By Lucy-Claire Saunders,
Xinhua
UNITED NATIONS: One night at a Ugandan high school, 15-year-old Grace Akallo was abducted along with 138 of her friends by a brutal rebel group known as the Lord Resistance Army (LRA).
With a gun to her head and her wrists tied, Akallo was forced to march into the northern Uganda forest. At that moment, her spirit died as she knew there would be no surviving.
Akallo shared her sad story at the UN Security Council here on recently, as she was invited to speak at an open Council debate on children and armed conflict, just to show how important it is to protect the interests and rights of children involved in armed conflict.
The students of Saint Marys college marched for days, all the time followed by Sister Rachele, the head mistress of the high school. The rebels told Sister Rachele to go home or else they would rape and kill her in front of the children. But she refused to go anywhere without her students.
In the end, Sister Rachele was released with 109 girls. Akallo was not one of them.
Death march with kids
During the long march to Sudan, children who could not walk their tired bodies any further were killed. The rebels would use sticks, axes, bayonets or machetes.
When Akallo and the remaining students finally arrived in Sudan, they were given AK-47s. They were taught how to dismantle, clean and assemble the rifle but they were not taught how to shoot or to fight. Hunger would eventually teach them, Lord Resistance Army commanders said. And it did.
Hungry and thirsty, Akallo and hundreds of other children were sent to battle the Sudan Peoples Liberation Army (SPLA) several times. At one point, Akallo fainted and was buried in a shallow grave. But Akallo survived.
Violence did not end on the battlefield. Akallo was forced to kill girls who tried to escape the advances of rebel commanders. Then she was raped herself, again and again.
Then on April 9, 1997, after seven months in captivity, Akallo finally got the chance to escape when the Lord Resistance Army was attacked by rebels from southern Sudan. Seizing the opportunity, Akallo ran as fast as she could until she found herself far from the chaos of the battle. For two weeks she walked, surviving only on leaves, soil and dew in the morning.
Eventually she was rescued by villagers from southern Sudan and handed back to Sister Rachele and her parents.
Lucky one
Akallo would later graduate from high school and then graduate from Gordon College as the first person from her village to do so.
I was lucky enough to be able to escape, she told the Security Council. But so many girls are still waiting for their chance to be rescued, and I think everyday of the friends I left behind.
Every year, millions of children are impacted by the horrors of armed conflict. Grave violations, which have been documented in the UN secretary-generals recent report on children and armed conflict, go beyond the recruitment of children. For the first time, the report calls on members of the Security Council to expand the scope of the UNs protection framework to also include sexual violence and the maiming and killing of children.
Both Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and Special Representative of the Secretary-general for Children and Armed Conflict Radhika Coomaraswamy called the expansion of the UNs monitoring mechanisms a critical step in striking a blow to perpetrators.
Speaking before a hushed audience in the Security Council chamber, Akallo said her goal was to remind the world of the stories of children who were still trapped by relentless and violent forces.
Their lives continue to be ruined, she said, but ultimately she has hope that their futures will also be saved.
There is hope, she said, because I believe that this Council will act.
woensdag, mei 20, 2009
French priest intervieuws Hitlers willing executioners in Ukraine
A horrific page of history unfolded last Monday in Ukraine.
It concerned the gruesome and untold story of a spontaneous pogrom by local villagers against hundreds of Jews in a town south of Ternopil in 1941.
Not one, but five independent witnesses recounted the tale, recalling how they rushed to a German army camp, borrowed weapons and gunned down 500 Jews inside the town's Christian cemetery.
One of them remembered decapitating bodies in front of the church.
The man heading the research that led to this discovery discussed it in Israel last week; Father Patrick Desbois was in Pope Benedict XVI's entourage.
Desbois is a French Roman Catholic priest. His team has been investigating mass executions in the former Soviet Union during the Holocaust for more than six years.In 2004, he founded Yahad-In Unum, a Paris-based organization devoted to Christian-Jewish understanding.
Oral testimonies from these events in Ukraine and Belarus are but a part of Desbois' research. Using metal detectors, his team uncovers German-made cartridges and bullets as well as victims' jewelry from killing pits.
The findings are transferred to an archive in Paris, where the testimonies are translated.
Earlier this year, Desbois helped start the first Holocaust masters program at the Sorbonne, focusing on the extermination in the former Soviet Union.
To Desbois, there are two holocausts: a western one and an eastern one. The western holocaust was more organized, whereas the eastern one, "the one that happened away from Berlin," was chaotic, decentralized and undocumented."
German officers wanted to appear efficient, so they documented one mass grave and declared the place judenfrei. In reality, the killings went on for years," he says.
"The only way of documenting these [other] graves is asking the locals. Time's running out, and we're the only organization on the ground there.
"The Ternopil story is not unusual because of its extreme cruelty but because it's so rare for perpetrators to openly admit playing a voluntary role. Most stories Desbois hears are from people who claim that the Germans forced them to take part in executions. "[Securing testimony from five participants in] a pogrom is a historic achievement," Desbois told Haaretz.
He notes how "we couldn't have achieved this a few years ago. We didn't have the skill."
He says his team's success reflects the ability to keep a poker face.
"If I react with shock, it's all over," he explains.
"Often I don't react at all to what the witnesses say. I just give them an interested expression and ask very technical questions about where they stood, where the victims lay, the time of day. I keep them talking and it pours out."
Desbois' full-time, nine-member team includes a cameraman who films the testimonies, while the others listen to stories of murder and human degradation.
But sometimes the poker face cracks, he says.
For instance, when one woman described how her mother would "finish off" wounded Jews with a shovel blow to the head before burying them.
"My team started to react, so I kept her talking, asking in a matter-of-fact way how exactly her mother would administer the blows."
Often with local help, the Germans killed nearly 1.5 million Jews in Ukraine after their invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941. Most of that history has gone untold. Unlike in Poland, where Jews were killed in death camps, in the Soviet Union most were mowed down and dumped into open mass graves in woodlands.
"I understand those who ask if Ukrainians and Poles were willing allies in the extermination of Jews," he says. "But I don't ask myself that, since most people I interview were children at the time. I'm only concerned with reconstructing the crime and knowing where the bodies are."
Desbois says one of his most surprising discoveries is institutionalized sexual slavery.
In several interviews, he found witnesses who said German soldiers would set up houses in ghettos where they raped Jewish women. The Germans and their accomplices usually executed the women near the end of the war.
This discovery challenged perceptions that ideologically-motivated Germans would not sexually exploit a member of what the Nazis termed an inferior race.Such accomplishments landed Desbois an honorary doctorate last week from Bar-Ilan University.
He says he arrives at a small town with five researchers and an interpreter. One approaches elderly people, who often lead the team to unmarked mass graves.
He began working in Ukraine in 2002, when he traveled to the village of Rava-Ruska. He went there in the footsteps of his paternal grandfather, who was deported to a prison camp for French soldiers.
Having researched the fate of French prisoners, Desbois discovered that 10,000 Jews had been killed at Rava-Ruska, but the town's mayor said he knew nothing.
So far, Desbois' organization has interviewed nearly 1,000 witnesses. His team has dug up mass graves only in one locale, at the request of the French Jewish community: "We do not uncover graves because of Jewish religious restrictions."
For the witnesses, the return to the killing ground is often the first time back in decades. "There, they recall more details," Desbois says. "Where the Germans stood, where this or that family was gunned down, a woman who couldn't walk and was dragged to the killing pit, or a woman who wouldn't take her clothes off."
Debois says easterners are more eager to talk about the Holocaust than westerners.
"People in Ukraine want to talk. They wait on benches to be interviewed and filmed. They take us to grave sites, they welcome us into their homes - homes that used to belong to Jews," he says. "
Imagine what would happen if I went around churches in Munich asking people if they helped kill Jews?"
Not another John Paul II
According to Father Patrick Desbois, the disappointment with the pope's speech at Yad Vashem -which officials at the memorial authority described as "lacking compassion" and "too general" - stems from a misunderstanding of the Holy See.
"People were expecting another Pope John Paul II. But Benedict is very different," Desbois says.
After teaching mathematics as a French government employee in West Africa and working in Calcutta for three months with Mother Teresa, Desbois joined the priesthood. His secular family was horrified.
When he first began researching the extermination of Jews in the former Soviet Union, he preferred to keep it a secret for a long time.
"A priest, a goy, a Catholic who does what I do.... I was afraid people would call me a fool," he says.
It concerned the gruesome and untold story of a spontaneous pogrom by local villagers against hundreds of Jews in a town south of Ternopil in 1941.
Not one, but five independent witnesses recounted the tale, recalling how they rushed to a German army camp, borrowed weapons and gunned down 500 Jews inside the town's Christian cemetery.
One of them remembered decapitating bodies in front of the church.
The man heading the research that led to this discovery discussed it in Israel last week; Father Patrick Desbois was in Pope Benedict XVI's entourage.
Desbois is a French Roman Catholic priest. His team has been investigating mass executions in the former Soviet Union during the Holocaust for more than six years.In 2004, he founded Yahad-In Unum, a Paris-based organization devoted to Christian-Jewish understanding.
Oral testimonies from these events in Ukraine and Belarus are but a part of Desbois' research. Using metal detectors, his team uncovers German-made cartridges and bullets as well as victims' jewelry from killing pits.
The findings are transferred to an archive in Paris, where the testimonies are translated.
Earlier this year, Desbois helped start the first Holocaust masters program at the Sorbonne, focusing on the extermination in the former Soviet Union.
To Desbois, there are two holocausts: a western one and an eastern one. The western holocaust was more organized, whereas the eastern one, "the one that happened away from Berlin," was chaotic, decentralized and undocumented."
German officers wanted to appear efficient, so they documented one mass grave and declared the place judenfrei. In reality, the killings went on for years," he says.
"The only way of documenting these [other] graves is asking the locals. Time's running out, and we're the only organization on the ground there.
"The Ternopil story is not unusual because of its extreme cruelty but because it's so rare for perpetrators to openly admit playing a voluntary role. Most stories Desbois hears are from people who claim that the Germans forced them to take part in executions. "[Securing testimony from five participants in] a pogrom is a historic achievement," Desbois told Haaretz.
He notes how "we couldn't have achieved this a few years ago. We didn't have the skill."
He says his team's success reflects the ability to keep a poker face.
"If I react with shock, it's all over," he explains.
"Often I don't react at all to what the witnesses say. I just give them an interested expression and ask very technical questions about where they stood, where the victims lay, the time of day. I keep them talking and it pours out."
Desbois' full-time, nine-member team includes a cameraman who films the testimonies, while the others listen to stories of murder and human degradation.
But sometimes the poker face cracks, he says.
For instance, when one woman described how her mother would "finish off" wounded Jews with a shovel blow to the head before burying them.
"My team started to react, so I kept her talking, asking in a matter-of-fact way how exactly her mother would administer the blows."
Often with local help, the Germans killed nearly 1.5 million Jews in Ukraine after their invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941. Most of that history has gone untold. Unlike in Poland, where Jews were killed in death camps, in the Soviet Union most were mowed down and dumped into open mass graves in woodlands.
"I understand those who ask if Ukrainians and Poles were willing allies in the extermination of Jews," he says. "But I don't ask myself that, since most people I interview were children at the time. I'm only concerned with reconstructing the crime and knowing where the bodies are."
Desbois says one of his most surprising discoveries is institutionalized sexual slavery.
In several interviews, he found witnesses who said German soldiers would set up houses in ghettos where they raped Jewish women. The Germans and their accomplices usually executed the women near the end of the war.
This discovery challenged perceptions that ideologically-motivated Germans would not sexually exploit a member of what the Nazis termed an inferior race.Such accomplishments landed Desbois an honorary doctorate last week from Bar-Ilan University.
He says he arrives at a small town with five researchers and an interpreter. One approaches elderly people, who often lead the team to unmarked mass graves.
He began working in Ukraine in 2002, when he traveled to the village of Rava-Ruska. He went there in the footsteps of his paternal grandfather, who was deported to a prison camp for French soldiers.
