Brothers subject to sledge-hammer TV tactics

The Christian Brothers are irredeemably corrupt and should be wound up immediately, their assets seized and sold to provide compensation to those they have harmed. This was the message hammered home in a two-part Prime Time documentary this week called Betrayed: Christian Brothers and Child Sex Abuse across Three Continents.

This was not balance, in my opinion. This was broadcasting as polemics, and that sometimes has a place. The Laffoy Commission, or the Redress Bill, flawed as the latter is, probably would not exist if broadcasters such as Mary Raftery and Louis Lentin had not showcased the anger and hurt of victims of child abuse in religious-run institutions. As the victims were ignored and not believed for so long, the programme-makers probably felt justified in concentrating solely on their needs.

Yet the danger is there that broadcasting as polemics can create new social pariahs who have no opportunity to state their case and be believed.

The whole point in highlighting injustice should be to look at it and learn from it. There is little sense of that in these programmes. Instead, in the first, there was blanket condemnation of the Order, the now-familiar claim that most Brothers were bad and those who were good were weak and did not oppose the evil they saw.

One of the sources on which the programme relied heavily was the report of an Australian Senate Committee on Child Migration, Lost Innocents. While it singles out the Christian Brothers for damning condemnation, it also has this to say:

"The committee understands that for many child migrants their experiences in the Australian institutions were positive and that they proceeded to lead happy and prosperous lives. The committee recognises that an inquiry such as this was unlikely to attract such people because the whole subject is not an issue for them."

Similarly, though not quoted in the programme, the report of the Canadian Law Commission on Child Abuse, which makes harrowing reading, acknowledges that "most of the people who worked in the these institutions did their very best to fulfil their roles as educators, care givers and guardians, often with inadequate resources and support".

That understanding is lacking in the programmes. It could have been there. Dr Barry Coldrey has worked to expose the inertia and denial of his own religious order. His last book, Religious Life Without Integrity, was published on the Internet. According to a Melbourne newspaper, the Vatican Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life demanded he withdraw it. Coldrey, citing "my duty of religious obedience", said he would obey, but cited "technical difficulties" which allowed those in the know to download the book before it was withdrawn.

Mike Milotte, the presenter, acknowledges that Coldrey was crucial to their investigation. Yet in an article in the Spring 2000 issue of Studies, Coldrey explains why severe physical punishment became the norm. Untrained staff often started with idealism, only to have their "high motivation challenged severely by numerous physical and psychological assaults made on their self-esteem and wellbeing by the children . . . Staff were sometimes confronted by abusive teenagers, messy and aggressive children and a community which responded only on special occasions."

He also points out: "Abuse was not peculiar to church-managed residential care; the Catholic Brotherhoods did not invent corporal punishment or pioneer sexual abuse of children." He points out that the long hours of work and the sacrifice involved do not excuse physical or sexual abuse, but it sets a context - which is sadly missing from the programmes which only see a black and white world of evil Brothers and saintly residents. In Lost Innocents a problem highlighted as a "particularly disturbing aspect of institutional life" was "bullying and sexual assault by older boys against younger boys". It is not mentioned in these programmes.

As for the claims that the Canadian Brothers are salting away assets to prevent paying compensation , if it is true it is disgraceful and Milotte and Raftery are to be congratulated for exposing it. If, however, as reported in the Irish Catholic and the Sunday Independent, they are instead trying to prevent schools from being sold, that may be different. If Christian Brothers schools in Ireland were sold to developers to pay compensation claims there would be uproar from parents, who would not see why their children should be penalised for the actions of Brothers.

The programme-makers relied heavily on lawyers who are representing claimants against the Brothers. These are hardly disinterested bystanders. For example, in Australia, when the Brothers succeeded in having cases heard in the jurisdiction in which the alleged crimes were originally committed, the law firm involved lost thousands and thousands of dollars of potential income.

Similarly, documents were quoted with extreme selectivity. This has been a feature of documentaries on this issue. Retrieving the entire document often paints a different and more balanced picture.

It was also ludicrous to claim that to offer an interview to Brother Edmund Garvey, head of the Christian Brothers worldwide, constituted any form of balance, though no doubt the programme-makers thought it did. In my opinion, it was a classic "When did you stop beating your wife?" situation, where anything he might say would be outweighed by the entire thrust of the rest of the programmes.

Children had their childhoods stolen, their innocence mercilessly exploited. You cannot equate the suffering of adults with that. However, I could not shake off an image of Brothers sitting quietly watching these programmes in community rooms. Some, who though middle-aged are too young to be implicated in abuses, and other older men who slaved selflessly in these institutions, all being condemned without trial and told their Order had no right to exist.

Terrible things were done. Redress must be made. But this kind of sledge-hammer television is not the way to do it.

bobrien@irish-times.ie