CANADA
Huffington Post
Tim Knight
Program: Breaking the Silence (CBC News Network)
Date: Sunday, May 13, 2012
Last Sunday, came yet another T.V. documentary detailing alleged abuse of young boys by Roman Catholic priests.
Breaking the Silence tells the stories of five Canadians who went to boarding schools in England and Tanzania run by the Rosminian Order.
In it, the five, now grown men, make horrifyingly routine accusations of sexual, physical and mental abuse suffered at the hands of priests. Along with the even more routine charge that the Church, in its infinite blindness, covered up the abuse. …
Flashback — Some 22 years ago, Christian Brothers of Ireland in Canada were forced to close their Mount Cashel Orphanage in Newfoundland and Labrador after charges that the Roman Catholic brothers sexually, physically and emotionally abused some 300 boys in their care.
Shortly thereafter, I was in Dublin training senior journalists at Ireland’s national broadcaster (equivalent of the CBC) Radio Telefís Éireann (RTÉ).
During a story workshop, I mentioned the Mount Cashel crimes and asked the assembled journalists if they were following up on the Canadian connection — was it not likely that similarly horrific child abuse also happened in Ireland, home base of the Christian Brothers?
The journalists’ response was that “everyone knew” of such happenings but pious Irish culture and draconian libel laws made it impossible to report on Roman Catholic Church abuses, sexual or otherwise.
In sum, the church covered up its sins, protected its sinners and was simply too powerful for Irish journalists to dare challenge.
It took another ten years before RTÉ finally screwed up the courage to broadcast a T.V. documentary, States of Fear, exposing Mount Cashel-like decades of pedophilia and sadism in Irish church-run and government-supported institutions for orphaned and abandoned children.
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