Spiritan abuse survivors urged to come forward as independent process to begin

Inquiry? WAT?

We are talking about serious crimes here. There should be a robust criminal investigation. If this was any other organisation, a private company for example, who's employees and management carried out, supported and covered up child sex abuse, what would be happening?

The organisation would be barred for trading, their offices would be raided and there would be multiple arrests.

How are the church involved at all in negotiation how all this will be handled? Mind boggling.

Like in any case abuse case, not involving the church, there should be a criminal investigation. Guilty abusers should be prosecuted and punished. The victims should be compensated by the abusing individual estate and by any organisation that supported the abuse, including the state. The victims should have an opportunity to make victim impact statements.

Special courts should be setup the streamline the process. Victims should be offered a legal service with top practitioners funded by the state.

Why isn't this automatic?

Yet not one parish priest, bishop, or ordinary (head of religious order) has ever been charged with covering up or facilitating these serious crimes, why is that?

Principle is "retiring" at the end of the year after being head of the school since 2000

Personally I don't believe a word of it being planned prior to the recent revelations.

For those unaware of the kind of man he is there's a great twitter thread by a previous student to give you an idea

Is the proposed inquiry/redress/ or what ever it is called restricted to the Spiritans?

Is it restricted to sexual abuse or is physical abuse such as beatings included as well?

Am getting different message from different people about this

Thanks as always

Looks like there will finally be an official State Inquiry

In spite of all ths, the Department of Educations Child Protection Guidelines are still optional in schools. Some Catholic schools have decided to opt out.

I stuck both CBS schools I went to into the search bar of the listing. Both came up as having abused kids in both primary and secondary. Mostly primary.

Even a local convent was affected. it had boys in primary school.

I'm just grateful I was left alone

Apologies if this was already answered but I can't seem to find it anywhere. Does anyone know the timeframe for the abuse detailed in the report? My old secondary school has a few cases mentioned but I'm wondering if they are from before my time as I never heard of anything untoward while I was there or since.

The abuse allegations go back as far as the 1970s

https://www.irishmirror.ie/news/irish-news/horror-sex-abuse-religious-run-33591856

By their nature, any guidelines are optional.....they"re only guidelines, not requirements.

While most schools fully buy into them, not all do. There was a child protection incident in a school one of my kids attended, and the school chose not to follow the guidelines. When parents complained to D/,Education and Tusla the response was that they cant make the school comply.....they"re only guidelines.

I was a pupil in 4 different schools, 2 of which are named.

'They hurt you at home and they hit you at school - they hate you if you're clever and they dispise a fool'

Hide, hide in plain sight, don't stand out, be like the zebra - part of the group of zebras.

Once, I found the 'punishment roll' - an old book, hidden away in a wall - At the age of 12 I was aghast at the crimes perpertrated against children written in front of me - I couldn't have kept the book but it's gone now along with the school that was.

Broken lives from men who witnessed Daingean reformatory or born into Bessboro to unknown mothers and fathers.

There were good teachers and good people as teachers but there were devils as well.

50 odd in a class and using the leather to keep control.

Everyone suffered then and no one spoke out.

I had a friend and he told me that he was a twin - and he explained that he was in his '50's when he found out - I knew his twin because she was marched into the class every morning along with the other 'orphans' - he was in the boys orphanage school across the river - it might as well have been on the other side of the earth.

There was a boy in my class when we were in 'the nash' - The National School - he was bigger than the teacher so we all tried to sit near him for protection so to speak - I saw his name on a listing in the graveyard and I must put a flower on his grave to thank him for standing up for himself and for us.

Is it possible to drill into the list for the names of the accused at a particular school or even get more info such as the time frame?

How many of the abusers on the list were sent away on "missions" to abuse children in africa, south america and asia - will that ever be addressed or even mentioned? What is the legacy of the abuse delivered to these places?

Yeah, unfortunately what happened in this country is only the tip of the iceberg.

Worldwide, I'd say if the real figures ever come out, it will be truly unbelievable.

But as you say, sure nothing will happen.

Sexually abusing small children. The lowest of the low. Yet so many "men of god" did it, covered it up, said nothing. Shame on them. Gardai should be kicking in doors this morning.

What timeframe will the proposed inquiry cover? The report is about "historic" sexual abuse. What do they consider "historic"? Is 5 or 10 years ago included?

There will still be people in this thread making all sorts of excuses for them.

How are people still going to mass taking instruction from these filthy perverts on how to live good lives?

I checked my former school and there were 13 alleged abusers - this surprised me greatly as I had heard of 3 and thought that was likely the sum total considering the passage of time and the publicity two of those 3 got through the media- considering this enquiry goes back decades I’m wondering did the rest exist in the school long before I arrived there and we just didn’t know them.
Will be interesting if any ultimately are named after the enquiry is over ?

I can’t think of one teacher other than those we know and are named as having abused kids, that you would have said would have been an abuser- yes I know probably a daft statement to make - some of my teachers you would have labelled lots of things- lazy, can’t teach, dry sense of humour, no sense of humour- all the usual things kids say about teachers - but not one of us would have labelled the remaining teachers not yet named, abusers or “dodgy” - so I’m thinking the other teachers not named were well before our time

All the "patriots" and culture war fukwits will be on soon enough to defend good catholic Ireland.

They will keep the heads down for a bit until their Twitter overlords can formulate a copy and paste response.

Who's going to make them comply with "guidelines".

Tusla's official position is that they will not investigate complaints from parents about child protection issues in schools - that this is a matter for the Dept of Education.

The official position of the Dept of Education is that they have no legal authority to investigate individual complaints from parents. And they recommend that parents should raise any issues with the religious organisation who run the school.

If you dont believe me, ask Tusla and D/Education yourself. Or stick in a FOI request for correspondence between them and concerned parents.

In spite of all thats happenef over the years, there is still no State body tasked with enforcing child protection or investigating child protection failings in schools.

And yet the school principal has to present a report to every board meeting which includes a section reporting on whether or not any allegations have been made against a staff member and the action taken.