. Podles also gives us analysis of the abusers and the victims, and of how each was treated by bishops, and what went wrong.
The bishops are clearly the focal point of his anger:
...
But he goes further, seeing the crisis as about more than the bishops and the priests they coddled: Catholic culture is implicated; specifically a narcissistic clericalism in which the laity, including police and judges and prosecutors colluded.

“The abuse is far more widespread, goes back farther, and is far worse” than has been recognized to date. (9)

A canonized saint tolerated abuse. Rings of abusers go back at least to the
1940s in America, and abuse involved sacrilege, orgies, and probably murder (and
perhaps even worse). Bishops knew about the abuse and sometimes took part in it.

Those who complained were ignored or threatened, and the police refused to
investigate crimes committed by clergy. (10)

Podles reveals some of the reasons for his personal connection to the subject, and these revelations give us some insight into how he came to target clericalism. He recounts an experience of physical abuse at the hands of a Christian Brother in high school—”He walked to my desk and slugged me so hard on the face that he broke my glasses.” The teacher went to the principal, and Podles was expelled for having objected to an injustice. This served as a lesson for the boys who remained. But it is also for Podles an example of how the Christian Brothers ruled their schools by intimidation, and he sees what happened to him as one instance of a pattern of physical abuse at Christian Brothers schools extending from Ireland to the US and Canada. Many of these same schools had problems of sexual abuse as well, and Podles sees a clear connection: “An atmosphere of physical abuse had prepared the way for sexual abuse.” The Brothers got the point across that you were to do what they asked without question or complaint. (4-5)

Podles, like many Catholic young men of the period, considered the priesthood; he went to Providence College in Rhode Island, which was run by the Dominicans, and lived in Guzman Hall, a dorm for those considering priesthood. There was an undercurrent of homosexuality there, however, and when a roommate “made a sexually aggressive move” on Podles in his sleep, he fled. (6)

Over the years, he began to wonder about the Catholic Church’s relationship with men. What is it about the Catholic Church—and the priesthood in particular—that attracts such a high percentage of homosexuals and drives off heterosexuals? This question led him to write his 1999 book, The Church Impotent: The Feminization of Christianity:.........

“I had been puzzled by the lack of men in Catholic activities, and I was
surprised that my circle of acquaintances included a large number of
homosexuals. I realized that I had met these men through Catholic activities,
through Mass and the charismatic renewal. My research soon revealed that men had stayed away from all the branches of Western Christianity for centuries. Men had doubts about the masculinity of those men who were closely involved with the Church (such as the clergy) and sometimes those doubts were justified. I decided
there was a centuries-old misunderstanding of masculinity and femininity, a
misunderstanding that led men to distance themselves from the Church and that
relegated women to a role of passive obedience.” (7-8; see also pp. 350ff)

.....
The revelations of 2002 should not have caught anyone by surprise. The Gauthé case involved all the same factors of abuse and cover-up, and had brought national attention upon the subject twenty years before. It brought together three unlikely allies, Fr. Thomas Doyle, OP, who was working for the Apostolic Nunciature, Gauthé’s attorney, Ray Mouton, and Fr. Michael Peterson of the St. Luke Institute, who together wrote a report for the US bishops in 1985, “The Problem of Sexual Molestation by Roman Catholic Clergy: Meeting the Problem in a Comprehensive and responsible Manner.” They submitted it to a committee chaired by Bernard Law. They warned of what could happen if the bishops didn’t change their ways. But their report was ignored, Doyle was sent into exile, and the bishops continued doing what they had always been doing.

But the Gauthé case wasn’t the beginning, either. Neither was Davenport. In fact, says Podles, “there is a centuries-old underground in the Church that perpetrates a tradition of abuse,” (68) and this underground is protected and is made possible because of clericalism.

