Sir, - The Christian Brothers have been swift to criticise RTE over the showing of the Prime Time series on their congregations in Australia and Canada. Their statement also describes their outrage at the possibility that children could suffer such abuse as described.
In the many years that we have been dealing with this subject, I have always been conscious of the many decent and holy Christian Brothers who served their lives as their founder wished. I have been saddened, too, by the few who abused their vocations for their own deprived gratification. Yes, only a few.
There is a case to answer by the Christian Brothers. It should be in their interest to confront this as humanely as possible. I wrote to the Christian Brothers some years ago asking for a meeting to discuss the Industrial Schools separate to their wider apology but was not listened to.
The claim that they are fully co-operating with the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse is a cloak for talking through their highly paid legal teams, as they did in Canada and Australia. They have not shown the values one would have expected from a religious order in their dealings with those of us representing victims.
I spent eight years with the Christian Brothers in Glin Industrial School (and eight years with the Sisters of Mercy in Killarney) as part of their family and have experienced this evasiveness on many occasions when visiting them in later years.
Can we not go back to basics and try to be more humane and honest in our dealings with each other and acknowledge that the hurt and abuses by those few Christian Brothers must be properly compensated for? Then we could close the door on these institutions for ever. - Yours, etc.,
Tom Hayes, Secretary to Alliance Victim Support Group, Castle Gardens, Richill, Co Armagh.