Having researched the fate of French prisoners, Desbois discovered that 10,000 Jews had been killed at Rava-Ruska, but the town's mayor said he knew nothing.
So far, Desbois' organization has interviewed nearly 1,000 witnesses. His team has dug up mass graves only in one locale, at the request of the French Jewish community: "We do not uncover graves because of Jewish religious restrictions."
For the witnesses, the return to the killing ground is often the first time back in decades. "There, they recall more details," Desbois says. "Where the Germans stood, where this or that family was gunned down, a woman who couldn't walk and was dragged to the killing pit, or a woman who wouldn't take her clothes off."
Debois says easterners are more eager to talk about the Holocaust than westerners.
"People in Ukraine want to talk. They wait on benches to be interviewed and filmed. They take us to grave sites, they welcome us into their homes - homes that used to belong to Jews," he says. "
Imagine what would happen if I went around churches in Munich asking people if they helped kill Jews?"
Not another John Paul II
According to Father Patrick Desbois, the disappointment with the pope's speech at Yad Vashem -which officials at the memorial authority described as "lacking compassion" and "too general" - stems from a misunderstanding of the Holy See.
"People were expecting another Pope John Paul II. But Benedict is very different," Desbois says.
After teaching mathematics as a French government employee in West Africa and working in Calcutta for three months with Mother Teresa, Desbois joined the priesthood. His secular family was horrified.
When he first began researching the extermination of Jews in the former Soviet Union, he preferred to keep it a secret for a long time.
"A priest, a goy, a Catholic who does what I do.... I was afraid people would call me a fool," he says.
Free through the world your spirit goes. The Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse: Commission Report
"I will not yield, I will not fall, I will eat dynamity and one day I will explode like a volcano"
The Commission’s Report will be published at 2.30pm on Wednesday, 20th May, 2009. The Report and Executive Summary will be posted to our website at that time. The Report, in hard copy, will consist of 5 volumes and will also be available on a single disk. Any further updates will be posted to our website.
...
"The peaceful night that round me flows,
breaks through your iron prison doors,
free through the world your spirit goes,
forbidden hands are clasping yours.
The wind is our confederate
the night has left the doors ajar;
we meet beyond earth's barred gate,
where all the world's wild rebels are."
Eva Gore-Boothuit
The Commission’s Report will be published at 2.30pm on Wednesday, 20th May, 2009. The Report and Executive Summary will be posted to our website at that time. The Report, in hard copy, will consist of 5 volumes and will also be available on a single disk. Any further updates will be posted to our website.
...
"The peaceful night that round me flows,
breaks through your iron prison doors,
free through the world your spirit goes,
forbidden hands are clasping yours.
The wind is our confederate
the night has left the doors ajar;
we meet beyond earth's barred gate,
where all the world's wild rebels are."
Eva Gore-Boothuit
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.
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.
dinsdag, mei 19, 2009
Ireland braces for report on Catholic child abuse; maak je borst maar nat.
RITE AND REASON: The long-awaited report of the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse is to be published tomorrow. One of the first former residents to go public on her experiences in the Goldenbridge institution reflects on events of recent decades, writes
CHRISTINE BUCKLEY
Christine Buckley is director of the Aislinn education and support centre at Jervis House in Dublin
By SHAWN POGATCHNIK – 3 hours ago
DUBLIN (AP) — For decades, thousands of Irish children suffered soul-crushing lives of forced labor, beatings and molestation in spartan institutions run by Roman Catholic religious orders. Campaigners for the abused believe that a measure of justice may finally be arriving — despite the church's best efforts to keep the past a secret.
The Commission to Inquire Into Child Abuse is publishing a 2,575-page report Wednesday after a nine-year investigation repeatedly delayed by church lawsuits, missing documentation and alleged government obstruction.
Its experts have sought to produce a comprehensive portrait of sexual, physical and emotional damage inflicted on children consigned to the country's defunct network of reformatories, workhouses, orphanages and other church-run institutions from the 1930s to 1990s.
Most of the children were ordered into church care because of school truancy, petty crimes or because they were the offspring of unwed mothers. Many faced regimes of terror involving ritual beatings and intimidation. But until the investigation came along, thousands of survivors said they had nowhere safe to tell their stories — because swathes of Irish Catholic society sought to label them liars.
Some of those victims say they feel hopeful now that vindication might be at hand.
Christine Buckley, who was one of the first to break silence in the early 1990s on the church's institutional abuse of children, said the report's verdict on church and government failings should demonstrate "whether the journey for justice, undertaken by so many and for so long, has at last been successful."
She, like many campaigners, said it was critical that the truth of their brutal childhoods be placed indisputably on the public record after decades of dispute from the religious orders — principally the Christian Brothers and Sisters of Mercy nuns — that ran Ireland's 19th century-era industrial schools and other state-funded refugees for Ireland's most vulnerable children. Most closed in the 1970s.
Typically, children at such facilities stopped receiving any formal education by age 12. But they kept generating income for the religious orders through their teens with their mandatory, unpaid labor on farms, in laundries and as domestic cleaners.
In Buckley's case, she was consigned to a Dublin orphanage in the late 1950s because she was the child of a single Irish mother and Nigerian father; children born out of wedlock typically were placed for adoption or into state care. All the girls at her former Sisters of Mercy-run home, Goldenbridge, were expected to manufacture 60 rosary necklaces a day or suffer humiliation or beatings.
Officials of the Sisters of Mercy, Christian Brothers and more than a dozen other orders implicated in sexual, physical and emotional abuse of children all testified to the commission. None was willing to comment this week in advance of the report's unveiling.
During the commission's investigations, oral evidence was collected from more than 1,000 people chiefly in their 50s to 70s — several hundred of whom traveled back to Ireland from as far away as the United States and Australia — who described childhoods of terror and intimidation.
The Christian Brothers delayed the investigation for more than a year with a lawsuit that successfully defended their members' right to anonymity in all references in the report — even in cases where individual Christian Brothers have already been convicted of sexual and physical attacks on children.
The Catholic Church's practice of protecting the sexual predators in their parishes and schools, rather than the children who suffered at their hands, has fanned several waves of outrage in once-devout Ireland starting in the mid-1990s.
The damage done to the church's reputation here has exceeded, in scope and political impact, even what happened in the United States, which suffered its own wave of abuse-coverup scandals in the past decade.
Ireland's first major pedophile-priest scandal, in 1994, triggered the collapse of a government. In 1999 former Prime Minister Bertie Ahern issued an apology for the state's failure over decades to defend children's rights in church-run facilities.
Ahern established both the fact-finding commission and a panel that has already paid out damages averaging nearly euro65,000 ($90,000) each to 12,000 abuse victims. The taxpayer, not the church, has footed most of that bill.
"The depth and duration of the abuse endured by our children in these institutions beggars belief," said Maeve Lewis, executive director of an abuse-victims support group called One in Four.
CHRISTINE BUCKLEY
TWENTY-FIVE years ago I started what seems now a fairly simple investigation to find out who my parents were. Perhaps, I thought, if they were still alive 37years after my birth, I might even meet them. Little did I know that thousands of other people would be inspired by that investigation and the spin-off from it
– some to undertake similar voyages of self-discovery and others to go beyond this through counselling support and education to develop renewed selves.
In 1985 I found my birth mother and three years later I travelled to
Nigeria to meet my father. There, I told him about my life in Goldenbridge
Industrial School (at Inchicore in Dublin) and how I intended to go public about
the horrors of that place once he returned to Ireland to meet my children.
In 1992 Dad duly arrived and his old friend Gay Byrne invited both of us
to tell our story on RTÉ Radio. Many might have thought that would be the end of it, with maybe a book, possibly titled Daughter Finds Parents, which would close
with an almost fairytale ending as we could all live happily ever after. But thousands of others wanted help to undertake similar investigations and wrote
and phoned Gay Byrne and me asking for our help. Their stories demonstrated how many children, several with the collusion of the judiciary, were incarcerated in
industrial schools to undertake slave labour in order to swell the coffers of
the religious congregations.
Not alone were many deprived of any knowledge of their parents, but their sense of self-worth was corroded by inhumane treatment and neglect. “School” was a complete misnomer. While I was one of the few fortunate ones to receive a secondary education, and subsequently qualified as a nurse, most didn’t even get a decent primary school education.
These institutions have been the subject of a major and lengthy investigation by the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse, which is to report tomorrow.
After the overwhelming response to the Gay Byrne radio interview, a senior member of the Mercy congregation apologised on the airwaves and agreed to meet me to discuss funding a counselling service for a handful of women who were with me in Goldenbridge. Alas, that promise was not realised.
It was those following years of delay, exacerbated by the denials or
dismissals by the religious and their apologists in the lay world, as well as
elements in the media, which meant that further, more telling evidence was
required.
For this reason I agreed to Louis Lentin’s invitation to participate in his 1996 TV documentary Dear Daughter . While Louis intended, as the title suggests, focusing onmy story and highlighting the fairytale ending, I persuaded him to incorporate the harrowing tales of other brave women in Goldenbridge.
This was designed to demonstrate that it wasn’t just one
person’s experience. Sadly, two of those women have since died. Yet again the scale of the response widened with many more people speaking out against the way
the Sisters of Mercy and other religious congregations treated children. They also provided evidence that the mistreatment was not confined to the Sisters of
Mercy but was perpetrated by a number of religious orders.
The Sisters of Mercy set up the Faoiseamh helpline But such was the response of religious sympathisers that RTÉ acquiesced and broadcast one of the most one-sided Prime Time programmes in its history, which included interviews with a Sister of Mercy held responsible for ill-treatment, and her sympathisers.
RTÉ refused me a right of reply in studio despite my co-operation with the producer. Such a right of reply was given to the Sisters of Mercy in our Dear Daughter programme.
Notwithstanding that, a “One Happy Day” reunion took place in the RDS
with the support of two Goldenbridge woman, Carmel McDonnell-Byrne and
Bernadette Fahy as well as wonderful volunteers from the general public. The day
was magnificent and shocking. Yet again further evidence would be necessary.
In the meantime, over those years I met politicians from the three main political parties to seek help for those who had contacted me.
My requests ranged from seeking an inquiry to finding out what went on and why in
those institutions, as well as to the provision of counselling and education for
victims of abuse.
Austin Currie, then minister for children in John Bruton’s government found excuses to avoid meetings, as has his fellow Northerner, President Mary McAleese. Perhaps it’s because of what Northern Catholics have suffered that they seem to be find it more difficult to believe what we suffered at the hands of the religious in the Republic.
In contrast, even in opposition and then when in power, former taoiseach Bertie Ahern and Micheál Martin, then minister for education. were willing to meet, listen and believe. Meanwhile, broadcaster and journalist Mary Raftery had been in contact with me and I assisted her in meeting people who were willing to be interviewed for her series States of Fear. It was supported by the book Suffer Little Children ,
written by Mary and TCD lecturer Eoin O’Sullivan. In response to that programme Ahern issued a historic apology on behalf of the State, on May 11th, 1999, which at last provided the vindication that the State, which had sought to brush us under the carpet, finally acknowledged what we suffered.
He also set up the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse, a nationwide counselling
service, and the Residential Institutions Redress Board. Self-helpgroups such as the Aislinn Centre, Right of Place in Cork and centres in Britain were established to assist fellow survivors.
Other services soon followed. These included the National office for Victims of Abuse (Nova); the Origins Tracing Service in Barnardos, to enable people access personal details about their childhoods and to assist them in tracings parents, and siblings who were sadly often separated on committal; and the Education Finance Board. It was set up (as part of the State indemnity agreement with the religious congregations) to financially assist former inmates and their relatives in availing of educational services. Nova also set up a helpline counselling service.
In the 2004 Baltimore Fishing School report, former chair of the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse Ms Justice Mary Laffoy, concluded “that victims accounts were credible” and described conditions at Baltimore as “so harsh and deprived by the standards of today as to verge on the unbelievable”. There are dark days ahead
as we await Mr Justice Seán Ryan’s findings tomorrow.
