New group insists many abuse claims unfounded

In years to come Irish society will "hang its head in shame" at the way it has treated members of religious congregations, the founder of a new group established to support them has said.

Ms Florence Horseman-Hogan, who spent her first five years in the care of the Sisters of Mercy at St Joseph's Industrial School in Ballinasloe, Co Galway, describes allegations of abuse against the nuns as "like an attack on my own family".

Taken into the nuns' care - despite coming from a Church of Ireland home - because her father was an alcoholic and her mother mentally ill, she says her overriding memory is of feeling "totally secure, fed, warm and nurtured".

The school closed when she was five, she says, and she went back to her parents for a time before being taken in by an aunt. Now married with four children, she works as a paediatric nurse in Dublin.

Six weeks ago she started Let Our Voices Emerge (LOVE), "to give a voice to the laity, supporting the religious of integrity through the current abuse scandals". So far, "about 80" people have joined the organisation.

She insists LOVE was her own idea and that it was she who approached the Christian Brothers urging them to release their statement on Sunday saying that "over 95 per cent" of the men who have had allegations of abuse made against them at the Laffoy Commission "worked in ordinary day schools without any allegation or hint of complaints against them".

"I just felt I could not sit by and watch the people who had given us so much being trampled on."

Since the screening of such films as States Of Fear and Dear Daughter, she believes a witch-hunt has been unleashed against religious orders who got "very little help from the State".

It is a witch-hunt which is made up of numerous "false allegations" and which has "ruined the lives" of those falsely accused. She said it had been "extremely traumatic" too for those who had good experiences of care.

"Growing up in a home you haven't got your family, either because they're gone or they don't want you or can't cope with you. You haven't got anyone who is yours. All you've got are the sisters, they are yours," Ms Horseman-Hogan said.

"People hear about the nuns feeding pig swill to children. Imagine people saying that about your mother. You'd say 'How dare you?' There are always two sides to every truth and every side should be told," she said.

She is convinced many of the allegations of abuse are unfounded and says she believes people are making spurious allegations in the hope of winning large compensation settlements.

"What we have are people right across the board saying 'You back up my allegation and I'll split the compensation with you'. People are coming up with scars they got accidentally and are saying they were abused."

There was abuse, she concedes, and agrees it was "absolutely necessary that the stories of abuse came out" but the documentaries were "just too, too hyped up".She has no agenda other than to "put some balance back". She said it wasn't easy "to come forward and speak up on behalf of the religious", but she felt someone had to do it.

LOVE can be contacted on 086-8762148