While abuse exists among the laity and outside of Catholicism, among clergy of other denominations as well as scout leaders and teachers, the Catholic crisis is unique. Catholicism makes claims about its priesthood that are made by no other institution (412), exemplified by the statement of Pope Pius XI, “The priest is indeed another Christ, or in some way he is himself a continuation of Christ.” Clericalism is the idea that the clergy really are “the church,” that the role of the laity is to be quiet, give generously, pray faithfully, and, above all, to obey. Clericalism has created a vision of the church where bishops are seen as divinely appointed shepherds whose voice should be heard by both church and state on all issues, spiritual and civil, as evidenced by the plethora of letters on matters such as economics, war, immigration and criminal justice. (416)

Podles sees clericalism as just an institutional variety of narcissism, which is a psychological disorder defined by DSM-IV as a “pervasive pattern of grandiosity (in fantasy or behavior), need for admiration, and lack of empathy.” The narcissist “has a grandiose sense of self-importance,” “believes that he or she is ‘special’ and unique and can only be understood by, or should associate with, other special or high-status people (or institutions),” “has a sense of entitlement, i.e., unreasonable expectations of especially favorable treatment or automatic compliance with his or her expectations,” “is interpersonally exploitative,” and “lacks empathy: is unwilling to recognize or identify with the feelings and needs of others.”

That last point, the lack of empathy, is especially important for considering the reaction of the hierarchy to abuse.

The victims were invisible to everyone. The abusers were narcissists
who had no empathy for the sufferings of their victims. The priests,
officials, and bishops of the Davenport diocese were all caught up in a
clerical narcissism, in which only repercussions that affected them had any
meaning. The laity too were afflicted by a Catholic narcissism that idolized
the clergy. (70)

Narcissism pervades Catholic clerical culture, as Podles portrays it. It creates a vision of priesthood characterized by a sense of performance. It leads to a preoccupation with reputation and appearances at all levels (299ff). It requires an audience who adore the performer, lay accomplices who grant clerics deference and privilege. They, in turn, have reacted in anger when bishops have disclosed the faults of their favorite priests and suspended them. The laity also joined the bishops in seeing court cases and newspaper articles as attacks on the church—which is why newspapers didn’t stay with the story after the Gauthé case. (p. 423 ff)

Clericalism also affects the society as a whole, as was seen in the past willingness of cops and judges to overlook the crimes of priests in the belief that bishops were better able to deal with the problem. Even in the wake of the scandals, some defend this system of privilege; Podles points to an article by Michael Orsi, “Bishops Sacrifice Accommodations, Privileges and Rights: Everybody Loses,” Homiletic and Pastoral Review, 2002. (418)

Narcissism isn’t the only psychological disorder affecting priests. Podles summarizes studies done with seminarians and priests over the past six decades indicating that psychological illnesses pervade the priesthood. Already in 1948 William Bier noted that seminarians were more likely to answer questions as women generally did. A 1968 study showed that 70% candidates for religious life were “psychosexually immature, exhibiting traits of heterosexual retardation, confusion concerning sexual role, fear of sexuality, effeminacy and potentially homosexual dispositions.” (93) A 1972 report by Eugene Kennedy said priests tended to have the emotional maturity of adolescents, and not only had sexual difficulties but problems relating to adults. (94) A 1971 study by Conrad Baars found that 60-70% of priests were emotionally immature, and as many as 25% of priests had “serious psychiatric difficulties.” In particular, they did not properly understand the role of human emotions. (95)
...........
If they read Podles’ book, maybe they might begin to understand why people are angry. Maybe then, things might change. That’s his hope. I can’t share it. I think the narcissism, the clericalism, and the emotionally repressed culture go too deep. How do you change an ancient culture? How do you change people who have been selected because they fit a certain profile and whose basic disposition has been reinforced by training and conditioning?

For me, the narcissism and authoritarianism of the Catholic clericalist system reveals the working of “the mystery of iniquity.” It illustrates how the Catholic system as a whole is corrupted by principles that are contrary to the spirit of Christ. Catholic teaching refers to “structures of sin.”