To promote healing, it is important to learn why abuses occurred and who was responsible. It is also anticipated that Mr JusticeRyan’s report will include recommendations for the safeguarding of children in care. But recommendations mean nothing unless they are implemented and strictly adhered to with frequent
unannounced inspections. Otherwise we could be revisiting a similar chapter of institutional child abuse in years to come.
What we find out tomorrow will indicate whether the journey for justice, undertaken by so many and for so long, has at last been successful.
Christine Buckley is director of the Aislinn education and support centre at Jervis House in Dublin
By SHAWN POGATCHNIK – 3 hours ago
DUBLIN (AP) — For decades, thousands of Irish children suffered soul-crushing lives of forced labor, beatings and molestation in spartan institutions run by Roman Catholic religious orders. Campaigners for the abused believe that a measure of justice may finally be arriving — despite the church's best efforts to keep the past a secret.
The Commission to Inquire Into Child Abuse is publishing a 2,575-page report Wednesday after a nine-year investigation repeatedly delayed by church lawsuits, missing documentation and alleged government obstruction.
Its experts have sought to produce a comprehensive portrait of sexual, physical and emotional damage inflicted on children consigned to the country's defunct network of reformatories, workhouses, orphanages and other church-run institutions from the 1930s to 1990s.
Most of the children were ordered into church care because of school truancy, petty crimes or because they were the offspring of unwed mothers. Many faced regimes of terror involving ritual beatings and intimidation. But until the investigation came along, thousands of survivors said they had nowhere safe to tell their stories — because swathes of Irish Catholic society sought to label them liars.
Some of those victims say they feel hopeful now that vindication might be at hand.
Christine Buckley, who was one of the first to break silence in the early 1990s on the church's institutional abuse of children, said the report's verdict on church and government failings should demonstrate "whether the journey for justice, undertaken by so many and for so long, has at last been successful."
She, like many campaigners, said it was critical that the truth of their brutal childhoods be placed indisputably on the public record after decades of dispute from the religious orders — principally the Christian Brothers and Sisters of Mercy nuns — that ran Ireland's 19th century-era industrial schools and other state-funded refugees for Ireland's most vulnerable children. Most closed in the 1970s.
Typically, children at such facilities stopped receiving any formal education by age 12. But they kept generating income for the religious orders through their teens with their mandatory, unpaid labor on farms, in laundries and as domestic cleaners.
In Buckley's case, she was consigned to a Dublin orphanage in the late 1950s because she was the child of a single Irish mother and Nigerian father; children born out of wedlock typically were placed for adoption or into state care. All the girls at her former Sisters of Mercy-run home, Goldenbridge, were expected to manufacture 60 rosary necklaces a day or suffer humiliation or beatings.
Officials of the Sisters of Mercy, Christian Brothers and more than a dozen other orders implicated in sexual, physical and emotional abuse of children all testified to the commission. None was willing to comment this week in advance of the report's unveiling.
During the commission's investigations, oral evidence was collected from more than 1,000 people chiefly in their 50s to 70s — several hundred of whom traveled back to Ireland from as far away as the United States and Australia — who described childhoods of terror and intimidation.
The Christian Brothers delayed the investigation for more than a year with a lawsuit that successfully defended their members' right to anonymity in all references in the report — even in cases where individual Christian Brothers have already been convicted of sexual and physical attacks on children.
The Catholic Church's practice of protecting the sexual predators in their parishes and schools, rather than the children who suffered at their hands, has fanned several waves of outrage in once-devout Ireland starting in the mid-1990s.
The damage done to the church's reputation here has exceeded, in scope and political impact, even what happened in the United States, which suffered its own wave of abuse-coverup scandals in the past decade.
Ireland's first major pedophile-priest scandal, in 1994, triggered the collapse of a government. In 1999 former Prime Minister Bertie Ahern issued an apology for the state's failure over decades to defend children's rights in church-run facilities.
Ahern established both the fact-finding commission and a panel that has already paid out damages averaging nearly euro65,000 ($90,000) each to 12,000 abuse victims. The taxpayer, not the church, has footed most of that bill.
"The depth and duration of the abuse endured by our children in these institutions beggars belief," said Maeve Lewis, executive director of an abuse-victims support group called One in Four.
maandag, mei 18, 2009
The end of a decade of inquiry
The Child Abuse Commission will next week deliver its final report, but the greatest difficulty it has faced is the sheer scale of the abuse it was established to investigate, writes MARY RAFTERY
Mary Raftery’s book Suffer The Little Children , co-written with Dr Eoin O’Sullivan, is published by New Island
A DECADE AFTER it was established, the Child Abuse Commission is at last to produce its final report next week. After so many years, and an estimated cost of more than €70 million, it has been one of the most secret and arguably the most controversial of the many tribunals of inquiry. The Commission’s initial presiding judge resigned in protest at the behaviour of one of the government departments under investigation. It has produced a few sensations in its time, but given that most of its hearings have been strictly in private, much is riding on its final report.
Thousands of victims of abuse look to it for ultimate vindication of the truth of the trauma they suffered as children. Equally, the religious orders that ran the schools and children’s institutions under inquiry hope that it will provide a balance by validating their own testimony of the good work they did for children who, they argue, would otherwise have been destitute.
The commission’s 2003 Interim Report provides a vivid reminder of what is at issue here. It summarised the testimony of more than 700 witnesses who had at that point given evidence to its confidential committee. Hundreds described “being beaten on every part of their body: the front and back of hands, wrists, legs, back, buttocks, head, face and feet. Some beatings were administered in public and witnesses reported that they were sometimes made to remove all their clothing for these public beatings.”
The commission listed weapons used, leather straps, together with “a variety of sticks and other instruments including ash plants, blackthorn sticks, brush handles, pointers, farm implements, drain rods, rubber tyres, fan belts, horse tackle, sliotars and hurling sticks”.
Sexual abuse is described as being commonly associated with physical violence and “ranged from detailed interrogation about sexual activity, inspection of genitalia, kissing, fondling of genitalia, masturbation of witness by abuser and vice versa, oral intercourse, rape and gang rape. Witnesses described their sexual abuse as sometimes a single event while for others the abuse lasted for their entire stay in the institution.”
The commission has also heard extensive testimony of severe emotional and psychological abuse, together with neglect and starvation. Its final conclusions next week will incorporate the evidence of roughly 2,500 people who suffered abuse in this country’s children’s institutions during most of the 20th century. It is expected that it will produce specific findings in respect of a number of named schools, hospitals and institutions in towns all over Ireland.
Amongst the religious orders under investigation are the Sisters of Mercy, responsible for the largest number of childrens institutions including Goldenbridge, and the Christian Brothers, the largest provider of institutions for older boys from 10 to 16 years including schools at Artane and Letterfrack.
Also investigated were the Oblates of Mary Immaculate who ran St Conleths reformatory school in Daingean, Co Offaly, the Rosminians, the Sisters of Charity, the Good Shepherd Sisters, the Presentation Sisters, the Presentation Brothers, the Poor Clare Sisters, the Sisters of Our Lady of Charity of Refuge (who ran the industrial school and Magdalen Laundry at High Park in Dublin), the Daughters of Charity, and the Sisters of St Louis.
It is a process which has been fraught with controversy from the beginning. The system under inquiry was vast. It was run mainly by Catholic religious orders, with its funding coming entirely from the State, which also had an inspection and regulatory function. The commission is dealing with more than 100 institutions, from industrial schools to institutions for children with disabilities, as well as allegations of abuse in a number of ordinary day schools.
In addition to the scale of the task, a number of the key players proved distinctly unhelpful. The approach of the religious orders was described by the commission in 2003 as “adversarial and legalistic”. The Department of Education, whose duty it was to inspect and regulate the bulk of the institutions, was refusing at that time to cooperate fully with the commission’s demands for documents.
The relationship between the commission and the department worsened to the point where eventually the chairwoman, Justice Mary Laffoy, resigned in protest in late 2003. The process of inquiry had also become bogged down in a series of legal challenges by the religious orders, some of which threatened to fatally undermine its work.
TWO MAJOR PROBLEMS had emerged. The numbers applying to have their cases fully investigated, almost 2000, were simply too large. Most had made allegations of abuse against several individuals. The commission faced the appalling vista of presiding over literally thousands of mini-trials, each one taking potentially days or even weeks to conclude.
Justice Mary Laffoy was convinced that by increasing the commission’s resources, and through the creation of a number of divisions that could conduct hearings in parallel, it was still possible to have full hearings for all complainants and thus fulfil the government’s initial promise to victims.
Her resignation in the face of what she perceived as a lack of government cooperation effectively signalled a change in direction for the commission. The fear was that her replacement would turn out to be a rubber stamp for a government that had clearly become uncomfortable with the entire inquiry process.
This, however, was not what transpired. The appointment of Justice Seán Ryan as the new chairman was widely welcomed. He already had considerable expertise in the general area of child abuse, having been counsel to the Ferns Inquiry. He had also produced what is probably the most concise report on the background to institutional child abuse in Ireland, commissioned by the government in advance of setting up the Residential Institutions Redress Board (an entirely separate mechanism that deals with compensation for victims).
It was not long, though, before Justice Ryan ran into controversy. The same problems that had so dogged Mary Laffoy remained unchanged. Ryan’s solution was to select only a limited number of cases for full hearing, a compromise that was heavily criticised by victims’ support groups.
Nonetheless, this had the effect of unblocking the procedures and allowed the inquiry to proceed. Some 1,300 victims remained determined to stick with the investigative process, and Justice Ryan gave a commitment that each would at least be interviewed and provide a written statement that would be used to inform the ultimate findings.
The second major obstacle concerned the naming by the commission of individuals responsible for child abuse. This was part of the original remit, but was vehemently opposed by the religious orders, one of whom (the Christian Brothers) had initiated a court challenge on the issue.
Given the relatively small number of convictions for abuse within the institutions, victims argued that the commission provided the last real chance for them to secure some form of justice by at least exposing those responsible for causing them so much pain. The religious congregations for their part asserted that many of their members concerned were deceased or elderly and infirm, making it impossible for them to mount an effective defence.
In order to again unblock the process, Justice Ryan announced in 2004 that the commission would no longer be naming any individuals who had not already been convicted in court. The Christian Brothers immediately dropped their court challenge, and within days produced the most dramatic revelation of the commission public hearings – namely that they had unearthed evidence of 30 cases of proven sexual abuse of boys by Brothers since the 1930s.
Again, the decision to no longer name and shame has been severely criticised by victims, who feel with some justification that the commission has had its teeth pulled. Justice Sean Ryan, in his justification, argues that, given the rights of each alleged perpetrator to his or her good name, every allegation has the potential to become almost a full-blown trial, making the entire process unmanageable.
The commission was a response to the tidal wave of public anger in the wake of the States of Fear documentaries. It made promises to victims that it was unable to keep. The commission might no longer fulfil its original commitment to reflect fully the experiences of all who testified before it, or even to expose the perpetrators, but at least it has survived the myriad legal and political challenges that had threatened to drown it.
It will be judged by the standard set by Sean Ryan himself, when he said in 2004 that “the vision I have of this inquiry is that it can analyse and understand and explain what happened in the past; it can ascribe responsibility for that – admittedly at a level of some generality – but nevertheless specifying institutions and identifying failures on the part of official bodies where appropriate; it can comment on public and political and social attitudes and on events and policies that underlay those attitudes . . . it can ask how those events can be related to the present; and it can produce recommendations which will have an impact on the treatment of children in care in our modern times”.
From documentary to inquiry: how allegations of child abuse have come to light
Mary Raftery’s book Suffer The Little Children , co-written with Dr Eoin O’Sullivan, is published by New Island
A DECADE AFTER it was established, the Child Abuse Commission is at last to produce its final report next week. After so many years, and an estimated cost of more than €70 million, it has been one of the most secret and arguably the most controversial of the many tribunals of inquiry. The Commission’s initial presiding judge resigned in protest at the behaviour of one of the government departments under investigation. It has produced a few sensations in its time, but given that most of its hearings have been strictly in private, much is riding on its final report.
