DUBLIN (IRELAND)
Irish Daily Mail [Dublin, Ireland]
June 14, 2023
By Helen Bruce
A documentary exposing the abuse of boys at Blackrock College in Dublin has enabled more victims to come forward, as official figures show a significant number of new allegations.
The National Board for Safeguarding Children in the Catholic Church in Ireland has produced its annual report, revealing that the number of allegations of abuse made against members of the clergy rose to 251, compared to 178 the previous year.
Teresa Devlin, chief executive of the board, wrote: ‘Many of these relate to boarding schools during a time when they were run by religious orders. The national board has consistently welcomed opportunities that give complainants a voice and a mechanism for sharing what happened to them as children.
‘A series of media releases in the autumn of 2022, following a documentary called Blackrock Boys, provided such an opportunity, not just for victims of abuse in Blackrock College, but in other boarding schools and settings governed by male and female religious across Ireland.’
She continued: ‘While we can be fairly confident that existing practice with children is well regulated, our work in safeguarding will not be completed until all of those who have been abused as children within the Church are enabled to come forward.’
The reports of abuse were notified to the board between April 1, 2022 and March 31 this year. A total of 200 said sexual abuse was the main form of abuse, but there were a further 37 allegations of physical abuse, one boundary violation, and 13 cases of alleged abuse for which the type was not provided.
In some cases notified, particularly in relation to sexual abuse, emotional abuse was also noted on the referral form. The board said that the allegations appeared to have been made against 170 respondents.
The abuse was said to date back to the 1970s in 88 cases, and to the 1980s in 56 cases, but other allegations ranged from the 1940s up until the 2020s.
Many of the abusers are believed to have died. ‘The spikes in notifications [in the past 12 months] are as a direct consequence of media interest in reports of abuse in boarding schools,’ the report stated.
Blackrock Boys – an RTÉ Radio Documentary on One broadcast last November – revealed that the Holy Ghost Order, now known as the Spiritans, had admitted paying out more than €5million in abuse settlement claims and support services since 2004.
Siblings David and Mark Ryan were the first to speak openly about the child sexual abuse they suffered at Blackrock College during the 1970s and early 1980s.
The documentary has resulted in a preliminary inquiry by the Government into the issue of sexual abuse in schools run by religious orders. In its report yesterday, the board said its role was to ensure that the allegation has been reported to the relevant statutory authority agency, and to monitor that risk is being assessed.
It said that because it only received anonymised information, it had no way to establish whether the alleged abuser was already known, or if the allegation may already have been reported by an alternative source.
It said this also meant it could not publicly report with the level of detail that it would like, in order to provide a detailed and transparent account of allegations received in any one year.
The board said that with the end of the pandemic restrictions, it had been able to return to in-person safeguarding reviews, and had seen an increase in the number of requests for safeguarding advice from 258 to 282.
During 2022, the board also carried out a review of the Church’s 2016 child safeguarding policy, work on developing a draft ‘adults at risk’ safeguarding policy and reviews of safeguarding practice in dioceses and religious congregations.