One million 'sexually abused'

Child abuse:  More than one million Irish people were sexually abused as children, a leading campaigner for victims' rights has claimed.

Mr Colm O'Gorman, founder of the One in Four group, said that all of Irish society was responsible for the children that were abused.

He argued that no one was held to account and said the only "worry" was the money required to compensate victims.

"Our Constitution states that all legislative, executive and judicial powers of Government derive from the people," he said.

"It is in our name that children have been brutalised, it is power that was derived from us, the people, that allowed such abuse.

"And we are therefore collectively responsible, not to blame, not personally at fault as individuals but responsible."

Mr O'Gorman was addressing the Labour Party conference after receiving the party's Jim Larkin Justice Award, which marks contributions to social justice.

Mr O'Gorman's revelations about the abuse he suffered from the Wexford priest, Father Sean Fortune, led to a major controversy in the Diocese of Ferns. Last year the Bishop of Ferns, Dr Brendan Comiskey, resigned. Mr O'Gorman recently received a substantial compensation settlement from the diocese.

Mr O'Gorman said the justice system had failed abuse victims, noting that only half of 1 per cent of all abuse cases resulted in a conviction. He called for the introduction of a system that worked towards principles of truth, fairness, integrity and right. "Without these principles there can be no justice," he said.

Mr O'Gorman said: "For many of our children who suffered so appallingly there is no light, nothing that uncovers the shadow. In so many cases, there is no prosecution, no response. There will be no prosecution in many hundreds of cases where children have been brutalised, raped, sodomised, beaten, degraded, starved, deprived and exploited. In so many cases, there is no prosecution, no response.

"How can it be in the public interest that over one million people in this country have been sexually abused as children in their churches, in their families, schools, hospitals and communities and our systems of justice are incapable of responding to that harm? How can it be in the public interest for us to lose that much human potential? Can we afford that?" Mr O'Gorman said there was a tendency to blame those who had been abused.

"It still appears that our fear at facing our collective shame for what was done to them in our name leads us to judge and further silence them," he said.

"It has been reported that senior civil servants advised the Government that a truth commission for those abused in industrial schools was ill-advised as they feared 'crackpots or people with axes to grind'."