Thousands of victims of abuse look to it for ultimate vindication of the truth of the trauma they suffered as children. Equally, the religious orders that ran the schools and children’s institutions under inquiry hope that it will provide a balance by validating their own testimony of the good work they did for children who, they argue, would otherwise have been destitute.
The commission’s 2003 Interim Report provides a vivid reminder of what is at issue here. It summarised the testimony of more than 700 witnesses who had at that point given evidence to its confidential committee. Hundreds described “being beaten on every part of their body: the front and back of hands, wrists, legs, back, buttocks, head, face and feet. Some beatings were administered in public and witnesses reported that they were sometimes made to remove all their clothing for these public beatings.”
The commission listed weapons used, leather straps, together with “a variety of sticks and other instruments including ash plants, blackthorn sticks, brush handles, pointers, farm implements, drain rods, rubber tyres, fan belts, horse tackle, sliotars and hurling sticks”.
Sexual abuse is described as being commonly associated with physical violence and “ranged from detailed interrogation about sexual activity, inspection of genitalia, kissing, fondling of genitalia, masturbation of witness by abuser and vice versa, oral intercourse, rape and gang rape. Witnesses described their sexual abuse as sometimes a single event while for others the abuse lasted for their entire stay in the institution.”
The commission has also heard extensive testimony of severe emotional and psychological abuse, together with neglect and starvation. Its final conclusions next week will incorporate the evidence of roughly 2,500 people who suffered abuse in this country’s children’s institutions during most of the 20th century. It is expected that it will produce specific findings in respect of a number of named schools, hospitals and institutions in towns all over Ireland.
Amongst the religious orders under investigation are the Sisters of Mercy, responsible for the largest number of childrens institutions including Goldenbridge, and the Christian Brothers, the largest provider of institutions for older boys from 10 to 16 years including schools at Artane and Letterfrack.
Also investigated were the Oblates of Mary Immaculate who ran St Conleths reformatory school in Daingean, Co Offaly, the Rosminians, the Sisters of Charity, the Good Shepherd Sisters, the Presentation Sisters, the Presentation Brothers, the Poor Clare Sisters, the Sisters of Our Lady of Charity of Refuge (who ran the industrial school and Magdalen Laundry at High Park in Dublin), the Daughters of Charity, and the Sisters of St Louis.
It is a process which has been fraught with controversy from the beginning. The system under inquiry was vast. It was run mainly by Catholic religious orders, with its funding coming entirely from the State, which also had an inspection and regulatory function. The commission is dealing with more than 100 institutions, from industrial schools to institutions for children with disabilities, as well as allegations of abuse in a number of ordinary day schools.
In addition to the scale of the task, a number of the key players proved distinctly unhelpful. The approach of the religious orders was described by the commission in 2003 as “adversarial and legalistic”. The Department of Education, whose duty it was to inspect and regulate the bulk of the institutions, was refusing at that time to cooperate fully with the commission’s demands for documents.
The relationship between the commission and the department worsened to the point where eventually the chairwoman, Justice Mary Laffoy, resigned in protest in late 2003. The process of inquiry had also become bogged down in a series of legal challenges by the religious orders, some of which threatened to fatally undermine its work.
TWO MAJOR PROBLEMS had emerged. The numbers applying to have their cases fully investigated, almost 2000, were simply too large. Most had made allegations of abuse against several individuals. The commission faced the appalling vista of presiding over literally thousands of mini-trials, each one taking potentially days or even weeks to conclude.
Justice Mary Laffoy was convinced that by increasing the commission’s resources, and through the creation of a number of divisions that could conduct hearings in parallel, it was still possible to have full hearings for all complainants and thus fulfil the government’s initial promise to victims.
Her resignation in the face of what she perceived as a lack of government cooperation effectively signalled a change in direction for the commission. The fear was that her replacement would turn out to be a rubber stamp for a government that had clearly become uncomfortable with the entire inquiry process.
This, however, was not what transpired. The appointment of Justice Seán Ryan as the new chairman was widely welcomed. He already had considerable expertise in the general area of child abuse, having been counsel to the Ferns Inquiry. He had also produced what is probably the most concise report on the background to institutional child abuse in Ireland, commissioned by the government in advance of setting up the Residential Institutions Redress Board (an entirely separate mechanism that deals with compensation for victims).
It was not long, though, before Justice Ryan ran into controversy. The same problems that had so dogged Mary Laffoy remained unchanged. Ryan’s solution was to select only a limited number of cases for full hearing, a compromise that was heavily criticised by victims’ support groups.
Nonetheless, this had the effect of unblocking the procedures and allowed the inquiry to proceed. Some 1,300 victims remained determined to stick with the investigative process, and Justice Ryan gave a commitment that each would at least be interviewed and provide a written statement that would be used to inform the ultimate findings.
The second major obstacle concerned the naming by the commission of individuals responsible for child abuse. This was part of the original remit, but was vehemently opposed by the religious orders, one of whom (the Christian Brothers) had initiated a court challenge on the issue.
Given the relatively small number of convictions for abuse within the institutions, victims argued that the commission provided the last real chance for them to secure some form of justice by at least exposing those responsible for causing them so much pain. The religious congregations for their part asserted that many of their members concerned were deceased or elderly and infirm, making it impossible for them to mount an effective defence.
In order to again unblock the process, Justice Ryan announced in 2004 that the commission would no longer be naming any individuals who had not already been convicted in court. The Christian Brothers immediately dropped their court challenge, and within days produced the most dramatic revelation of the commission public hearings – namely that they had unearthed evidence of 30 cases of proven sexual abuse of boys by Brothers since the 1930s.
Again, the decision to no longer name and shame has been severely criticised by victims, who feel with some justification that the commission has had its teeth pulled. Justice Sean Ryan, in his justification, argues that, given the rights of each alleged perpetrator to his or her good name, every allegation has the potential to become almost a full-blown trial, making the entire process unmanageable.
The commission was a response to the tidal wave of public anger in the wake of the States of Fear documentaries. It made promises to victims that it was unable to keep. The commission might no longer fulfil its original commitment to reflect fully the experiences of all who testified before it, or even to expose the perpetrators, but at least it has survived the myriad legal and political challenges that had threatened to drown it.
It will be judged by the standard set by Sean Ryan himself, when he said in 2004 that “the vision I have of this inquiry is that it can analyse and understand and explain what happened in the past; it can ascribe responsibility for that – admittedly at a level of some generality – but nevertheless specifying institutions and identifying failures on the part of official bodies where appropriate; it can comment on public and political and social attitudes and on events and policies that underlay those attitudes . . . it can ask how those events can be related to the present; and it can produce recommendations which will have an impact on the treatment of children in care in our modern times”.
From documentary to inquiry: how allegations of child abuse have come to light
1996
Dear Daughter, RTÉ documentary (produced by Louis Lentin) details abuse suffered by Christine Buckley and others at St Vincent’s Industrial School, Goldenbridge, Dublin.
April/May 1999
States of Fear, an RTÉ documentary series (produced by Mary Raftery) on the abuse suffered by children throughout the entire childcare system during the 20th century (industrial and reformatory schools, residential institutions for children with physical and intellectual disabilities, and modern childcare facilities) is broadcast.
May 1999
Taoiseach Bertie Ahern apologises on behalf of the State to victims of child abuse, and announces a Commission of Inquiry and a national counselling service.
May 1999
Ms Justice Mary Laffoy is appointed to head the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse.
May 2000
Legislation is passed to establish the commission on a statutory basis.
October 2000
The government agrees to compensate victims of institutional child abuse. The Residential Institutions Redress Board is eventually established in December 2002.
July 2001
Deadline for receipt of complaints of abuse to the commission. 3,149 people apply to testify before the Commission. Of these, 1,957 request a full hearing before the Investigation Committee. The remainder (1,192) opt for the non-adversarial Confidential Committee hearings.
December 2003
Justice Mary Laffoy resigns as chairwoman of the commission. Sean Ryan SC is appointed a High Court judge and the new chairman.
June 2004
Justice Sean Ryan announces that the commission no longer intends to name anyone responsible for abuse, other than those already convicted by the courts.
June 2004
The Christian Brothers drops its legal actions against the commission.
July 2004
The Christian Brothers testify at the commission public hearing that files only recently discovered in its Rome-based archive show evidence of 30 canonical trials of brothers on foot of proven incidents of child sexual abuse against boys in their care from the 1930s onwards.
2005/2006
Private hearings continue , together with a number of public hearings of testimony from religious orders.
May 2009
The publication date for the commissions final report
Bishop criticises Monageer report
THE AUXILIARY Bishop of Dublin and former apostolic administrator of Ferns has criticised the limited disclosure of the report into the deaths of the Dunne family in Monageer, Co Wexford.
Adrian (29) and Ciara Dunne (24) were found dead, along with their children Leanne (5) and Shania (3), at their home in Monageer in April 2007.
The Dunnes came to the attention of gardaí and social workers shortly before their deaths after the parents made funeral arrangements for the family.
Reacting to comments by Minister for Children Barry Andrews that recommendations in the Monageer report were blacked out for legal reasons, as the inquiry was non-statutory, Bishop Eamonn Walsh said legal niceties should be left aside, adding “it would be best for everyone if everything was shown”. He added: “The Ferns report was non-statutory and I would be very upset if they hadn’t shown all the conclusions in that.”
Bishop Walsh was speaking following the launch of Colm O’Gorman’s book Beyond Belief, which details the clerical abuse he suffered as a boy. Bishop Walsh said: “He’s done the Catholic Church a service by coming forward.”
Adrian (29) and Ciara Dunne (24) were found dead, along with their children Leanne (5) and Shania (3), at their home in Monageer in April 2007.
The Dunnes came to the attention of gardaí and social workers shortly before their deaths after the parents made funeral arrangements for the family.
Reacting to comments by Minister for Children Barry Andrews that recommendations in the Monageer report were blacked out for legal reasons, as the inquiry was non-statutory, Bishop Eamonn Walsh said legal niceties should be left aside, adding “it would be best for everyone if everything was shown”. He added: “The Ferns report was non-statutory and I would be very upset if they hadn’t shown all the conclusions in that.”
Bishop Walsh was speaking following the launch of Colm O’Gorman’s book Beyond Belief, which details the clerical abuse he suffered as a boy. Bishop Walsh said: “He’s done the Catholic Church a service by coming forward.”
zondag, mei 17, 2009
Ireland abuse inquiry report due; Is maith an scéalaí an aimsir. Dank jullie wel!
BBC news
Yvonne Murray
17 May 2009
Inquiries into alleged child abuse by Catholic orders in the Irish Republic are due to publish their findings.
The Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse, which was set up in 1999 after a TV documentary, reports on Wednesday.
A second report, to be published later this summer, is expected to criticise the handling of sex abuse complaints in cases involving up to 500 priests.
The commission has heard testimony from the residents of the state institutions where Ireland's poorest children, as well as the infants of unmarried mothers, were sent.
It was established following the airing of a documentary for Irish television on industrial schools, produced by Mary Raftery.
"There was widespread sexual abuse, particularly in the boys' institutions," she said.
"Extremely vicious and sadistic physical abuse, way off the scale, and horrific emotional abuse, designed to break the children.
"We had people talk to us about hearing screams... the screams of children in the night coming from these buildings and really not knowing what to do.
They didn't know to whom they could complain because the power in the town was the religious order running the institution."
The Archbishop of Dublin Diarmuid Martin, who is seen as a reformer, used his homily on Holy Thursday to warn the gathering of Ireland's senior clergymen that the report would "shock us all".
He said: "It is likely that thousands of children or young people across Ireland were abused by priests in the period under investigation and the horror of that abuse was not recognised for what it is."
Andrew Madden, who was the first victim of a paedophile priest
to come forward, said he was angry the state inquiry had taken so long.
'Too much power'
He said: "It is 14 years since I first went public about this practice the Catholic Church had of moving priests with a record of child abuse on to another parish which would give them further access to children.
"Only now is the state ready to publish a report into that practice... and then look at what it needs to do to change it."
