The Child Abuse Commission will next week deliver its final report, but the greatest difficulty it has faced is the sheer scale of the
abuse it was established to investigate, writes MARY RAFTERY A DECADE AFTER it was established, the Child Abuse Commission is at last to produce its final report next week. After so many years, and an estimated cost of more than €70 million, it has been one of the most secret and arguably the most controversial of the many tribunals of inquiry. The Commission’s initial presiding judge resigned in protest at the behaviour of one of the government departments under investigation. It has produced a few sensations in its time, but given that most of its hearings have been strictly in private, much is riding on its final report. Thousands of victims of abuse look to it for ultimate vindication of the truth of the trauma they suffered as children. Equally, the religious orders that ran the schools and children’s institutions under inquiry hope that it will provide a balance by validating their own testimony of the good work they did for children who, they argue, would otherwise have been destitute. The commission’s 2003 Interim Report provides a vivid reminder of what is at issue here. It summarised the testimony of more than 700 witnesses who had at that point given evidence to its confidential committee. Hundreds described “being beaten on every part of their body: the front and back of hands, wrists, legs, back, buttocks, head, face and feet. Some beatings were administered in public and witnesses reported that they were sometimes made to remove all their clothing for these public beatings.” The commission listed weapons used, leather straps, together with “a variety of sticks and other instruments including ash plants, blackthorn sticks, brush handles, pointers, farm implements, drain rods, rubber tyres, fan belts, horse tackle, sliotars and hurling sticks”. Sexual abuse is described as being commonly associated with physical violence and “ranged from detailed interrogation about sexual activity, inspection of genitalia, kissing, fondling of genitalia, masturbation of witness by abuser and vice versa, oral intercourse, rape and gang rape. Witnesses described their sexual abuse as sometimes a single event while for others the abuse lasted for their entire stay in the institution.” The commission has also heard extensive testimony of severe emotional and psychological abuse, together with neglect and starvation. Its final conclusions next week will incorporate the evidence of roughly 2,500 people who suffered abuse in this country’s children’s institutions during most of the 20th century. It is expected that it will produce specific findings in respect of a number of named schools, hospitals and institutions in towns all over Ireland.
Amongst the religious orders under investigation are the Sisters of Mercy, responsible for the largest number of childrens institutions including Goldenbridge, and the Christian Brothers, the largest provider of institutions for older boys from 10 to 16 years including schools at Artane and Letterfrack.