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

Talk about a poor attempt at deflection.

The law on protected disclosures obviously doesn’t go far enough - we’ve seen this elsewhere in government run departments also - you would have thought that those departments of all places wouldn’t be playing “games” with people’s livelihoods - I’d understand it to a degree in the private sector - there needs to be severe penalties for those found victimising employees who go down the whistleblower route - like 100,000s euro sort of penalties - that might put a stop to things

think the public needs to be more vocal too on this - the clergy got off Scott free in the past with some sort of “deal” which they didn’t even abide by (this was nearly 20 years ago or more I think) - need some big legal sticks at this stage but I’d say they’re all lawyered up and ready to fight - as you say what do they have to lose at this stage?

Not surprised to see my secondary school alma mater (dominican college in newbridge) in the list. It had died out (as far as I knew?) when I attended in the late 90's early 00's but there was for sure a historical whiff of it there.

Like the other schools no doubt, a great school whose name is tarnished by one or two rotten eggs.

I haven’t misrepresented her piece in the slightest and I stand by my characterisation of her in response to what she wrote on the subject of this thread.

Hah “fragile male ego” it’s like meaningless buzzword bingo with you, I’d say you’re raging the other lad got in with the random references to Gript before you did.
And the absolute irony of you trying to deflect that to me when what you’ve described is quite literally what she has done in her piece. The horrible news came out and rather than an empathetic piece she took it as her opportunity to write a smug, embittered piece centred around herself. She’s a columnist in a national paper and still that was the tack she decided to take.
“Vaguely related” are you having a laugh, it was literally her response to the initial breaking of this entire story - who’s misrepresenting now?

And eh I didn’t say everyone disagrees with me? Misrepresenting again are we? It’s the opposite in fact, and it’s nothing to do with echo chambers - take a look at the comments on boards, reddit, instagram, Facebook, twitter whatever or any news site the article was posted on and try and tell me the comments are mostly in agreement with her (and you).

Have you heard of sticking your head in the sand because reality disagrees with you? It appears you’re intimately familiar with the concept.

Forgive my typo, it's your claim that 'pretty much everyone else' agrees with you that is quite strange. Do you hang around exclusively in misogynist circles or what?
You did completely misrepresent the article in question. You claimed that she was "gloating that some of the boys that were mean to her in the past may have been sexually abused". This claim has no basis in fact.
Quite the opposite in fact, where she says "We now know that Blackrock College and Willow Park, its junior school, employed some sexually abusive priests whose heinous attacks on children over three decades were never once reported to the Garda. Strange how these things go. We now know the Blackrock boys had nothing to feel superior about. All those years us Pill Hill girls should have been looking down on that school, pitying the boys who were learning in the shadow of a dark regime that had festered in corridors and classrooms and dormitories. All those bad days and nights in Blackrock.".
The absolute irony is, of course, that you're employing exactly the tactic that you (incorrectly) accuse her of employing, deflecting from an important issue to make a fuss and drama about a minor personal disagreement.
Interesting to see you trying to change to goalposts from 'pretty much everyone' to 'most' people, presumably as you realise that 'pretty much everyone' doesn't stand up at all. Does this constitute 'pretty much everyone'?
https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119892145/#Comment_119892145
https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119892568/#Comment_119892568
https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119893061/#Comment_119893061
https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119891952/#Comment_119891952

The deal your referencing I think was made in 2002 and it involved the religious orders paying 128m euro in compensation while the state was left on the hook for most of the bill which I believe was about 1.3b euro. As of today over 20 years later and the religious orders have not even paid up the derisory 128m euro in full.

My area has a bunch of modern built churches with fuk all people still going. Lovely sites with loads of green area around them.

Take 3 of 4 off them and tear them down to put housing on.

Take the hospitals too. I'm sick of working in saint this or saint that.

Won't happen though. Quinn threatened it and FG sh@t themselves.

Just read John McGuirks take on this in gript. That man is some see you next tuesday.

https://gript.ie/the-risk-of-a-witch-hunt-over-historic-sex-abuse-in-schools/

What a load of crap from that rag

Careful though people might get shirty if you dare criticise journalistic coverage of the story in here

yep that whole fiasco was pure criminal

At this stage I just feel like giving up on this place. How many times are we going to do this and produce report after report after report and hold nobody accountable.

I went to one of those schools and had one of those named individuals as a teacher. Nothing happened to me, but the fact that this was going on and nobody acted just says it all to me.

Some of the most vulnerable people in society were left to fend for themselves in a very dangerous environment and basically gaslit when they blew the whistle when they could.

It says a lot about our allegedly friendly, open, happy go lucky, gregarious culture.

It’s cowardly, cold as ice and riddled with some kind of manipulative, guilt tripping bullshit to shut down ‘troublemakers’

Here we go again. Reports and reports and reports and no legal consequences. There needs to be full civil and criminal liability, not just another report and redress scheme at someone else’s expense.

I assume, once again, we’ll be paying for this while these great institutions swan off into the sunset, claiming all sorts of moral superiority.

It’s a great little country … it’s just a pity it’s rotten to the core.

Sensible post. Confiscate the land, turn the buildings into asylum seekers housing to take advantage of the free demolition services provided by the Irish right-wing nutters, and Bob's your uncle.

It's been pointed out before, such moves to confiscate Church property are illegal.

A constitutional amendment to articles 44.2.5 and 44.2.6 would be required if it were to ever happen.