Hele artikel
Maar hoe zeg je in godesnaam Dank je wel tegen die mensen, al die duizenden?
Door ze wijsheid en rust te wensen de komende weken?
Wees a.u.b. goed voor en dus voorzichtg met jezelf de komende tijden?
Of misschien wel Go bhfága Dia do shláinte agat.
May love and laughter light your days,and warm your heart and home.
May good and faithful friends be yours, wherever you may roam.
May peace and plenty bless your world with joy that long endures.
May life's passing seasons bring the best to you and yours!
Dank je wel!!
Voor wat zovelen ver buiten Ierland , voor wat ik én mijn kinderen, van en door jullie kreeg.
Is maith an scéalaí an aimsir.
Yvonne Murray
17 May 2009
Inquiries into alleged child abuse by Catholic orders in the Irish Republic are due to publish their findings.
The Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse, which was set up in 1999 after a TV documentary, reports on Wednesday.
A second report, to be published later this summer, is expected to criticise the handling of sex abuse complaints in cases involving up to 500 priests.
The commission has heard testimony from the residents of the state institutions where Ireland's poorest children, as well as the infants of unmarried mothers, were sent.
It was established following the airing of a documentary for Irish television on industrial schools, produced by Mary Raftery.
"There was widespread sexual abuse, particularly in the boys' institutions," she said.
"Extremely vicious and sadistic physical abuse, way off the scale, and horrific emotional abuse, designed to break the children.
"We had people talk to us about hearing screams... the screams of children in the night coming from these buildings and really not knowing what to do.
They didn't know to whom they could complain because the power in the town was the religious order running the institution."
The Archbishop of Dublin Diarmuid Martin, who is seen as a reformer, used his homily on Holy Thursday to warn the gathering of Ireland's senior clergymen that the report would "shock us all".
He said: "It is likely that thousands of children or young people across Ireland were abused by priests in the period under investigation and the horror of that abuse was not recognised for what it is."
Andrew Madden, who was the first victim of a paedophile priest
to come forward, said he was angry the state inquiry had taken so long.
'Too much power'
He said: "It is 14 years since I first went public about this practice the Catholic Church had of moving priests with a record of child abuse on to another parish which would give them further access to children.
"Only now is the state ready to publish a report into that practice... and then look at what it needs to do to change it."
Hele artikel
Maar hoe zeg je in godesnaam Dank je wel tegen die mensen, al die duizenden?
Door ze wijsheid en rust te wensen de komende weken?
Wees a.u.b. goed voor en dus voorzichtg met jezelf de komende tijden?
Of misschien wel Go bhfága Dia do shláinte agat.
May love and laughter light your days,and warm your heart and home.
May good and faithful friends be yours, wherever you may roam.
May peace and plenty bless your world with joy that long endures.
May life's passing seasons bring the best to you and yours!
Dank je wel!!
Voor wat zovelen ver buiten Ierland , voor wat ik én mijn kinderen, van en door jullie kreeg.
Is maith an scéalaí an aimsir.
zaterdag, mei 16, 2009
Weakland says he didn't know priests' abuse was crime
In the early years of the sex abuse scandal in Milwaukee, retired Archbishop Rembert G. Weakland says in his soon-to-be released memoir, he did not comprehend the potential harm to victims or understand that what the priests had done constituted a crime.
"We all considered sexual abuse of minors as a moral evil, but had no understanding of its criminal nature," Weakland says in the book, "A Pilgrim in a Pilgrim Church," due out in June.
Weakland said he initially "accepted naively the common view that it was not necessary to worry about the effects on the youngsters: either they would not remember or they would 'grow out of it.' "
Clergy victims reacted angrily to the revelation.
"It's beyond belief. He's either lying or he's so self-deceived that he's inventing fanciful stories," said Peter Isely, Midwest director for the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, or SNAP.
"These have always been crimes."
Weakland's handling of the clergy sex abuse scandal is just one chapter in the wide-ranging memoir that recounts his childhood in the coal-mining region of Pennsylvania, his life as a Benedictine monk, his struggles with his own homosexuality, his strained relationship with Pope John Paul II and finally his public fall from grace in Milwaukee.
By Annysa Johnson of the Journal Sentinel
Posted: May. 15, 2009
Weakland retired in 2002 after it became known that he paid $450,000 in 1998 to a man who had accused him of date rape years earlier.
Weakland has declined to be interviewed by the Journal Sentinel.
Weakland said in the book that he eventually came to question the notion that victims would forget or "grow out of" the trauma induced by abuse.
"My general reasoning was that there were probably some kids who 'grew out of it,' and then some who were deeply disturbed for life," he wrote.
SNAP this week issued an open letter asking Weakland to meet with victims.
Weakland responded Friday by saying he would seriously consider it.
"We've been trying to get this from him for 15 years," Isely said.
Clericalism, Religious Duress and its Psychological Impact on Victims of Clergy Sexual Abuse
Marianne Benkert and Thomas P. Doyle
Abstract: Religious duress is a unique kind of threat and constraint involuntarily experienced by some members of the Roman Catholic Church as a result of religious indoctrination and training. Fear, awe and respect for the clergy foster the development and actualization of religious duress. This phenomenon can seriously impede a person’s capacity to accurately perceive and evaluate abusive actions perpetrated on them by clergy. This constraint poses an impediment to emotional and spiritual development. Internalized religious duress confuses and psychologically overwhelms such individuals and renders them incapable of absorbing their sexual trauma. The consequent feelings of numbness and immobility distort the perception of reality. It then becomes impossible for the individual to act in a manner that would protect and promote emotional growth and spiritual well being.
Published online: januari 2009
Archbishop's book details lifelong journey, struggle with sexuality
Zonder het gelezen te hebben: petje af voor zijn keuzes.
Een boek wat hij, gezien zijn verhaal en overige beschikbare informatie maar beter (ook) online had kunnen zetten.
By Brian T. Olszewski
Catholic News Service
ST. FRANCIS, Wis. (CNS) -- In his new book, "A Pilgrim in a Pilgrim Church: Memoirs of a Catholic Archbishop," retired Archbishop Rembert G. Weakland of Milwaukee details aspects of his life from birth to retirement.
In the prologue the 82-year-old archbishop explains why he wrote the 384-page book, set to be released by Eerdmans Publishing May 29: "I am internally propelled to share with those I love and served for so many years a fuller story than I was able to tell in May 2002 when I apologized publicly to them.
"That 2002 apology followed revelations that Archbishop Weakland had paid $450,000 in archdiocesan funds to Paul Marcoux, a man with whom he had a sexual relationship in 1979.In a statement on its Web site, the Milwaukee Archdiocese said the book "will undoubtedly spark a variety of emotions in Catholics throughout southeastern Wisconsin. Some people will be angry about the book, others will support it."
"The Archdiocese of Milwaukee continues to pray for the needs and intentions of all those who experienced this difficult time," the statement added.
Archbishop Weakland said the decision to write his memoirs was primarily "rooted in a religious motivation."
"It is embedded in my concept of the church's nature and as a communion of believers on a faith journey, a communion of saints (few in number) and of sinners (most of us)," he said in the prologue. "My story affects everyone else's story and thus, at least in part, belongs to them.
"In the epilogue, he returns to why he has written his memoirs, adding that he "often had a front seat" in the church and world history that parallels his life.
Noting concern about "revisionism" that he detected particularly when people were writing about the years of Pope Paul VI's pontificate, the archbishop wrote, "I have thought it important to say how I, as one individual, saw what was happening then. True, it is only one believer's experience, but, I hope, one worth sharing and saving for posterity."
The story wends from his childhood and Benedictine vocation in western Pennsylvania to his rise to the leadership of the Benedictines. At age 36, he was elected archabbot for life of St. Vincent Archabbey in Latrobe, Pa. While he was ascending in the community, the Second Vatican Council was under way.
He recalls his enthusiasm for Pope John XXIII's opening talk and writes, "Can anyone fault those of us who expected the council to usher in a new era for the church as it looked at its heritage, tried to renew and update itself, and then contribute to a better world?"Archbishop Weakland adds that during the council he changed his "image of God from that of enforcing policeman to one of a loving and caring parent."
In 1967, the Benedictines, while meeting in Rome, elected him the fifth abbot primate -- head of the Benedictine order. In that role he visited Benedictine communities throughout the world and would regularly meet with Pope Paul VI, whom he describes as having "a monastic soul and sensitivity.
"But it was also during his time as abbot primate that Archbishop Weakland began to experience his sexual awakening and orientation, at age 45, and consider the ramifications of a celibate life.
"I never doubted my vocation or the significance of the vows I took; but now I had to see them in a new light, namely, not as the avoidance of sin and evil, but as a new way of living the Gospel of love that Jesus Christ preached. I wanted to be a person who lived by love not fear," he writes.
In 1977 he struggled with Pope Paul's personal request that he become archbishop of Milwaukee. "I never wanted to be a bishop, otherwise I would never have become a Benedictine," he writes. Yet "how could I refuse the personal wish of the pope and still be at peace with myself?"
His relationship with the Vatican during the papacy of Pope John Paul II was not easy."On every ad limina trip without exception, I noticed that I would be singled out -- the other bishops were never aware of this -- and told to meet with" the heads of various Vatican offices, Archbishop Weakland writes. "Upon arrival in their offices, I would be presented with a list of complaints.
These were actions or decisions of mine that seemed to irritate the pope and members of the Curia."Four years into his episcopacy, Archbishop Weakland was asked to chair the U.S. bishops' committee responsible for drafting the pastoral letter "Economic Justice for All." He terms the experience "one of the most important and formative periods of my life."
During the bishops' spring meeting at Collegeville, Minn., in 1988, Archbishop Weakland learned that the Vatican Congregation for Bishops had asked another U.S. archbishop to investigate him.
He writes that no one from the Vatican spoke to him about the outcome of that investigation during his ad limina visit in December 1988."Through it all, I retained a deep respect for the Holy Father as pope, but found little to love and admire in his style of treating people who disagreed with him," Archbishop Weakland writes. "I was convinced that he was indeed a very holy man, but not one without flaws."
Archbishop Weakland's prologue focuses on his 2002 apology "for the scandal that has occurred because of my sinfulness" and an explanation of his relationship with Marcoux, the $450,000 financial settlement paid to him in 1997 with archdiocesan funds, and the relationship and settlement being made public by Marcoux in 2002.
With money he earned from speaking and writing, and through funds raised by several of his friends, Archbishop Weakland repaid the $450,000 to the archdiocese. In a recent interview with TheAssociated Press, the archbishop said proceeds from the sale of his memoirs will be donated to the Milwaukee-based Catholic Community Foundation.
EXCLUSIVE: People React to Weakland Book
Mick Trevey
MILWAUKEE - People are speaking out about former Milwaukee Archbishop Rembert Weakland's new book. TODAY'S TMJ4 reporter Mick Trevey obtained an exclusive publisher's preview copy of the manuscript. In the book, Weakland writes about growing up in Pennsylvania and serving in Milwaukee for 25 years as Archbishop. He also talks frankly about the priest sex scandal and his own sexuality."It's a very painful thing," said priest sexual abuse victim John Pilmaier about the book. Weakland admits that priests were moved from parish to parish because of sex abuse cases. "Such a move would give the priest a chance to start over, and before 1985 this was common practice," he writes. He also writes that priests were give more attention than their victims. "In handling these cases, I had accepted naively the common view that it was not necessary to worry about the effects on the youngsters: either they would not remember it or would 'grow out of it'," Weakland wrote.John Pilmaier says that shows the Archdiocese disregarded the victims' futures saying, "I've told people it's a life sentence. It's not something you can just get over or grow out of."Weakland also writes that he did not see the sexual abuse as illegal. "We all considered sexual abuse of minors as a moral evil, but had no understanding of it's criminal nature," Weakland says in the book."It's like it hasn't happened yet for him. it hasn't occurred. It hasn't reached him," said Peter Isely of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests.
The book also has the attention of trial lawyers who believe the text could be used against the Archdiocese in lawsuits filed by abuse victims.
