A REPORT examining the abuse experienced by thousands of children who attended State-run institutions is to be made public in Dublin this afternoon.
The final report of The Child Abuse Commission, the largest investigation of religious orders in Ireland to date, is expected to outline the emotional, physical and sexual abuse inflicted on young people who attended schools and institutions from 1940 onwards.
Institutions investigated by the commission over a 10-year period included industrial schools, institutions for children with disabilities and ordinary day schools.
Among the religious orders investigated were the Sisters of Mercy, responsible for the largest number of children’s institutions, the Christian Brothers, the largest provider of institutions for boys aged 10 to 16, the Presentation Sisters and the Sisters of Our Lady of Charity of Refuge (who ran the Magdalen Laundry at High Park in Dublin).
The deadline for receipt of complaints of abuse to the commission was July 2001, at which time 3,149 people had applied to testify. Around 1,000 applicants had hearings before the confidential committee which examined their claims of abuse, while a further 800 people were interviewed by the investigation committee.
The inquiry, believed to have cost some €70 million, was announced in 1999 by then taoiseach Bertie Ahern, who apologised to the victims of abuse following revelations made in States of Fear, an RTÉ documentary series on the abuse suffered by children throughout the childcare system during the 20th century.
Ms Justice Mary Laffoy was appointed to head the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse in May 1999 and legislation to establish the commission on a statutory basis was passed one year later.
The approach of the religious orders to the inquiry was described by the commission in 2003 as “adversarial and legalistic” and, later that year, Ms Justice Laffoy resigned in protest at the behaviour of the Department of Education, whose duty it was to inspect and regulate the bulk of the institutions, because, she said, it was refusing at that time to co-operate fully with the commission’s demands for documents.
She was replaced by Justice Seán Ryan, who announced that the commission no longer intended to name anyone responsible for abuse, other than those already convicted by the courts and that it would interview a cross section of witnesses, due to the scale of the inquiry.
The commission’s interim report, published in 2003, summarised the testimony of more than 700 witnesses who had at that point given evidence to its confidential committee.
Hundreds of those interviewed described “being beaten on every part of their body” and many said “beatings were administered in public” and that “they were sometimes made to remove all their clothing” for public beatings.