Podles is not about to abandon the Catholic Church, despite all he has related and concluded. He thinks it can be saved, and proposes a series of reforms. A policy of zero tolerance is essential, he argues, as it not only removes individuals but disrupts networks of abusers. The Vatican must extend it worldwide (495). Canon law must be changed to give bishops authority over all priests in their diocese, religious or diocesan, to hold bishops accountable, and to make it possible for bishops to discipline each other (496). The laity must be more directly involved in governance, and should be consulted in all matters that concern them; parishes and dioceses should be audited annually and the audits made public. He suggests care should be taken in ordaining homosexuals—but he goes further, and advocates the barring of abuse victims from seminary. This may well be his most controversial recommendation, but he sees it is necessary because so many abusers were abused themselves. The cycle of abuse must be ended.

Finally, he calls for a renewed ethic which restores the place of righteous anger and the fear of God. “Righteous anger is a forgotten concept, zeal is condemned as disruptive.” (507) “The bishops fear bad publicity; they need to remember the fear of God, if in fact they believe in Him.” (508)
....
That’s his hope. I can’t share it. I think the narcissism, the clericalism, and the emotionally repressed culture go too deep. How do you change an ancient culture? How do you change people who have been selected because they fit a certain profile and whose basic disposition has been reinforced by training and conditioning?

For me, the narcissism and authoritarianism of the Catholic clericalist system reveals the working of “the mystery of iniquity.” It illustrates how the Catholic system as a whole is corrupted by principles that are contrary to the spirit of Christ. Catholic teaching refers to “structures of sin.”

… [S]in makes men accomplices of one another and causes concupiscence,
violence, and injustice to reign among them. Sins give rise to social situations
and institutions that are contrary to the divine goodness. “Structures of sin”
are the expression and effect of personal sins. They lead their victims to do
evil in their turn. In an analogous sense, they constitute a “social sin”
(Catechism 1869).

I’d suggest that the Catholic understanding of the papacy and the episcopacy is just such a “structure of sin”; it is “the expression and effect of personal sins,” especially narcissism. These structures that have developed from human sin, and that in turn perpetuate sin, are now seen as constitutive of the Church for Catholicism. Reformation is not possible without undoing what Catholicism sees as of its esse. This reinforces for me the urgency of the prophetic call, “Come out of her, my people, that you be not partakers of her sin.”

It's time to face facts about industrial school failings

Irish Independant
Saturday August 25 2007

BROTHER Edmund Garvey, in this week's press statement about Artane, claims that the Department of Education inspection -- following Fr Moore's Report -- made by two senior inspectors together with Dr Anna McCabe, the Medical Inspector, was not notified in advance.

He says: "The Brothers in Artane at the time did not have prior notice of the inspection, contrary to reports in recent media commentary."

It was the regular practice, in all industrial schools, for prior notification to be given by the Department of coming inspections.

As a result, special food was served, clean clothing issued and everything was smartened up.
It was a charade, but it allowed everyone to go on as before and reform nothing. Countless inmates have testified to this factual situation.

It is not sufficient to challenge what Brother Garvey has said about the inaccuracy on this point in Irish Independent coverage, which he criticises.

There is more evidence, however. The boy who served meals to Fr Moore -- who generally fed on his own -- knew of the inspection in advance and knew also that Fr Moore expected it.

As soon as they arrived he drove out of Artane and back to his house. There was no doubt, in Fr Moore's and the boy's minds, as well as in gossip among the Brothers, that there was prior knowledge of the visit.

Conflict of evidence goes deeper. Reading the sustained and unrelentingly negative judgments made by Fr Moore in his Report, it is inconceivable that a two-day visit by inspectors could in any way whatever refute the testimony.

And it is a disgrace that the two approaches were treated to cancel each other out.

The Moore Report, presented to the Archbishop, was concerned with every aspect of Artane witnessed over almost two years (Fr Moore remained at Artane as chaplain for seven years).