Attorney Ted Warshafsky says, "they're admissions that somebody who was in charge aided and abetted and continued a practice that was illegal."Attorney Robert Habush said, "that's an admission of fraud."
As to Weakland's belief that abuse victims would "grow out of it," Attorney Will Techmeier said he would make sure that was brought up in a trial. "I would want the jury to know about that," he said.Lawyers for the Archdiocese would not comment on the legal ramifications of Weakland's book because of pending litigation.
TODAY'S TMJ4 reporter Mick Trevey spoke with former Archbishop Rembert Weakland Friday afternoon. We declined to do an interview saying he wanted to let some of the attention "die down" first.
Een boek wat hij, gezien zijn verhaal en overige beschikbare informatie maar beter (ook) online had kunnen zetten.
By Brian T. Olszewski
Catholic News Service
ST. FRANCIS, Wis. (CNS) -- In his new book, "A Pilgrim in a Pilgrim Church: Memoirs of a Catholic Archbishop," retired Archbishop Rembert G. Weakland of Milwaukee details aspects of his life from birth to retirement.
In the prologue the 82-year-old archbishop explains why he wrote the 384-page book, set to be released by Eerdmans Publishing May 29: "I am internally propelled to share with those I love and served for so many years a fuller story than I was able to tell in May 2002 when I apologized publicly to them.
"That 2002 apology followed revelations that Archbishop Weakland had paid $450,000 in archdiocesan funds to Paul Marcoux, a man with whom he had a sexual relationship in 1979.In a statement on its Web site, the Milwaukee Archdiocese said the book "will undoubtedly spark a variety of emotions in Catholics throughout southeastern Wisconsin. Some people will be angry about the book, others will support it."
"The Archdiocese of Milwaukee continues to pray for the needs and intentions of all those who experienced this difficult time," the statement added.
Archbishop Weakland said the decision to write his memoirs was primarily "rooted in a religious motivation."
"It is embedded in my concept of the church's nature and as a communion of believers on a faith journey, a communion of saints (few in number) and of sinners (most of us)," he said in the prologue. "My story affects everyone else's story and thus, at least in part, belongs to them.
"In the epilogue, he returns to why he has written his memoirs, adding that he "often had a front seat" in the church and world history that parallels his life.
Noting concern about "revisionism" that he detected particularly when people were writing about the years of Pope Paul VI's pontificate, the archbishop wrote, "I have thought it important to say how I, as one individual, saw what was happening then. True, it is only one believer's experience, but, I hope, one worth sharing and saving for posterity."
The story wends from his childhood and Benedictine vocation in western Pennsylvania to his rise to the leadership of the Benedictines. At age 36, he was elected archabbot for life of St. Vincent Archabbey in Latrobe, Pa. While he was ascending in the community, the Second Vatican Council was under way.
He recalls his enthusiasm for Pope John XXIII's opening talk and writes, "Can anyone fault those of us who expected the council to usher in a new era for the church as it looked at its heritage, tried to renew and update itself, and then contribute to a better world?"Archbishop Weakland adds that during the council he changed his "image of God from that of enforcing policeman to one of a loving and caring parent."
In 1967, the Benedictines, while meeting in Rome, elected him the fifth abbot primate -- head of the Benedictine order. In that role he visited Benedictine communities throughout the world and would regularly meet with Pope Paul VI, whom he describes as having "a monastic soul and sensitivity.
"But it was also during his time as abbot primate that Archbishop Weakland began to experience his sexual awakening and orientation, at age 45, and consider the ramifications of a celibate life.
"I never doubted my vocation or the significance of the vows I took; but now I had to see them in a new light, namely, not as the avoidance of sin and evil, but as a new way of living the Gospel of love that Jesus Christ preached. I wanted to be a person who lived by love not fear," he writes.
In 1977 he struggled with Pope Paul's personal request that he become archbishop of Milwaukee. "I never wanted to be a bishop, otherwise I would never have become a Benedictine," he writes. Yet "how could I refuse the personal wish of the pope and still be at peace with myself?"
His relationship with the Vatican during the papacy of Pope John Paul II was not easy."On every ad limina trip without exception, I noticed that I would be singled out -- the other bishops were never aware of this -- and told to meet with" the heads of various Vatican offices, Archbishop Weakland writes. "Upon arrival in their offices, I would be presented with a list of complaints.
These were actions or decisions of mine that seemed to irritate the pope and members of the Curia."Four years into his episcopacy, Archbishop Weakland was asked to chair the U.S. bishops' committee responsible for drafting the pastoral letter "Economic Justice for All." He terms the experience "one of the most important and formative periods of my life."
During the bishops' spring meeting at Collegeville, Minn., in 1988, Archbishop Weakland learned that the Vatican Congregation for Bishops had asked another U.S. archbishop to investigate him.
He writes that no one from the Vatican spoke to him about the outcome of that investigation during his ad limina visit in December 1988."Through it all, I retained a deep respect for the Holy Father as pope, but found little to love and admire in his style of treating people who disagreed with him," Archbishop Weakland writes. "I was convinced that he was indeed a very holy man, but not one without flaws."
Archbishop Weakland's prologue focuses on his 2002 apology "for the scandal that has occurred because of my sinfulness" and an explanation of his relationship with Marcoux, the $450,000 financial settlement paid to him in 1997 with archdiocesan funds, and the relationship and settlement being made public by Marcoux in 2002.
With money he earned from speaking and writing, and through funds raised by several of his friends, Archbishop Weakland repaid the $450,000 to the archdiocese. In a recent interview with TheAssociated Press, the archbishop said proceeds from the sale of his memoirs will be donated to the Milwaukee-based Catholic Community Foundation.
EXCLUSIVE: People React to Weakland Book
Mick Trevey
MILWAUKEE - People are speaking out about former Milwaukee Archbishop Rembert Weakland's new book. TODAY'S TMJ4 reporter Mick Trevey obtained an exclusive publisher's preview copy of the manuscript. In the book, Weakland writes about growing up in Pennsylvania and serving in Milwaukee for 25 years as Archbishop. He also talks frankly about the priest sex scandal and his own sexuality."It's a very painful thing," said priest sexual abuse victim John Pilmaier about the book. Weakland admits that priests were moved from parish to parish because of sex abuse cases. "Such a move would give the priest a chance to start over, and before 1985 this was common practice," he writes. He also writes that priests were give more attention than their victims. "In handling these cases, I had accepted naively the common view that it was not necessary to worry about the effects on the youngsters: either they would not remember it or would 'grow out of it'," Weakland wrote.John Pilmaier says that shows the Archdiocese disregarded the victims' futures saying, "I've told people it's a life sentence. It's not something you can just get over or grow out of."Weakland also writes that he did not see the sexual abuse as illegal. "We all considered sexual abuse of minors as a moral evil, but had no understanding of it's criminal nature," Weakland says in the book."It's like it hasn't happened yet for him. it hasn't occurred. It hasn't reached him," said Peter Isely of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests.
The book also has the attention of trial lawyers who believe the text could be used against the Archdiocese in lawsuits filed by abuse victims.
Attorney Ted Warshafsky says, "they're admissions that somebody who was in charge aided and abetted and continued a practice that was illegal."Attorney Robert Habush said, "that's an admission of fraud."
As to Weakland's belief that abuse victims would "grow out of it," Attorney Will Techmeier said he would make sure that was brought up in a trial. "I would want the jury to know about that," he said.Lawyers for the Archdiocese would not comment on the legal ramifications of Weakland's book because of pending litigation.
TODAY'S TMJ4 reporter Mick Trevey spoke with former Archbishop Rembert Weakland Friday afternoon. We declined to do an interview saying he wanted to let some of the attention "die down" first.
vrijdag, mei 15, 2009
Wachtend op de rapporten van de Ierse revolutie.
Na zoveel keren uitstel moet dan 20 mei het Ryanrapport uitkomen, eind van de maand dat naar het onderzoek van het misbruik in Dublin.
In Jersey werd gisteren in een onwaarschijnlijk krankzinnige situatie rond Haute de la Garenne er toch nog iemand voor een rechtbank veroordeeld: een vroegere bewoner die seksueel misbruik pleegde.
Maar in Belgie is blijkbaar vanavond de toekomstige generatie die haar mond open zal doen over misbruik al op het journaal besproken. Een snotneus met een GSM op Instituut Mariadal in Hoegaarden.Hij werd kennelijk van school verwijderd.
Moge iemand zo intelligent zijn eens te gaan rekenen wat een goede filmopleiding nu aan dat kind de samenleving aan kosten bespaard.
In Jersey werd gisteren in een onwaarschijnlijk krankzinnige situatie rond Haute de la Garenne er toch nog iemand voor een rechtbank veroordeeld: een vroegere bewoner die seksueel misbruik pleegde.
Haut de la Garenne - Michael Aubin Pleads Guilty!!!
Michael Aubin admitted to two counts of gross indecency and two counts of indecent assault on children under ten years old.Aubin, who appeared before the Royal Court, carried out the sexual abuse on boys while he was a resident at the home in the 1970s.
Aubin is the first person to be brought to court after a police
investigation into historic child abuse on the island.He previously pleaded not
guilty to three additional counts of indecent assault. Those counts will be
dealt with after Aubin is sentenced on June 22.
Two other people have been charged in connection with the Haut de la
Garenne abuse scandal and police have amassed a list of 40 additional
suspects.Finally some justice in Jersey!
Personally I am stunned, but extremely pleased with this victory!
This is a great day for the abuse victims, Senator Syvret, Lenny Harper, Graham Power and Simon Bellwood. Well done, you all have been vindicated!
Maar in Belgie is blijkbaar vanavond de toekomstige generatie die haar mond open zal doen over misbruik al op het journaal besproken. Een snotneus met een GSM op Instituut Mariadal in Hoegaarden.Hij werd kennelijk van school verwijderd.
Moge iemand zo intelligent zijn eens te gaan rekenen wat een goede filmopleiding nu aan dat kind de samenleving aan kosten bespaard.
De directie van de school voor buitengewoon secundair onderwijs Mariadal uit
Hoegaarden hoort vanavond om 18.30 uur leerkracht C.A. van de bouwopleiding die in november vorig jaar een leerling tijdens de les zwaar mishandelde.
Dat gebeurt in het kader van de tuchtprocedure die tegen de betrokkene
werd opgestart. Volgens Jan Bergé, advocaat van de school, is er vanavond nog
een beslissing te verwachten.
Op 27 maart op de hoogte
De school raakte pas op 27 maart op de hoogte van de feiten. Bergé heeft geen verklaring voor het feit dat het zo lang geduurd heeft voor de leerkracht gehoord wordt. "Men heeft zich onmiddellijk geïnformeerd over wat er moest gebeuren en de zaak aan de inrichtende macht voorgelegd", aldus Bergé. Vanmiddag krijgt de school
ook de onderwijsinspectie op bezoek die de houding van de directie in dit dossier wil onderzoeken.
"In Het Laatste Nieuws wijst iemand erop dat de leerling die de opnames maakte weggestuurd is, maar beide dingen hebben niets met mekaar te maken. De leerling heeft het bestaan van de film ter sprake gebracht tijdens de tuchtprocedure tegen hem en heeft wellicht de film in dit kader willen gebruiken", aldus Bergé.
Zwaardere straf
Bij een veroordeling riskeert de leerkracht een zwaardere straf. Dat meldt het Leuvense parket, dat een opsporingsonderzoek naar de feiten is begonnen.
Op een video die in de media is opgedoken, en in bezit is van het gerecht, is te zien
hoe de leraar de tiener uitscheldt, in een emmer cement duwt en onder een kraan
met koud water houdt.
"Het slachtoffer is recent verhoord via een videoverhoor", zegt Patrick Vits, woordvoerder van het Leuvense parket. "Ook de medeleerlingen van de jongen en alle andere betrokkenen zijn verhoord of zullen nog verhoord worden. Op dit moment wordt het onderzoek door het parket gevoerd en is het geen gerechtelijke onderzoek. Voorlopig zijn er immers geen dwangmaatregelen nodig waarvoor een onderzoeksrechter zou bevoegd zijn."
