Special Feature: Make the Religious Pay:
Get them out of Education and Health

By Peadar O’Grady

The Ryan Report is a shocking indictment of the systematic neglect and abuse of children for economic profit by religious orders and the state.

The report criticises these orders (‘congregations’), who “admitted that abuse took place but ... they have not accepted congregational responsibility for it”.

Despite this, these same congregations remain in charge of children in education (e.g. the Sisters of Mercy and the Christian Brothers) and residential care (e.g. Brothers of Charity, Sisters of Charity)!

All recommendations in the report should be implemented, especially the last one: “Children First, The National Guidelines for the protection and Welfare of Children, should be uniformly and consistently implemented”.

Published in 1999, the guidelines still lack funding or a statutory (legal) base. In 2009, up to 7 out of 10 reports of abused children in HSE areas have no allocated Social Worker.

The best monument to the decades of abused children would be properly funded Child Protection Services, a ban on Religious Orders (or other profiteers) being in charge of children’s services and the seizing of the assets of the abusing congregations.

Victims of Institutional Abuse should have the final say in what constitutes a just solution to past crimes of power and greed but the future welfare of children is all of our concern.

Solidarity with the abused means fighting for justice and democracy in properly funded public services today.

A history of sadism and cover-up

By Rory Connolly

Of all the religious orders who raped and tortured children in institutional ‘care’, none did so with more sadistic gusto than the Christian Brothers. Yet none has sought to cover up their crimes and protect their assets from compensation claims as much as these pious perverts.

Over 80% of all the male children whose abuse cases were investigated by the Ryan Commission had been in the care of the Christian Brothers, and what the Ryan Report shows is that, right to the end, the Christian Brothers lied and deceived, accusing their victims of being compensation-seeking cheats and chancers.

And all the while, behind the scenes and under the guidance of corporate lawyers, the Christian Brothers were shunting their assets back and forth so as to ensure their victims would never get proper compensation.

Within two days of the publication of the Ryan Report, Edmund Garvey, former world supremo of the Christian Brothers and now head of communications, announced that they had no more money to put into the compensation pot.

As Garvey spoke, public fury was mounting over the scandalous deal done in 2002 between the 18 abusing orders and the ultra-Catholic Minister for Education, Michael Woods. The deal limited the liability of the religious to a mere €127 million - most of which has never been paid - while the taxpayers have had to fork out over €1 billion in compensation to the abusers’ victims.

Garvey made it clear the Brothers had no intention of putting another cent into the pot, not because they didn’t want to, but because they couldn’t. The poor Brothers are stony broke.

But don’t they own scores of valuable properties all over Ireland?

They certainly did at the start of the Inquiry into Child Abuse, when their Irish assets - 100 schools and acres of land - were worth €500m. But, as Garvey revealed in the wake of the Ryan Report, the Brothers have since transferred ownership of all their schools and land to a separate entity called The Edmund Rice Educational Trust, headed by Commercial Court Judge, Peter Kelly.

And this isn’t the first time the devious and cunning Brothers have engaged in such shenanigans.

In 1996, faced with compensation claims totalling $30m from victims of abuse in their Mount Cashel orphanage in Newfoundland, the Canadian Christian Brothers went into liquidation, telling the liquidator they had only $4.3m in assets.

But the liquidator discovered that the Brothers’ assets were worth over $100m just a short time previously. What they had done was transfer ownership of their most valuable schools to supposedly separate trusts which they hoped would put them beyond the reach of their victims.

The Brothers, of course, say they have set up their Irish schools trust for ‘benign’ reasons - the maintenance of their ‘educational ethos’ - at a time of rapidly declining vocations. Apart from the sheer hypocrisy of an abusing order seeking to protect its assets so it can stay in the business of caring for children, there is good reason to doubt the Brothers’ bona fides.

For one thing, Edmund Garvey himself played a key role in helping the Canadian Brothers protect their assets, even to the extent of advising them to move ownership of their best school off-shore, something even their lawyers baulked at.

What’s more, the Canadian liquidator found a damning document, dated 1990, stating quite explicitly that by transferring the title of schools to independent Trusts the Brothers could protect their wealth from claims for compensation. It was a deliberate ruse.

Fortunately, the wheeze failed in Canada and their schools were sold to compensate the children they had raped.

But the big difference between what happened in Canada and what is happening in Ireland is that the Newfoundland state authorities pursued the Christian Brothers through the courts, believing none of their lies, and in the end forcing them out of educational provision entirely so that today Newfoundland has a completely secular school system, totally free from denominational control.

We need to follow our Newfoundland cousins and kick the religious out of our schools! WE need to demand free secular education for all! And while we are at it, let’s kick the religious out of the health service as well.

Time to separate church and state

By Kevin Wingfield

The arrogant dismissal by the 18 congregations of religious of any revisiting of the deal to pay just a fraction of their liabilities for sexual and physical abuse of children in their care must be the last straw.

Even some of the bishops, sensing the huge groundswell of anger over the issue, have felt forced to speak out in the last few days. The Catholic primate Cardinal, Seán Brady, Archbishop of Dublin, Diarmuid Martin, and Bishop of Killaloe, Willie Walsh, said the 2002 deal limiting the religious congregations’ contribution to just €127m of the estimated €1.3bn liability with the taxpayer picking up the tab for the rest, should be revisited and the 18 congregations concerned should contribute more.

But the director general of the Conference of Religious of Ireland (CORI), Marie Ann O’Connor, point blank refused, flannelling instead that the 18 congregations would prefer to “deal directly and to use all in their powers to channel whatever resources directly to the former residents” rather than reopen the terms of the deal.