Moreover divestment has proved more difficult than anticipated, with parents resisting it.

The constitution could be amended and a threat to carry out a referendum may be the only lever the Government has to encourage meaningful participation by the Orders in a redress programme.

Maybe such a referendum would pass but it's not guaranteed. Many clearly would think that it would strike at the heart of religious and personal freedoms around property.

On any case at the moment though, they don't have that power and therefore calls to say kick the church out of schools within 5 years cannot happen. And where divestment has already been put to parents as an option, turns out not all want it.

I doubt a referendum would be particularly fraught tbh. Just bring it on.

I don't really see why the church should be in any way protected from civil liability. It's about equality before the law.

As for parents resisting divestment, is that really the case or just some issue with boards of management and lack of coherent plans?

These organisations are masters of spin and always have been.

In most countries these are community halls, community sports fields, community services. In Ireland, it's a theocracy basically - it's all paid for out of local funds, but is run by the church.

Ireland never really got past the medieval period on this. We've inadequate structures for local government - i.e. if you were in France you'd have a community council (commune) with a local mayor for even quite small villages and areas. In Ireland you've an amorphous county council and the church owning large chunks of community services, which the community paid for and often have been funded through council and state grants / direct payments.

At best it's archaic. At worst, you could argue it's laying the grounds for serious sectarianism if public facilities are owned by one religious organisation that's becoming less and less relevant.

I mean, why should tax payers fund facilities that are then given over to the exclusive control of a private religious organisation?

I see Ireland ending up with demands for every flavour of school imaginable and the whole thing becoming a fractured mess.

We don't actually have many public facilities, rather we've private ones run by a bunch of religious organisations that we all pay for, yet they control.

It's nuts. If you were talking about this in the US for example, people would be shrieking about it being some kind of Bible Belt whack jobbery.

The simple reality of it is that Ireland is still stuck with largely unreformed systems that are a throwback to a bygone era, centuries ago. We won't change because there are powerful vested interests and until pretty much a few decades ago, it was a rather weird place that was utterly wrapped up in the church.

Most of us are so stuck in our ways we can't even imagine doing anything differently. School is still very much seen as something that involves the church. It's the sad reality of it. We are only superficially a progressive country. We've one foot in the 2020s and the other somewhere in the 1750s.

I actually quite honestly don't think Ireland's capable of reforming any of this. I has neither the vision nor the backbone to do anything about it.

Republic? Yeah .. right… All that seems to mean in Ireland is that we're not the UK. Any kind of philosophical notion of being a genuine republic, or republican values seems to be totally lost on us. We use all the jargon alright, but that's as far as it goes.

At the end of the day, it's a highly conformist society that tends to not really do anything radical about anything. We pat ourselves on the back for doing things like passing the divorce referendum, or the abortion referendum etc but in reality they were just Ireland implementing things a half century or more after the rest or our peers in the developed world, having fought off its own enormous self-created institutional inertia. We passively let a powerful religious organisation wield enormous and totally inappropriate levels of power within policymaking, service provision and all sorts of other things.

The whole thing will be just business as usual and swept under the carpet after a bit of handwringing.

I can't really help being completely cynical at this point. We have never tackled these issues. We've just managed them from a PR point of view.

I know it was in the Irish Times ffs, you need to read the posts more carefully before hitting reply.

She was not wrong though. There is often a very toxic culture in that sort of school and not just among the staff.

Yeah. The notion that the orders are short of cash or only own schools/hospitals where the only possible purchaser is the state, is frankly utter bollocks. Most if not all of them have plenty of unused urban sites worth (or potentially worth, when rezoned) a great deal of money. They are moving their assets into the control of lay trusts. When the assets are ultimately liquidated this money (the sweat of the brow of generations of Irish people) will most likely be spirited out of the country. If their US branch is in trouble, the US taxpayer will most certainly not step in like here, so they could get a digout… Or the Vatican might need a re-gilding.

Money, power, and abuse are not bugs of religious orders, they're features.

There’s no option for negative “likes” so it’s not a quantifiable comparison - where are all the comments supporting what she said of those in agreement?
Likewise for the Irish times? Furthermore if you just search the title of the article in twitter again you'll see overwhelming disgust, couldn’t see anyone defending her gloating

And what do you think of the overwhelmingly negative Reddit response?

“We now know the Blackrock boys had nothing to feel superior about”…because they were being sexually abused? (How unsuperior/inferior of them)

You’re happy enough to defend the timing of the article also? Story breaks and the knee jerk response is to make the story all about herself?

If we need to change the constition then let's do it. When are we going to stop kowtowing to these religious orders??

The divestment process is an obvious farce, designed to fail, controlled by the RCC with the outcomes obvious but for many years now surveys of parents of school-going children show that most of them do NOT want a "religious ethos" education for their children.

Expecting a devout RCC principal to fairly put the case for and against divestment to the staff and parents is a complete joke but that is where we are at. It's trivial to throw out enough FUD to block any change "at least until my Johnny has done sixth class / Leaving"

Next week there will still be many people arranging baptisms for their kids, booking a church for their wedding, and getting excited for the confirmunions next year. Others will attend hospital and stay in St. Somebody wing. Some teachers will start the day/class with prayer. 90% of schools will still be catholic patronage.

The church is ingrained into this country, despite falling attendance and the disgusting abuse that continues to be uncovered.

Government will call this a disgrace, people will tut tut, and nothing will be done. We are a strange country.