Verschillende verzwarende omstandigheden
Als de leraar veroordeeld wordt voor slagen en verwondingen, dreigt de strafmaat wel hoger te liggen dan bij een klassieke zaak van slagen en verwondingen. "Er is hier sprake van verschillende verzwarende omstandigheden. Het slachtoffer is een minderjarige, die bovendien in een bijzondere lichaams- of geestestoestand verkeert, zoals de wet dat omschrijft. Daarenboven is er tussen leraar en leerling sprake van en gezagsfunctie. Dat zij drie afzonderlijke verzwarende omstandigheden."
Het onderzoek naar de feiten is al enige tijd aan de gang en volgens het Leuvense parket werken alle partijen vlot mee.
Geschokt
Staatssecretaris voor Personen met een Handicap Julie Fernandez Fernandez
reageert intussen geschokt op de zaak. Ze vraagt aan Vlaamse minister van
Onderwijs Frank Vandenbroucke om de feiten in detail uit te spitten en streng op
te treden tegen dit incident.
Vandenbroucke liet al verstaan dat hij de zaak grondig zal onderzoeken. Hij heeft ook vragen bij het trage optreden van de school. (belga/mvdb)
Jeezes, als ze dat al zware mishandeling noemen zelle. . Amaai. Dat komt er niet in de verste verte van af! . Die kinderen zijn ook niet gemakkelijk om mee om te gaan hoor. Wie weet wat dat rakertje allemaal gezegd en gedaan heeft. Het mocht niet gebeuren maar tis toch allemaal fel overroepen!
In mijn tijd hadden wij (kinderen die iets willen bereiken en gewoon naar school gingen) al last met die sukkels van het bereops. Ook de film 'blueberry Hill' is daar een mooi voorbeeldje van. Die leraar heeft veel moeten doorstaan en knapte, en 'toevallig' had weer iemand een gsm. Het lijkt me uitgelokt. Veel steun voor alle leerkrachten die les moeten geven aan domkoppen.
Och,de oudjes die hun eigen kinderen zo goed opgevoed hebben en die nu absoluut alleen maar slechtopgevoede kinderen zien zijn daar weer.Ik weet niet in welke milieus jullie je bevinden maar de meeste kinderen die ik ken zijn WEL opgevoed.En dat ze mondiger zijn is geen
probleem.Vroeger ben ik ook vernederd door een leerkracht tekenen omdat ik niet
kan tekenen,kan ik eraan doen dat ik die gave niet heb?Was ik toen maar mondiger geweest !!!!!!
Ik blijf in ieder geval Hoegaarden drinken, en ja, er is een probleem met het respect van de kinderen voor mensen die met hen begaan zijn. Hopelijk schept dit een polemiek waarin ook achterlijke kinderen aan het woord gelaten worden en kunnen zeggen wat zij het liefst zouden doen in plaats van te gaan werken !
Moge iemand dát snotneusje duidelijk maken dat hij een heldendaad verichtte!
En hem daarna een pestklus laten doen: 200 opgeblazen balonnen bevestigen aan Reus Langnek in de Efteling of zo
Getuigen zijn tenslotte zelden helden.
En hem daarna een pestklus laten doen: 200 opgeblazen balonnen bevestigen aan Reus Langnek in de Efteling of zo
Getuigen zijn tenslotte zelden helden.
stealing more than US$400,000: "I was brought up in the old regime, where pastors had power over their own funds and were never questioned"
FATHER John Skehan, 82, the elderly Kilkenny priest who was convicted of stealing more than US$400,000 from his church collection plate in Delray Beach, Florida began his 14-month sentence in a US jail 12 days ago.
The real story behind the "biggest financial scandal to hit the Catholic Church in decades" was aired in a TV documentary, White Collar Crime, featuring an in-depth interview with the fallen priest from Johnstown on RTE 1 on Monday night.
Fr Skehan spoke out for the first time since his arrest, detailing exactly how and why he took the money. The documentary also threw some new light on the case by claiming that there was more than US$7 million in church accounts when Fr Skehan retired.
He served as the priest in St Vincent Ferrer's parish for more than 40 years and was charged with stealing the money and using it to fund a "lifestyle befitting an international playboy, gambling holidays in the Bahamas and Las Vegas, lavish trips to Ireland and taking bags of money and going off to Las Vegas".
Night of arrest
He was arrested on grand theft charges more than two years after he retired from St Vincent's parish in 2003. He was holidaying in Ireland when the warrant for his arrest was issued in 2006 and he was apprehended as he stepped off the plane on US soil.
As he was driven away in a police car, the priest naively asked police whether he thought he should have an attorney.
He felt he was entitled to some of the money because he was underpaid by the church and had been given no provisions for his retirement after more than four decades of service.
"We're getting pennies for salaries," he said. "We're running a big, big business and we get absolutely nothing for it. It's supposed to be for, you know, vocation and you're doing it for God and that, which is fine. But when you put it all together, you begin to realise how much you're been used and abused down through the years and you have access to this money and it's so easy to use it in other areas.
"But the parish never suffered. I did everything that could possibly be done for that parish."Fr Skehan maintained that, as the leader of St Vincent's parish, he had the right to spend the church funds as he saw fit.
"I was brought up in the old regime, where pastors had power over their own funds and were never questioned, so I felt I could do with the money what was needed," he said...
...Where it went"I withheld that money as a contingency plan for when people needed the money. And the parish made no provisions for retired priests, once you retire, you're own your own. I needed some money for my retirement."
Answering questions about how he spent the money and replying to allegations about gambling trips to Las Vegas and abroad, Fr Skehan said: "Some people do go gambling (to Las Vegas) but there are also some beautiful golf courses there, so that was the condition on which I went. For golf," he said. "I had no interest in gambling, ever, and Guinan agreed to play golf with me. In the evenings, we'd go and see a show and he would head off to the tables and I'd go to bed."
And what about that infamous gold coin collection worth US$400,000 he is alleged to have bought with church funds?"I paid for 99% of the things I bought with my own money," he said. "Well, maybe not 99%, but at least 80%."
Parishioners' support
These claims were supported by many parishioners of St Vincent's and he was described by Delray Beach locals as the "beating heart" and "driving force" of the parish, as well as "hugely popular with his parishioners".
rest artikel
The real story behind the "biggest financial scandal to hit the Catholic Church in decades" was aired in a TV documentary, White Collar Crime, featuring an in-depth interview with the fallen priest from Johnstown on RTE 1 on Monday night.
Fr Skehan spoke out for the first time since his arrest, detailing exactly how and why he took the money. The documentary also threw some new light on the case by claiming that there was more than US$7 million in church accounts when Fr Skehan retired.
He served as the priest in St Vincent Ferrer's parish for more than 40 years and was charged with stealing the money and using it to fund a "lifestyle befitting an international playboy, gambling holidays in the Bahamas and Las Vegas, lavish trips to Ireland and taking bags of money and going off to Las Vegas".
Night of arrest
He was arrested on grand theft charges more than two years after he retired from St Vincent's parish in 2003. He was holidaying in Ireland when the warrant for his arrest was issued in 2006 and he was apprehended as he stepped off the plane on US soil.
As he was driven away in a police car, the priest naively asked police whether he thought he should have an attorney.
He felt he was entitled to some of the money because he was underpaid by the church and had been given no provisions for his retirement after more than four decades of service.
"We're getting pennies for salaries," he said. "We're running a big, big business and we get absolutely nothing for it. It's supposed to be for, you know, vocation and you're doing it for God and that, which is fine. But when you put it all together, you begin to realise how much you're been used and abused down through the years and you have access to this money and it's so easy to use it in other areas.
"But the parish never suffered. I did everything that could possibly be done for that parish."Fr Skehan maintained that, as the leader of St Vincent's parish, he had the right to spend the church funds as he saw fit.
"I was brought up in the old regime, where pastors had power over their own funds and were never questioned, so I felt I could do with the money what was needed," he said...
...Where it went"I withheld that money as a contingency plan for when people needed the money. And the parish made no provisions for retired priests, once you retire, you're own your own. I needed some money for my retirement."
Answering questions about how he spent the money and replying to allegations about gambling trips to Las Vegas and abroad, Fr Skehan said: "Some people do go gambling (to Las Vegas) but there are also some beautiful golf courses there, so that was the condition on which I went. For golf," he said. "I had no interest in gambling, ever, and Guinan agreed to play golf with me. In the evenings, we'd go and see a show and he would head off to the tables and I'd go to bed."
And what about that infamous gold coin collection worth US$400,000 he is alleged to have bought with church funds?"I paid for 99% of the things I bought with my own money," he said. "Well, maybe not 99%, but at least 80%."
Parishioners' support
These claims were supported by many parishioners of St Vincent's and he was described by Delray Beach locals as the "beating heart" and "driving force" of the parish, as well as "hugely popular with his parishioners".
rest artikel
‘Salam’, ‘Shalom’, woensdag, mei 13, 2009
Apple kiest eieren voor haar geld
Technology giant Apple Inc has rejected an application for its iPhone in which users are encouraged to superimpose their head on an image of Jesus.
UBUNTU!
Santa subito; Maria verschijningen en de Congregaties van de geloofsleer.
The head of the Palestinian Sharia court, Sheikh Taysir al-Tamimi, fiercely denounced Israeli policy in the presence of Pope Benedict on Monday and appealed to the pope to help end what he called the “crimes of the Jewish state.”
Speaking at an interfaith conference held at the Notre Dame Church in East Jerusalem, al-Tamimi accused Israel of slaughtering women, children and senior citizens.
The speech was delivered in Arabic, without simultaneous translation, but after the pope was informed of the political nature of al-Tamimi’s speech, he left the conference.
The Sheikh opened his impromptu speech with a story about Saladin, who upheld the rights of Christians after he conquered Jerusalem, stressing that Islam and Christianity must unite against “the Israeli occupation and bring about an independent Palestinian state.”
“Israel destroyed our home, exiled our people, built settlements, ruined the Muslim holy sites, and slaughtered women, children and senior citizens in Gaza,” he continued. At this point, the conference’s organizers tried to persuade al-Tamimi to end his spontaneous speech, but to no avail.
Al-Tamimi won a round of applause from some of the assembled clerics.
Addressing the pope at the end of his six-minute address, he said: “Your Holiness, I call on you in the name of the one God, to condemn these crimes and press the Israeli government to halt its aggression against the Palestinian people.”
Al-Tamimi shook the pope’s hand as he left the podium and the meeting broke up as scheduled immediately afterwards. 
The director general of Israel’s Chief Rabbinate, Oded Wiener, said that “Sheikh Tamimi embarrassed the pope.”
He said Tamimi, a familiar and fiery figure in Palestinian public life, had pressured the Catholic organisers to be allowed to speak and that the Jewish members would no longer take part in a long-standing, three-way interfaith dialogue until the sheikh was barred from attending.
“The Chief Rabbinate will not continue it as long as Tamimi is part of the Palestinian delegation,” Wiener said.
Vatican spokesman Federico Lombardi criticized al-Tamimi’s speech. “The speech by Sheikh Taysir Tamimi was not scheduled by the organisers of the meeting. In a meeting dedicated to dialogue, this intervention was a direct negation of what a dialogue should be. We hope that such an incident will not damage the mission of the pope aiming at promoting peace and also interreligious dialogue,” he said.
The incident further marred the start of the German-born pope’s five-day tour of Israel and the Palestinian territories, after criticism by some Jews that a speech at a Holocaust memorial did not go far enough to mend Catholic-Jewish rifts.
Pope Benedict, in his own speech to the gathering of priests, rabbis and sheikhs, praised their efforts to seek common values and mutual respect to overcome differences in religious practices that “may at times appear as barriers.” 
Pinokkios goed katholieke traditie: het is allemaal helemaal niet waar: het komt door de pers.
Aan de vooravond van het verschijnen van de Ierse onderoeksrapporten: tot zover de bijdrage van het Vaticaan bij het verdwijnen van The Globe. 
