DUBLIN (IRELAND)
Irish Examiner [Cork, Ireland]
October 7, 2023
By Niall Meehan
A reader says the Education Minister should allow victims of abuse in Protestant-ethos schools to contact the scoping inquiry
The scoping inquiry into abuse in schools run by religious orders wants to delay its report because of the extensive volume and nature of responses. A reason given for the inquiry’s sectarian basis, which excludes Protestant participation, was the need to complete investigations within a tight time frame. That excuse is unreasonable.
The Minister for Education should now allow victims of abuse from Protestant-ethos schools to contact the inquiry. The media should provide a supportive environment within which Protestants can narrate their experience.
The last point is important. Victims of abuse from a Roman Catholic setting are received positively by media and state. Concerns about reputational damage to the church that once loomed so large in theirs and most Irish people’s lives are ignored. Telling stories of past dark days is facilitated, as it should be.
That is not the case with the smaller Church of Ireland, where a lack of critical engagement from wider society encourages sweeping matters under the carpet. For example, in 2022 the Church of Ireland Historical Society (COIHS) was confronted with evidence that its founder, Rev WG Neely, abused children.
He was silently transferred by the Church of Ireland from Antrim to Tipperary in 1976. The society said nothing. Instead, Neely’s name was deleted from COIHS web pages. Historic announcements of winners of the society’s once prestigious WG Neely Prize were rewritten to refer to a then-non-existent “COIHS Prize”. A historical society falsified history.
The Neely-COIHS story has not been reported down South, despite the Tipperary connection. Had the society Roman Catholic (or simply Catholic) in its name there can be little doubt that, today, the COIHS approach would be deemed inappropriate, or rejected publicly by some society officers. The media would regard it as a news story. The society would be made accountable. The Roman Catholic Church in such circumstances, unlike the Church of Ireland, would be unable to keep its head down.
In the absence of the media and civic society treating victims and reporting their abusers equally, our rhetorically secular state will pursue sectarian investigations, while claiming to act in a secular manner.
Niall Meehan, Journalism and Media Faculty, Griffith College, Dublin