The other, done more or less on the orders of the chairman of the inter-departmental committee, Peter Berry, was done with Charles Haughey's backing. He as minister was the instigator of the response.

Department of Education alarm -- expressed very strongly by its representatives at meetings of the committee -- sought to refute everything the priest had said. To do so would have needed a stay at Artane of months, rather than two-days.

It was done as a 'response' to Fr Moore, according to Bridget McManus, present secretary general, in her testimony to the Commission on June 12, 2006.

She said the inspectors, whose brief was "to state the facts reasonably and with discretion, good and bad to be included", had, in their two-day inspection and according to department records, managed to look "at virtually every aspect of life in Artane ... including food the children were eating and the clothes they were wearing ... the relationship between boys and teachers ... virtually every heading ... [and] the Department's report was satisfied that there was no substance to the allegations of Fr Moore."

According to Bridget McManus, "there was some criticism subsequently in the Interdepartmental Committee minutes and discussions that perhaps they hadn't dealt with all headings". Hardly surprising if their assessment was confined to two days.

Later, the Medical Inspector, Dr Anna McCabe, agreed with part of Fr Moore's report but rejected its findings over food.

This was later to have a humourous postscript. When Dr McCabe, a formidable lady, retired in 1965 she visited Artane for a farewell lunch, dressed for the occasion in a tweed suit and wearing a smart tweed hat. She was accompanied by the senior brothers.

Informed in advance, the boys were given the usual 'special day' food of boiled pork chops in gravy.
When Dr McCabe came into the dining hall the boys were picking up the unusual food and inspecting the chops. Deciding that they were in her honour, those near the entrance threw them at her.

Both she and the senior brothers beat a hasty retreat. A large detachment of brothers later entered the dining hall and anyone without a chop on his plate was flogged. The event became known as giving Dr McCabe 'the chop'.

Compared with the reprehensible handling of Fr Moore's report, the treatment of Dr McCabe was light relief.

Brother Reynolds, who appeared at the Commission for the Christian Brothers, said, in talking about Fr Moore, he found himself "in difficulties". These difficulties were the 1994 conviction against Fr Moore for sexual abuse, 30 years after his report.

Brother Reynolds started his testimony saying: "I am so sorry, I need some direction ... I meant to do this before... a name was mentioned and it has caught up with me... I am not too sure how to put this without saying what I want to say. I am not too sure how to deal with this."

Instead of stopping him, Commission chairman Sean Ryan directed him to continue on the grounds of vital public interest. He allowed the references to a conviction of Fr Moore for sexual abuse to be made, and for a general debate about what might be done with this extraneous and -- to Fr Moore and his report -- damaging testimony.

This is just one of the many loopholes of error in the whole industrial school saga.

We still have a long way to go.

The Archbishop of Dublin should give us more help of the kind he gave in releasing Fr Moore's Report.

Dishonesty on Artane Abuse Probe Exposed...Eventually.

Irish Independent
August 18, 2007
Diarmuid Martin has released 'The Private Report on Artane Industrial School' which was furnished to his predecessor, Archbishop John Charles McQuaid, on July 7, 1962.

In so doing he has honoured his pledge, that the only possible resolution of the child sexual abuse scandal would be when everything came out.

The Archbishop should be congratulated for that. He has also said: "There are no short cuts. Over the past five years there has been a change in the Church's handling of the issue with a policy of openness and of rapidly addressing problems."

Some would dispute this, pointing to the disparity between what has happened in other countries and what has happened here. But the Archbishop is still a new broom and should be encouraged in what appears to be the beginnings of a new policy here.

He has put himself at odds with the Government and with the more reactionary elements in the Church, in respect of the abuse issue, and this is where the release of the Father Moore Report is an important action.

It throws into doubt the whole method and direction of what should have been a scrupulous investigation but has turned out to be a flawed one.

The Archbishop has drawn our attention, perhaps unwittingly, to the dishonest and biased handling of the Moore Report and its content in the hearings before the Commission on Child Abuse.

