The Scope Of Child Rape By Religious Orders

Anthony McIntyre ☠ For the detractors of Ireland's religious orders it is the gift that keeps on giving.

For the victims of those orders, it is the nightmare that keeps recurring.

Almost twenty years after the Ferns Report, Irish society finds itself facing yet another rape scandal involving religious orders. We have come to expect it. Catholic clerics and child rape just seems so commonplace. Names of rapist priests such as Sean Fortune and Brendan Smyth have taken up considerable space in the collective memory vaults of this society as has the Magdalene Laundries and Tuam babies.

In the view of one news outlet, the report from the scoping inquiry led by Senior Counsel, Mary O’Toole SC, was nothing short of explosive:

one of the worst mass atrocities in the modern age and it happened here, in Ireland, on a grand scale as recently as the 1980s and 1990s.

Despite being red top hyperbole, it still underlines the gravity and scale of the systemic and institutionalised assault by Irish religious orders on children.

In more temperate language another media outlet concisely summed up the 700 page report:

almost 2,400 allegations of sexual abuse of children in schools run by religious orders. There were 844 alleged abusers in over 300 schools run by 42 religious orders across the country.

The report also suggests 'that the overall number of allegations might be the tip of the iceberg of those affected by abuse in Irish schools.' Almost a quarter of the abuse allegations came from 17 schools that were supposed to attend to the special needs of children, not the perverted sexual needs of priests and their fellow travellers.

Many of the personal testimonies of abuse victims are horrific but have been well detailed elsewhere and require no elaboration here. Suffice to say that they are not for the faint hearted.

One victim Chris Doris feels “the church’s response continues to be devoid of Christian ethics.” Another reading of it might suggest a different assessment: that the behaviour is wholly consistent with what passes for Christian ethics in Irish society, an ethics more in line with that identified by Nietzsche: “Christianity gave Eros poison to drink; he did not die of it, certainly, but degenerated to Vice.” Complementary to Shakespeare's observation that hell is empty and all the devils are here.

Even in a society which might be expected to have lost its sense of shock in respect of the clerical rape of children, this report has aroused huge anger.

The religious orders along with the Church hierarchy will wring their hands, beat their breasts, offer thoughts and prayers and seek to avoid forking up compensation for those its vile staffers raped and abused. As has been said before in TPQ the Catholic Church in Ireland can rightly be viewed as a child rape cartel.

Education Minister Norma Foley, describing the report as a “harrowing document, containing some of the most appalling accounts of sexual abuse”, promised a Commission of Investigation.

With victims airing suspicions about paedophile rings organising the abuse, Garda Commissioner Drew Harris has said that there will be an investigation into the claims. Society can only hope he goes at it with more determination than he has thus far against far right violence.

While on that nefarious topic, it is worthwhile noting that a persistent theme of far right discourse is the threat allegedly posed by immigrants and refugees to children. Yet the racists have never yet been found howling and scowling outside the property of religious orders, with demands to 'get them out.' Nor have they organised riots in protest at one clerical assault on a child or thrown petrol bombs at properties housing members of religious orders. The arrival of five hundred undocumented priests, nuns and Christian Brothers into a community would be welcomed by the far right, claiming to see in it the reassertion of moral authority and Christian values.

I much prefer the immigrants.

⏩Follow on Twitter @AnthonyMcIntyre.