The investigation committee of the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse was told yesterday that the emergence of clerical child sex abuse as an issue had been due to "the media and the constant publicity of those religious found guilty in the courts".
Mr Tom Hayes, of the Alliance Victims' Support group, said this confused quite a lot of people who had been in institutions. They came to believe that when dealing with Government bodies "they had to say they were sexually abused as opposed to other forms of abuse. That is what we found on the ground," he said.
"We know sex abuse did occur in the institutions," he said, but that the abuse was perpetrated by peers. "Religious abuse was new to my ears."
His group was different from other support groups in that it believed all services to victims should be on a professional basis only, he said. Alliance lobbied officials and acted in an advisory role to victims. It had no offices but had a website, and advertised meetings around the country which were "not successful" in attendances.
Earlier Mr Tony Treacy, of the Cork-based Right of Place group, said the truth had to come out. He looked forward to the day when he could hold up the commission's report and say: "We were telling the truth."
The group was set up on July 10th, 1999, and had evolved from being past residents at Upton to include former residents at Ferrybank, Clonmel, also run by the Rosminian congregation, to having a more broad-based membership.
Its office in Cork was funded by the State, as was Welcome House, which it ran for people to stay in while giving evidence before the commission and the redress board.
It recently opened State-funded apartments for former residents now living abroad who wished to return to Ireland, and for the homeless. It had offices in Tralee, Limerick, Galway and Ennis, with branches in Waterford and Clonmel.
He asked the committee to investigate the role of the ISPCC and the St Vincent de Paul society in putting children in the institutions.
This was repeated by Mr Tom Cronin, of the International Survivors of Institutional Abuse.
Based at Hammersmith, England, it was set up in 2002, he said. It had 150 to 200 members throughout the UK, but received no funding from any source. They "got nothing from the Taoiseach's apology. It meant little or nothing to them."
He believed parents of survivors should be included in committee investigations, as well as people who had worked in the institutions.
Sister Cornelia Walsh, of the Sisters of Nazareth, said they dealt with 1,851 children at their home in Sligo between 1910 and its closure in 1993. Allegations of physical and sexual abuse "against persons other than sisters" began to emerge in the mid-1990s. There were also allegations of "administration of harsh discipline by a sister", and about the home itself.
The allegations had dismayed the congregation in Ireland and throughout the world. There were no records of discipline administered at the home, nor had there been procedures in place where abuse was concerned. There were an average 115 children in the home at any one time, sleeping in dormitories until the early 1970s. She did not say, nor was she asked, how many complaints against the congregation had been received by the commission. Nor would she tell The Irish Times later.
Ms Christine Buckley, of the Aislinn centre, which has refused to go before the committee without legal representation, said yesterday she had been informed by the Taoiseach's Office that the Attorney General had advised she was entitled to representation.
She took exception yesterday to Mr Hayes's evidence to the committee that allegations of clerical sex abuse in the institutions had been media-led. She said Mr Hayes had asserted this in an interview with the Irish Catholic and later denied saying such things. In a later interview with the same paper, he repeated the allegations.
She and other members at the National Office for Victims of Abuse (NOVA, an umbrella body for victims' groups) had asked him to produce documentary evidence he said supported his view. When he failed to do this, he was removed from NOVA.