That Commission has concluded its public hearings and its chairman, Judge Sean Ryan, now has to prepare his own Report.

Father Henry Moore's Report shines a clear light of judgement upon the iniquities of Artane and upon the wider iniquities of the Industrial School System for letting what happened at Artane and elsewhere continue unchecked for decades.

The annual reports on industrial schools, year after year, told the same lies, that "the physical and educational needs of the children were adequately catered for", that "those fitted for post-primary education were enrolled in secondary or vocational classes", and that "where it was considered that pupils would benefit from secondary or vocational classes, they were enrolled in such classes".

These regular mantras were simply not true.

Moore's Report was the result of a confidential charge given him by Archbishop McQuaid. It was factual and complete. It was also, it must be said, written intelligently and with style. It followed a careful reading of the Cussen Report of 1936, itself a damning indictment of Artane, and Father Moore found -- 26 years later -- that nothing had changed.

Moore endorses Cussen's finding, that "in Artane only the minimum standard of literate education required by the regulations is provided" and that trades taught were obsolescent and "useful to the schools rather than providing a groundwork for future employment. The boys are regarded as juvenile labourers".

Moore said Artane "is in need of drastic revision". Management methods employed "are obsolete, proper training is neglected, and there is no attempt at rehabilitation". Artane is "dilapidated, colourless and uninspiring, and reflects the interior spirit".

Admission is "indiscriminate" with "no regard for background, medical history, antecedents or suitability for the training". Medical history would not have mattered anyway because the Department of Education inspectors were entirely indifferent to "the seriously inadequate medical facilities in the school" -- no matron or nurse, but run by an unqualified brother "transferred from care of the poultry farm".

Food was sufficient, but plain and unappetising. Methods of serving were crude and unhealthy. Clothing was inadequate, uncomfortable, unhygienic and dirty, as were the boys. The winter during which Moore surveyed conditions was cold, and the one that followed his report was one of the coldest of the last century.

"It is pathetic to observe hundreds of boys walking the roads even in deep winter without overcoats," Moore wrote. "All the clothing was indiscriminately shared. Handkerchiefs are not used."

A trifle, in the broader spectrum of a place run like a prison, but Moore comments: "This fundamental disregard for personal attention inevitably generates insecurity, instability and an amoral concern for the private property of others. This I consider to be a causative factor in the habits of stealing frequently encountered among ex-pupils."

Discipline he found outrageously severe -- "regimentation"; "without proportion"; "boy severely beaten on the face for an insignificant misdemeanour", are phrases used. The result was "undue fear and anxiety", loss of self-esteem and an inability to establish relationships.

He condemned the chapel as dirty and damaged, with mouse-droppings on the Chasuble.

Severest judgements were against the levels of education, with widespread illiteracy in boys up to 14. Technical training was completely out of date, vocational guidance non-existent, choice of trade training bore no relation to wishes or capacities of the boys. This was all contrary to the Children's Act of 1908.

A counter move by the department, made aware of the report, was to send inspectors on a two-day visit, the Brothers knowing of it in advance. A whitewash followed. An inter-departmental inquiry heard Moore's evidence and accepted a good deal of it but he was given a punishing time, causing his mentor, Archbishop McQuaid, to respond to the department and to the Government.However, any public confrontation would bring shame on the Church, so the matter was dropped.

As to the charges on education, clothing, care, food, recreation and all the other matters dealt with by Moore, the Commission did not discuss, debate or raise them in a direct and open way, putting each of Moore's criticisms into the public arena for debate and cross-examination.

Doodscertificaat van Patsy Flannigan, een van the boys of Artane, 1951
en hier staan de openbare verhoren.

Dank je wel, voor jullie gecontinueerde moed!

"...My worry is that many victims won't adequately appreciate the huge achievements they've made - in their own healing, in protecting others, in prodding law enforcement and in alerting citizens...."