In a statement, the Rape Crisis Network Ireland (RCNI) said, “Sadly, yet again we see these institutions employ the legal profession and hide behind so called legal concerns in order to aggressively protect their self preservation at any cost.”

The RCNI said it was unacceptable for agencies involved in the systematic abuse revealed in the Ryan commission report “to promote themselves as best placed to meet the needs of those they have previously betrayed”.

Having protected men in their midst who raped and brutalised children, the orders believe they can hide behind the government and the legal profession to avoid paying realistic compensation to their victims.

It was recently revealed that the religious congregations told the government in 2002 that they would fight every case in the courts and estimated that by spinning out these cases, and the rising legal bills of those claiming, they could reduce their liability by to just €60m.

The thuggish cover-up of decades of sexual and physical assaults by the religious orders amounts to a criminal conspiracy of enormous proportions. Yet they believe a few words of regret will wipe the slate clean. They also know that Fianna Fáil will protect them and their assets.

The craven excuse of Fianna Fáil ministers that there are legal impediments is a transparent falsehood. No such impediments were found when it came to altering the contracts of public sector workers and imposing levies on their pension contributions.

If there was a willingness from the government to ensure the religious took responsibility for their actions, it could easily be done. The statute of limitations which prevents victims taking action for physical abuse and cruelty in the past could be amended. A special tax or levy on the assets and property of the religious congregations could be put in place. The massive Church assets could be taken by the CAB. If there was a willingness from our rulers to bring the Church to account, it could be done.

Instead the corrupt institution of Fianna Fáil will do nothing unless they are forced to. We need a massive movement of protest demanding that the Church pays for its abuse.

From the foundation of the State, the Church was given a privileged position in Irish life, dominating education and health. What should be a voluntary association was elevated into an arm of the State. Fianna Fáil and the ruling class were happy to turn a blind eye to its abuses because it provided social control, particularly on the poor and working class people. The long overdue erosion of its authority among the mass of people has allowed its terrible abuse to slowly come to light.

Socialists have always argued for the separation of Church and State. Religious observation of whatever sort should be a private matter, neither promoted nor discriminated against by the state, its schools or its hospitals. Social provision should be a public matter, democratically controlled, not the private fiefdom of religious hierarchies.

Even now, 80 percent of our schools are controlled by the Church. The neurotic celibacy of the religious, and its power over the vulnerable, has shown itself to be an affront to decency. It is time to take the Church out of our hospitals, social services and schools.

State’s deference to Church

By Eamonn McCann

The fact that Catholic clergy in the Republic got away with child abuse for decades reflected the deference of political institutions to the Church. This tells us a great deal about the nature of the Southern State.

Politicians of all major parties have consistently kow-towed to the Church. This has included parties of the “Left”.

In 1996, it was a Labour Minister of Education, Niamh Breathnach, who introduced a law which copper-fastened Church control of primary schools.

The bishops were given a legal guarantee that the approximately 90 percent of schools run by Catholic bishops would henceforth be “managed in accordance with the doctrines, practices and traditions of the Roman Catholic Church as stated by the Irish Epicopal Conference.”

No TD objected.

In the same year, Breathnach led a delegation representing all Dáil parties to Rome for the beatification of Ignatius Rice, founder of the Christian Brothers. Again, no TD objected. No national newspaper condemned the use of public money for sectarian purposes.

Clerical abuse of school-children was already in the public arena. At the beginning of 1996, the number of admitted official investigations of complaints of abuse in dioceses stood at: Achonry 3, Ardagh & Clonmacnois 5, Armagh 8, Cashel & Emly 2, Clonfert 2, Cloyne 11, Cork & Ross 12, Derry 26, Down & Connor 3, Dromore 5, Dublin 67, Elphin 16, Ferns 21, Galway, Kilmacduagh & Kilfenora 6, Kerry 11, Kildare and Leighlin 1, Killaloe 10, Kilmore 6, Limerick 10, Raphoe 10, Waterford & Lismore 7.

And yet no TD opposed the moves to strengthen the bishops’ and the Church’s control of children’s education.

Even today, no Dáilparty, including the Greens and Sinn Féin, calls for an education system free of clerical control.

Bertie Ahern now denounces “attacks” on the Church. Former Education Minister Michael Woods defends the deal whereby the Church paid only a pittance to compensate the victims. Fine Gael leader Enda Kenny declares that the “great work” done by religious orders shouldn’t be lost sight of.

Underpinning all this is the fact that the Southern State came into existence as a specifically Catholic entity. Colonial oppression had long been expressed in anti-Catholic policies and practices. To an extent, then, freedom from oppression had come to be seen as freedom for Catholicism. Church bosses were not slow to take advantage.

The national movement which emerged as dominant in the aftermath of 1916 was steeped in Catholic influence. Ten percent of delegates to the Sinn Féin conference in 1917 were priests. The parties which emerged from Sinn Féin, Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil, and the remnants of Sinn Féin itself, carried this forward.

Thus, there was no serious opposition to allowing the Church to retain and strengthen its power in education and to have laws passed banning divorce, contraception or films and books which the Church disapproved of. Its power was institutionalised. It was able to bring down a Minister, Noel Browne, when he tried to bring in welfare provision for mothers and children in 1951.

Breathnach and her like were following in a long tradition.

Throughout, the Church helped ruling class parties to stabilise the State by denouncing and marginalising any Left-wing challenge which emerged.

To respond to the revelations of horrendous child abuse without facing up to the reality of the Church’s role and the complicity of the political establishment is, again, to back off from confronting the organisation mainly responsible for the abuse.

We need a secular, socialist, democratic society in which the interests of children, not of any Church, take precedence. Ending Church control of schools would be a start.