BishopAccountability.org
	Civilians to Help Gardai Analyse Ryan Report By John Burke Sunday Business Post May 31, 2009 http://www.sbpost.ie/post/pages/p/story.aspx-qqqt=IRELAND-qqqm=news-qqqid=42142-qqqx=1.asp Detectives will focus their probe on whether members of religious orders who passed information to the Ryan Commission gave contradictory or misleading information to Gardai during previous criminal investigations as far back as the 1990s. The investigating unit will also be asked to identify whether there are any internal Church documents or memoranda relating to allegations or knowledge of child sexual abuse that were not disclosed during previous investigations. In the coming days, the garda unit, under the command of Assistant Commissioner Derek Byrne, the force’s highest operational commander, will begin to examine statements made by senior clerics to the Ryan Commission. The unit will attempt to identify any discrepancies between information provided to the Commission and statements given when reformatories such as Letterfrack in Galway and Daingean in Offaly were investigated back in the early 1990s. However, given the complexity and sensitivity of the case, the probe is not likely to see definitive results for several months at the earliest, according to senior garda sources. One senior garda close to the investigation described the Ryan Report as ‘‘unfortunately, vague in how it reported the periods when incidents were alleged to have occurred’’. The probe is expected to focus almost entirely on instances of sexual abuse, rather than physical abuse. That is because of statutory protections which were afforded to certain forms of corporal punishment under the Childrens Act 1908, until its abolition in 1982. A garda spokesman said that, once the dedicated garda unit had identified new strands of information, these would be passed to the relevant district detective units where the Church-run homes were located. A number of the members of religious orders who were identified in the Ryan Commission report have already been convicted and sentenced. These include Maurice Tobin, who was convicted in 2003 of abusing 25 boys while he was a Christian Brother at Letterfrack. James Redmond, also known as Brother Eunan, was convicted in 2004 after admitting he may have abused more than 100 boys in a 40year period.
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