Gaawiin Minawaa Wiikaa ! Never again ! The day the Pope said sorry.
BEN-GURION AIRPORT, Israel, May 11 (Reuters) - Pope Benedict began a visit to Israel and the Palestinian territories on Monday. Below is a transcript of his remarks on arrival:
...Tragically, the Jewish people have experienced the terrible consequences of ideologies that deny the fundamental dignity of every human person. It is right and fitting that, during my stay in Israel, I will have the opportunity to honour the memory of the six million Jewish victims of the Shoah, and to pray that humanity will never again witness a crime of such magnitude.
Sadly, anti-Semitism continues to rear its ugly head in many parts of the world.
This is totally unacceptable. Every effort must be made to combat anti-Semitism
wherever it is found, and to promote respect and esteem for the members of every
people, tribe, language and nation across the globe...
CBCnews Canada
Monday, May 11, 2009
When my father Tobasonakwut Kinew was a boy, he was taken away from his mother and father and placed in St. Mary's, a Catholic residential school in Rat Portage, Ont. From then on he was forced to navigate this world on his own.
By the time he was kicked out of St. Mary's in the early 1950s at the end of grade 8 (because Indians were not allowed to attend the high school in Kenora), the removal of his younger brothers had caused his family to unravel.
Along the way, my father was forced to endure physical and sexual abuse at the hands of lay brothers, priests and nuns, and to grow up in a dormitory and schoolyard with rage-filled predators who had endured the same type of treatment as he had.
The most damaging incident, and perhaps the most telling, came when his father died.
My grandfather was the original Wabanakwut, my namesake. On an October day when my father Tobasonakwut was 11 years old, my grandfather was run over by a car.
He lay at in a hospital bed, his body half-crushed, as he waited for his boys to come home from school and see him. But the priest at St. Mary's and the head of Cecilia Jeffrey school (where one of the sons was living) refused to allow the boys to leave.
The next day my grandfather passed on to the spirit
world. Following a Catholic service, he was interred at the cemetery down the hill from St. Mary's.
As is our custom, my father took a hand full of dirt, sprinkled some on his father's casket and sang his father's death song. But this display of aboriginal spirituality was perceived as insolence by the priest.
When the children returned to their schools an assembly was called. My father was called to the front and was promptly given, in his words, "the most supreme ****-kicking of my entire life."
It's unclear whether or not my grandfather rolled over in his freshly dug grave.
A meeting of faiths
From that point on my father was never really able to express his emotions in any manner other than anger or violence. A few years later, he walked out of St. Mary's a changed person, no longer the fun-loving boy he once was, but an intense, strong-willed fighter.
He would go to work cutting trees as a teenager and then wind his way through careers as a diesel mechanic, boxer and academic. Eventually he would become the founding Grand Chief of the Grand Council of Treaty #3 (which covers most of Northwestern Ontario and Southeastern Manitoba) and the Grand Chief of the Chiefs of Ontario.
A few weeks ago, at the end of April, he was part of the delegation that visited the Vatican and had an audience with the Pope.
When my dad was a boy in the residential school he was called a "maudit sauvage" and told he was worthless for trying to express his faith in the way his elders had taught him.
That he stuck around long enough to see the Holy Father tremble in his presence and appear visibly upset as he tried to make amends is, for me, monumental.
To me, it says that, in spite of the concerted efforts of the government of Canada and five churches to destroy our culture, it has survived.
It says that in spite of all the tragedies and pain that was visited upon the members of my family — my two older brothers who died tragically, one from a self-inflicted gunshot; my uncle who drank himself to death, confiding that he didn't have the courage to commit suicide; my cousins and niece who died from alcohol or drugs — that we have endured.
We can't blame all the deaths that have visited my family explicitly on the residential schools but I do think we can draw a line down through the generations: from my father's experience, to my brother's death, to my niece's overdose.
Gift of a feather
My father brought a pipe, an eagle feather and a dream catcher to his meeting with the Holy Father. For him, this was not merely a symbolic act, it was a bit of a test.
In the past, these types of spiritual items were outlawed in Canada, their use associated with Satanism and, as the story about my grandfather's funeral illustrates, justification for serious punishment.
My father had decided in advance that if the Pope spoke kind words but still displayed an aversion to the spiritual items that his apology would not be sincere. On the other hand, were his Holiness to receive the spiritual items in a kind way, then it would signify that the true mentality of the Catholic church had changed.
When the time came, the Holy Father passed the test with flying colours. He displayed a respectful curiosity, coming straight to my father and asking what the pipe was for, how it was used and what its origins were.
My father asked the Pope to bless the items, which he did. He graciously accepted the eagle feather as a gift of fellowship in return.
I hope all Christians get the word that his Holiness has accepted our traditional religion as being a good thing. There are communities, I know, in Manitoba where aboriginal people have been so indoctrinated with Christianity and self-hate that they refuse to have sweats or even powwows on their land. I hope this changes.
I still find it amazing that the leader of the Catholic faith has embraced our traditional items and what appears to be true remorse at what residential school survivors had endured.
Yet the healing
Of course, no matter how heartfelt, the Pope's apology does not mean healing, at least not instantly.
My father returned from the Vatican elated and yet with a renewed awareness of what had happened to him as a child.
His pain and suffering have now been validated by the Vatican and the government of Canada. But his memories and suppressed emotions have surfaced again and he has been forced to try to deal with them anew.
The stories I heard from my father as a boy are not unique. My aunt Nancy suffered a similar public flogging, though she was stripped naked and had her head shaved in the process. This was punishment for trying to run away from the school. My uncles have their own horror stories. So do the parents and relatives of my friends.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but I am among the first generation in my family that didn't have to attend these schools.
I have a four-year-old son at home. He is the same age as my uncle was when he was taken away and put into St. Mary's.
I look at my son and see his gentle nature and his natural curiosity and I can't bear to think about what it would be like to have him taken away and subjected to the things my father endured.
I look at his fragile frame and growing body and wonder whether he could have survived the beatings that my father did. And then there are the things I don't think about.
Think about your kids and ask yourselves the same questions. The good news is that they will never have to face those things. All our children are now free to grow up in the manner we choose to raise them.
In the end, the residential school apologies are important to every Canadian because they are a testament that will remind us of the inherent goodness of children and the duty we have to stand up for them, for themselves as much as for ensuing generations.
The experiences of my father and the other residential school survivors will remind us of a phrase that my community has adopted from the Jewish community: Gaawiin Minawaa Wiikaa. Never Again.
Monday, May 11, 2009
When my father Tobasonakwut Kinew was a boy, he was taken away from his mother and father and placed in St. Mary's, a Catholic residential school in Rat Portage, Ont. From then on he was forced to navigate this world on his own.
By the time he was kicked out of St. Mary's in the early 1950s at the end of grade 8 (because Indians were not allowed to attend the high school in Kenora), the removal of his younger brothers had caused his family to unravel.
Along the way, my father was forced to endure physical and sexual abuse at the hands of lay brothers, priests and nuns, and to grow up in a dormitory and schoolyard with rage-filled predators who had endured the same type of treatment as he had.
The most damaging incident, and perhaps the most telling, came when his father died.
My grandfather was the original Wabanakwut, my namesake. On an October day when my father Tobasonakwut was 11 years old, my grandfather was run over by a car.
He lay at in a hospital bed, his body half-crushed, as he waited for his boys to come home from school and see him. But the priest at St. Mary's and the head of Cecilia Jeffrey school (where one of the sons was living) refused to allow the boys to leave.
The next day my grandfather passed on to the spirit
world. Following a Catholic service, he was interred at the cemetery down the hill from St. Mary's.As is our custom, my father took a hand full of dirt, sprinkled some on his father's casket and sang his father's death song. But this display of aboriginal spirituality was perceived as insolence by the priest.
When the children returned to their schools an assembly was called. My father was called to the front and was promptly given, in his words, "the most supreme ****-kicking of my entire life."
It's unclear whether or not my grandfather rolled over in his freshly dug grave.
A meeting of faiths
From that point on my father was never really able to express his emotions in any manner other than anger or violence. A few years later, he walked out of St. Mary's a changed person, no longer the fun-loving boy he once was, but an intense, strong-willed fighter.
He would go to work cutting trees as a teenager and then wind his way through careers as a diesel mechanic, boxer and academic. Eventually he would become the founding Grand Chief of the Grand Council of Treaty #3 (which covers most of Northwestern Ontario and Southeastern Manitoba) and the Grand Chief of the Chiefs of Ontario.
A few weeks ago, at the end of April, he was part of the delegation that visited the Vatican and had an audience with the Pope.
When my dad was a boy in the residential school he was called a "maudit sauvage" and told he was worthless for trying to express his faith in the way his elders had taught him.
That he stuck around long enough to see the Holy Father tremble in his presence and appear visibly upset as he tried to make amends is, for me, monumental.
To me, it says that, in spite of the concerted efforts of the government of Canada and five churches to destroy our culture, it has survived.
It says that in spite of all the tragedies and pain that was visited upon the members of my family — my two older brothers who died tragically, one from a self-inflicted gunshot; my uncle who drank himself to death, confiding that he didn't have the courage to commit suicide; my cousins and niece who died from alcohol or drugs — that we have endured.
We can't blame all the deaths that have visited my family explicitly on the residential schools but I do think we can draw a line down through the generations: from my father's experience, to my brother's death, to my niece's overdose.
Gift of a feather
My father brought a pipe, an eagle feather and a dream catcher to his meeting with the Holy Father. For him, this was not merely a symbolic act, it was a bit of a test.
In the past, these types of spiritual items were outlawed in Canada, their use associated with Satanism and, as the story about my grandfather's funeral illustrates, justification for serious punishment.
My father had decided in advance that if the Pope spoke kind words but still displayed an aversion to the spiritual items that his apology would not be sincere. On the other hand, were his Holiness to receive the spiritual items in a kind way, then it would signify that the true mentality of the Catholic church had changed.
When the time came, the Holy Father passed the test with flying colours. He displayed a respectful curiosity, coming straight to my father and asking what the pipe was for, how it was used and what its origins were.
My father asked the Pope to bless the items, which he did. He graciously accepted the eagle feather as a gift of fellowship in return.
I hope all Christians get the word that his Holiness has accepted our traditional religion as being a good thing. There are communities, I know, in Manitoba where aboriginal people have been so indoctrinated with Christianity and self-hate that they refuse to have sweats or even powwows on their land. I hope this changes.
I still find it amazing that the leader of the Catholic faith has embraced our traditional items and what appears to be true remorse at what residential school survivors had endured.
Yet the healing
Of course, no matter how heartfelt, the Pope's apology does not mean healing, at least not instantly.
My father returned from the Vatican elated and yet with a renewed awareness of what had happened to him as a child.
His pain and suffering have now been validated by the Vatican and the government of Canada. But his memories and suppressed emotions have surfaced again and he has been forced to try to deal with them anew.
The stories I heard from my father as a boy are not unique. My aunt Nancy suffered a similar public flogging, though she was stripped naked and had her head shaved in the process. This was punishment for trying to run away from the school. My uncles have their own horror stories. So do the parents and relatives of my friends.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but I am among the first generation in my family that didn't have to attend these schools.
I have a four-year-old son at home. He is the same age as my uncle was when he was taken away and put into St. Mary's.
I look at my son and see his gentle nature and his natural curiosity and I can't bear to think about what it would be like to have him taken away and subjected to the things my father endured.
I look at his fragile frame and growing body and wonder whether he could have survived the beatings that my father did. And then there are the things I don't think about.
Think about your kids and ask yourselves the same questions. The good news is that they will never have to face those things. All our children are now free to grow up in the manner we choose to raise them.
In the end, the residential school apologies are important to every Canadian because they are a testament that will remind us of the inherent goodness of children and the duty we have to stand up for them, for themselves as much as for ensuing generations.
The experiences of my father and the other residential school survivors will remind us of a phrase that my community has adopted from the Jewish community: Gaawiin Minawaa Wiikaa. Never Again.
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