AUSTRALIA
Australian Broadcasting Corporation
December 14, 2017
Ireland is still debating the scandal of child abuse in the Catholic Church, eight years after a royal commission into the matter delivered its groundbreaking report.
Ireland is still debating the scandal of child abuse in the Catholic Church, eight years after a royal commission into the matter delivered its groundbreaking report.
It found abuse was endemic in church-run schools where the under-privileged and troubled were sent.
The Ryan Commission published its report in 2009, 10 years after it began, and found that “beyond a doubt the entire system treated children like prison inmates and slaves”.
Mannix Flynn was seven years old when he was taken to court for skipping school and stealing a toy car in Dublin.
“I was brought into the cells under the building, dragged out in a police van and taken away on a train, hundreds of miles away,” Mr Flynn said.
He was sentenced to seven years at St Joseph’s Industrial School in Letterfrack on the other side of the country, run by the Christian Brothers.
He suffered sexual abuse and was one of the hundreds of witnesses who gave evidence to the Ryan Commission.
The inquiry in Ireland was restricted by two rules — there would be no calls for prosecution and no sanctions of any party involved.
Mr Flynn, who is now a Dublin city councillor, said it was a flawed process and he was pessimistic about the impact of the Australian inquiry.
The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse in Australia is due to hand down its final report on December 15.
“So what will happen in Australia is that there’ll be mock shock, they’ll print out the report, they’ll find things we already knew but there will be no justice delivered,” Mr Flynn said.
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