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	Responsibility and Accountability: Who Was Responsible? In Plain Sight - Amnesty International September 26, 2011 http://www.amnesty.ie/sites/default/files/INPLAINSIGHT%20(WEB_VERSION).pdf [excerpt: beginning on page106] The absence of both clear lines of responsibility and effective accountability mechanisms played a significant role in enabling the continuation of the abuse of children. The actions of agents of the Catholic Church (members of religious orders, priests, and diocesan and Vatican authorities), agents of the State (those within the executive and government departments, the Gardaí and the health authorities), and the responses of wider society to failings in residential institutions and abuses will be examined. Despite the formal constitutional separation of church and State, the Catholic hierarchy had a unique position among pressure groups in Irish society.1 By the 1950s "indirectly through its influence on the Catholic majority, and directly through its influence upon Catholic members of government", the Catholic Church was "without peer in terms of power".2 The Murphy (Dublin) Report suggests that the prominent and influential role of agents of the Catholic Church in society was the very reason why these abuses were allowed to go unchecked.3 While there was a failure to demand accountability from this powerful and pervasive institution, article 44.5 of the Irish Constitution suggested that any involvement in the internal affairs of the various Irish churches was inappropriate, even unconstitutional: Every religious denomination shall have the right to manage its own affairs, own, acquire and administer property, movable and immovable, and maintain institutions for religious or charitable purposes. The absence of effective accountability mechanisms for an organisation that acted as the dominant provider of services for the majority of the population contributed to the conditions which allowed for the large scale abuse of children housed in residential institutions run by religious orders and enabled the abuse of children in the community by priests to go unchecked. While there was an absence of external accountability mechanisms, there was similarly an absence of internal mechanisms within the governing structures of Catholic organisations, which made abuse even more likely. Staffing In residential institutions, run by religious orders, not only were members often allowed to go unchecked in their abuse of children, but abuse was made more likely by the selection of particularly unsuitable staff. Barry Coldrey describes how "old, sick and mentally unstable members" were commonly 'hidden' in institutions.5 He has identified this as a worldwide problem in children's institutions managed by religious and charitable organisations.6 This also reflects the traditional low status attached to the work of caring for children and the low status attached to children housed in residential institutions. [I]t was generally believed in the order that men were often sent to staff such terrible places because they had proved difficult or inadequate or had got into trouble in 'normal' schools. The vast majority of these children were of 'working class' origins and it is clear that that this affected the staff selection process. Religious orders often managed a variety of educational facilities and it is apparent that the explicit hierarchy within orders determined staff allocations between secondary schools and residential institutions. Indeed, a two-tier membership system that reflected class origins existed within the orders, which produced 'choir' sisters and brothers, who received more training, usually for teaching and nursing, and 'lay' sisters and brothers who were responsible for farm work and domestic duties, and who were more likely to end up staffing residential institutions.8 Margaret Lee, a former Sister of Mercy who entered the novitiate in 1961, describes how "the brightest and most talented sisters were assigned to the secondary school system" which, until 1967 when post primary education became free, educated only a minority of Ireland's children. In contrast "untrained personnel were often deployed to the care of the children in the orphanage [industrial school]9 , reflecting the scant regard in which both the carer and those cared for were held".10 She notes that secondary schools were highly valued because they "provided an education for the middle class section of society from which our own roots had sprung and were also the recruiting ground for new members to the congregation".11 Similarly Tom Dunne argues that Christian Brothers' secondary schools, which housed potential recruits for the order, "were staffed with their brightest and best" while they left "the far more needy boys of their industrial schools to the inadequate or the troubled, who were given no special training and little supervision".12 For Lee the class system underpinned the value system of her order and while the congregation was predominantly middle class, children placed in the orphanage "were seen as coming from the lower strata of society and therefore as unequal to us and less deserving".13 The low status of the staff that worked in residential institutions reflected that of the schools themselves, and of the children who resided there, in Irish society. Retired Bishop of Killaloe, Willie Walsh, has suggested that the young age at which people entered orders, the burden of celibacy for some members, the promotion of obedience, and the authoritarian nature of leadership in all areas of religious life, were "not conducive to good human formation" and that these factors go some way to explaining why the abuse happened.15 Walsh suggests that their very powerlessness within the structure of their order meant that abusers were likely "to abuse whatever little power they may have [had] over other people in their care or control".16 Similarly Lee suggests that, these people were voiceless and without any great status in their congregations and, consequently, within themselves were simmering with anger, frustration and dissatisfaction with life … In the religious communities they were powerless but in the world of the orphanage they had absolute power. Put with this the fact that they could be fairly certain that any violence or rough treatment, indeed any punishment of the children, would go unchallenged, and we may be coming to some explanation for it all. Even if some parents did challenge what was occurring they were unlikely to get a hearing from any authority figure in church or state, due to the commonly held perception that they were not worthy of a hearing. The use of corporal punishment in residential institutions was widespread and excessive. For Coldrey this was the result of large numbers of children and teenagers being left in the care of few untrained staff who "resorted to corporal punishment as the only control mechanism they knew".18 He also asserts that "the boundary between acceptable punishment and abuse was vague and ambiguous" while similarly blurred were the boundaries between physical and sexual abuse.19 Neglect and hunger were also common features of residential institutions while few resources were devoted to the children's education or entertainment.
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