The task facing the Government in preparing a statutory inquiry into sexual abuse in boarding and day schools run by religious orders in Ireland cannot be overestimated.
The sexual abuse of boys at boarding schools in Ireland was not confined to those run by religious congregations such as the Spiritans, Jesuits, Dominicans, Vincentians, Carmelites or Benedictines.
Such abuse also took place in diocesan colleges run by local Catholic clergy, or junior seminaries as they were called, and almost every Catholic diocese of the 26 on the island of Ireland had such a diocesan boarding school. For instance, as established in an article for this newspaper in May 2023, 19 such diocesan colleges have faced sexual abuse allegations against a total of 44 priests.
Furthermore, there are the 11 Protestant-run boarding schools. In his autobiography Full On, broadcaster and former government minister Ivan Yates described his years at the since-closed Protestant boarding school Aravon in Rathmichael, Co Dublin, as “unremitting torture”, where he was sexually abused by the owner and headmaster, Charles Mansfield.
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In 2016, eight pupils at King’s Hospital School in Dublin were suspended pending the outcome of an investigation into allegations that a teenage boy there had been sexually assaulted. In 2008, King’s Hospital was party to six-figure settlements, along with Swim Ireland, involving 13 female victims of convicted sex abuser Derry O’Rourke, who had been employed by the school as a swimming coach. The victims claimed that O’Rourke was allowed to remain there despite several complaints about him to the school from 1973.
Last month, it was revealed that “over 150″ people have contacted An Garda following revelations in the 2022 RTÉ radio documentary Blackrock Boys about sexual abuse at the Spiritan-run Blackrock College and its preparatory school, Willow Park, in south Dublin.
In February of this year, it was disclosed that child sexual abuse complaints against 44 Jesuit priests were received by the congregation between 1945 and late last year. These related mainly to three Jesuit schools: Belvedere College in Dublin, Crescent College in Limerick and Clongowes Wood College in Kildare.
The period of time covered by a statutory inquiry will also be a major influence on the work to be done. More recent statutory inquiries into clerical abuse of children did not investigate beyond the mid-1970s. For instance, the Murphy Report, which investigated the handling of clerical child sex abuse allegations in Dublin’s Catholic archdiocese, went back just to 1975.
It is expected that whatever new statutory inquiry is announced in this case will be extended similarly. Not least because, at a November 2022 press conference in Dublin, abuse survivors from the Spiritan-run Blackrock and Willow Park revealed that 21 per cent of the 1979 Leaving Certificate class there had made allegations of being sexually abused (mainly while at Willow Park).
The Government will be determined to avoid what happened in 1999, when then taoiseach Bertie Ahern announced the setting up of a commission of inquiry into the physical and sexual abuse of children in institutions and other places.*
That commission ran into immediate difficulty with the Christian Brothers, who took legal action to stop it naming deceased members who faced abuse allegations, as originally planned. Moreover, Ms Justice Mary Laffoy, who had been set up to chair that Commission, also ran into difficulties when trying to secure the co-operation of various government departments, particular Education. Such general frustrations led to her resignation in 2003.
Senior counsel Seán Ryan was appointed to review the situation, and made new recommendations which included dropping plans to name any deceased accused in the Commission’s final report. The Christian Brothers dropped their action.
The Commission resumed its work with the newly-appointed judge, Mr Justice Seán Ryan, as its chair. Its five-volume, 2,600-page report was published six years later in May 2009. The legal costs involved have been estimated at around €90 million.
In an effort to cut costs and time, the Dáil passed the Commissions of Investigations Act in March 2004. It was under this law that inquiries into Dublin’s Catholic Archdiocese (report 2009), Cloyne Catholic diocese (report 2011), and Mother and Baby Homes (report 2021) took place, all chaired by Ms Justice Yvonne Murphy.
These had no sessions in public, as the Ryan Commission had, though the legislation allowed it. It helped to cut legal costs considerably, thought it upset some activist groups in particular.
Also in 1999, Ahern announced the setting-up of a Redress Board to compensate individuals who had been in residential institutions as children. Officials had estimated that about 3,000 people would seek such compensation. In fact more than 15,000 people, five times that number, came forward, each receiving an average sum of €62,000.
After the scheme was announced, the 18 religious congregations involved stepped forward to say they would assist with such compensation. To date, of the estimated €1.3 billion cost of this scheme, religious congregations have paid €480 million, a shortfall of €270 million on a Government target of 50 per cent of costs to be paid by the congregations.
It is expected in this instance, too, that religious congregations will assist with redress costs.
*This article was amended on Monday, July 29th, 2024, to clarify that the then taoiseach Bertie Ahern announced the setting up of a commission of inquiry into the physical and sexual abuse of children in institutions and other places rather than “the abuse and neglect of children in orphanages, industrial schools, and reformatories run by religious congregations” as stated in an earlier version.
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