Madam, – Child abuse has not gone away. Today’s victims include the many children with mental health difficulties for whom services are grossly inadequate. I and my colleagues in the mental health services regularly see suicidal children who have to be discharged to unsafe living arrangements whether at home or in care, because no other alternative is available for them. These children have no one to advocate on their behalf, and I believe many will bring cases against the State in the years ahead.
Mental health professionals, the HSE, the Government, the people – we all contribute to this situation by our inaction. – Yours, etc,
Madam, – The Ryan report on child abuse has done this State some service.
How we interpret its shocking disclosures will tell a lot about what we understand about ourselves, of how as a community of people we inflicted such horrors and tried to close the door on such darkness.
For a moment, let us move beyond the redress debate (important as it is) and consider what can we learn from the report. Beyond the apologies, the begging for forgiveness, the walks of atonement, let us no longer decry the darkness but fully shine a light on it.
The darkness is the perversity of religious formation, the repression of natural human desires, the negative influencing of human thought, the utter poverty of reasoned understanding of humanity and its process of evolution and development.
All of the above has contributed to the sense of powerlessness over the human body and mind and resulted in heinous overspilling of warped power onto vulnerable children.
Shame on religion. – Yours, etc,
Madam, – On the one hand, as a victim of child sexual abuse myself, I was overwhelmed by the tsunami of suffering I have been listening to and reading about in the media over the past few weeks. On the other hand, I wanted to ask myself if all this abuse was a core evil in itself or the symptom and result of an even deeper evil. I have come to the conclusion that it is the latter.
That aside, I believe that various actions now need to be taken to give justice and closure to the victims and to address the massive and righteous anger of the Irish people.
1. The 18 religious orders named in the Ryan report should either voluntarily or under force pay the whole of the €1 billion bill for what has happened. 2. Every priest, brother, nun and lay man should be publicly named on a special web site and in the media alongside the name of the institution where the abuse was committed and the nature and extent of the abuse. 3. The Garda should prosecute each individual where a complaint has been made and sufficient evidence for a prosecution exists. 4. Retrospective legislation should be enacted to facilitate the prosecution and imprisonment of bishops, religious superiors and others who covered up the abuse and sheltered the abusers. Only in this way will victims get full justice and the clergy and religious of Ireland regain even a shred of respect and moral authority.
As to the deeper evil at the core of this problem? This lies in the phenomenon of the transmutation over the centuries of the love- and service-driven Christian community founded by Christ into the current day Roman Empire Mark II and the absolutely corrupting dynamics of absolute power and dysfunctional sexuality underpinning it.
One of the Reformers hit the nail directly on the head when he declared: “What Christ preached was a kingdom. What we got was a church”!
In order to address this core evil Ireland must do the following: 1. Ireland must start treating the Catholic Church, not as a “state” but as one church among many, withdraw the Irish ambassador from the Vatican and with courtesy put the Irish Papal Nuncio and his staff on the next flight to Rome. 2. The Irish people should be invited to vote for a new constitution that makes no mention whatsoever of religion and declares that Ireland is a modern, democratic, secular and pluralist nation within the European Union. 3. All the institutions of the nation – schools, colleges, hospitals, nursing homes etc – should be under the direct control of the State. No church should have any input into these institutions and religion should be confined to the privacy of the family home and the place of worship.
Finally, we should never again have to witness our president, taoiseach, ministers, mayors, councillors Garda or armed forces turning up in their official capacities at church events such as the installation and funerals of clergy or escorting the bones of saints around our roads.
As one of your correspondents pointed out recently its way past time that the Roman colonisation of Ireland was brought to a complete end. – Yours, etc,
Madam, – One of the most important contributions of the Ryan report was its emphasis on the systemic nature of the abuses that took place. These were not just the work of isolated, individual abusers but were part of a much wider culture that permitted abuse to occur and remain unchallenged.
I think it would be wise for us, in the light of all that we have learned, to take a careful look at the ways in which the mistreatment of young people still happens. Apart from the continued occurrence of child sexual abuse, I can think of at least two other areas that should give us cause for concern.
The first is the widespread and increasing practice of drugging children with psychiatric medicine in order to manage their behaviour. Were we to have another tribunal some time in the future, I believe this would be identified as a major scandal.
The second cause for concern is the continued acceptance of adults’ right to slap children.
I’m sure that if we thought about it, we could identify other ways in which we still collude with the mistreatment of children and young people. – Yours, etc,
Madam, – It’s always too easy to blame “them” for past scandals and avoid doing what’s necessary right now. For instance, in 2006/07 a Department of Education survey showed that 15 per cent, or nearly 500 primary schools, had not introduced the “Stay Safe” programme. This very gentle programme, which lets kids know that they have certain rights and gives them some means of seeking help if they are being bullied or abused, was vehemently opposed by right wing Catholic fundamentalists up and down the country.
It is now up to every parent and politician to insist on its implementation in every school. – Yours, etc,
Madam, – My gratitude for the excellent journalism of Colm Keena (Home News, May 28th).
If a property developer owing half a billion euro to Anglo Irish Bank (the Irish taxpayer) appeared before the commercial court and was discovered by the learned High Court judge to have off-loaded €400 million of his assets to a philanthropic trust presided over by a bricklayer in the preceding 12 months – what would happen?
I’m guessing the High Court judge would declare that such a transfer was a fraud upon creditors and null and void.
Could the Christian Brothers and the Minister for Justice please let us know whether the assets of the Edmund Rice Schools Trust will be available to heal the battered, the raped and the buggered? – Yours, etc,
Madam, – We citizens and taxpayers are literally paying for the sins of the religious orders, developers, feeble politicians and the banks. Our nation’s soul has also been violated by these same people. What are we going to do about it? What kind of a country do we want for future generations? It is finally time now for us the people to reclaim our destiny and face up to our duty to create an honest, proud and egalitarian Republic. – Yours, etc,
Madam, – The Ryan report has caused a shockwave throughout the country, and the dust won’t settle on it for a long time – nor should it. However, some journalists who would claim to be opposed to racism have no problem with promoting hatred of Catholicism, and Catholics. In fact hatred of Catholics and Catholicism, has become normalised in Ireland now. It is not good, and it is not normal. – Yours, etc,