Bruno's simple request

Last week saw a flurry of Irish diplomatic activity in the Vatican, where Government secretary general Dermot McCarthy spoke publicly of formalising church/state dialogue, and the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Mr Ahern, met the Pope and invited him again to these shores.
Mary Raftery reports.

As we contemplate the possibility of another papal visit, it is worth considering the extraordinary case of Bruno Hrela. Bruno has a remarkable file of correspondence with the Vatican, from which the following information has been taken.

Bruno was born in Croatia in 1938 into a devout Catholic family. His father was killed during the second World War when their house was bombed from the air and destroyed. He, his two sisters and his mother, Maria, became refugees and fled to Italy.

There they met a fellow Croatian, a priest who suggested to Bruno's mother that she go to Ireland where she could start a new life in that most Catholic of countries.

With this priest's help, Maria Hrela and her family eventually arrived in Dublin in 1951. However, she received little assistance here and was unable to find work.

Within months, Maria's children were taken from her and placed in industrial schools. Bruno, then 12 years old, ended up in Artane, which at that time housed up to 800 other boys, and was of course run by the Christian Brothers. As Bruno tells the Pope in his letters, it was here that his personal tragedy began.

These letters describe the abuse Bruno suffered as a child at Artane. At the time, he managed to tell his mother what was happening not just to him but to many other boys as well.

She was distraught by the accounts of daily beatings and humiliations endured by her son, and embarked on a most unusual course of action. She decided to write to then Pope, Pius XII.

Bruno had fluent Italian from his time spent in that country, and so his mother dictated to him and he translated and physically wrote the two-page letter to the Pontiff.

It outlined the abuse suffered (physical and sexual, says Bruno) by the boys at Artane, and spoke of the fear and anguish in which they lived. Bruno describes it as a desperate cry for help.

Surprisingly, the Vatican appears to have acted on the letter. Bruno describes a bishop arriving at Artane, with the children all lined up for his inspection.

The bishop - Bruno cannot remember his name - was brought over and introduced to Bruno. In front of the Christian Brothers in charge, the bishop asked the boy if he had any complaints about the school.

Bruno froze in terror, and did not confirm the accusations of abuse made in the letter to the Pope. The bishop departed, and Bruno was left alone with the Brothers. As he explained in the letters to the current Pope, they beat him into unconsciousness and left him bleeding on the floor.

Bruno now wants that original letter, written in the early 1950s, alerting Pope Pius XII to the abuse of children in Artane.

He first made the request in 2001. He was curtly informed that the Vatican archives were available for inspection only up until 1922, the end of the pontificate of Pope Benedict XV.

Everything since 1922 remains sealed. He has tried again and again, humbly pleading with Pope John Paul, but the response every time is brief and blunt - his request is refused.

All Bruno wants from the Vatican is a copy of what after all is his own letter, written over 50 years ago by his own hand and containing his mother's words.

It is, he says, a part of his own story, his own experience.
It is almost literally breaking his heart that the Pope won't listen to him.

From time to time, Bruno phones me from London, where he has lived for many years.

When he talks about Artane and his letter and the current Pope, there often comes a point where he can't continue, where he breaks down and cries. The sadness never leaves you, he says.

Of course, were it from the Irish State that Bruno had requested any material relating to himself, he would be given it without argument. His right to any documentation relating to himself is now enshrined in our freedom of information legislation.

Perhaps the formalisation of church/state dialogue in this country might be of some value if it avoided abstractions and addressed itself instead to issues such as Bruno Hrela's very simple request from the Vatican.

It is one area where the Irish State could teach the Vatican a thing or two about basic duties and obligations, and in the process ease the burden on one man who has suffered much at the hands of both church and state.

Twenty-five years ago, when the Pope last visited Ireland, we did not know Bruno's story or those of thousands like him whose lives have been tortured by their experiences as children in Catholic Church-run institutions.

Today, in the context of a possible second visit by the Pontiff, we no longer have that excuse.

Mary Raftery - Email
18th November 2004
© The Irish Times