By Eftehia Katsareas
ABC News
May 22, 2009
http://abcnews.go.com/International/story?id=7645342&page=1
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Tom Hayes' first memories are those of the physical abuse he suffered in a school run by priests of the Christian Brothers' congregation in Limerick county, Ireland.
More than 50 years after Hayes, 62, was sexually abused by an older monitor in his school, the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse in Ireland's reform schools has released its final report. Now Hayes told ABC News that he's "glad the report was published in his lifetime."
More than 3,000 abuse victims sent applications to the Commission to have their stories heard. The report chronicles "endemic and repeated" sexual, physical and motional abuse by Catholic priests and nuns to children in the period from 1930 until the Catholic Churchchurch-run institutions were closed in the 1990's.
Cardinal Sean Brady, leader of the Catholic Church in Ireland responded to the report, saying, "I am profoundly sorry and deeply ashamed that children suffered in such awful ways in these institutions. Children deserved better and especially from those caring for them in the name of Jesus Christ.''
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