NORTHERN IRELAND
Irish Times
Patsy McGarry
The Northern Ireland Historical Institutional Abuse inquiry (HIA) report last January was unequivocal in its findings about the Nazareth House (girls) and Nazareth Lodge (boys) homes in Belfast, both run by the Sisters of Nazareth.
It investigated abuses in Northern Ireland residential institutions for children in the period between 1922 and 1995.
The HIA report concluded that at the homes in Belfast “the shortage of finance and its consequent impact on staffing levels and physical standards of care amounted to a form of neglect and constituted systemic abuse. Although both central government and the welfare authorities bore some responsibility, this was primarily the responsibility of the Sisters of Nazareth.”
Up to the 1960s, the state, it said, “was content to allow the Sisters to continue to proceed as before, relying solely on the funds they could raise from the Catholic community to cover their running costs”.
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