Tuesday, May 19, 2009

Up to 500 Dublin priests implicated in abuse: Report

Reports suggest hundreds of priests will be implicated this week when Ireland's Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse will publishes its findings.

The Commission has spent nine years looking into allegations, some of which date back more than 60 years, from thousands of former residents of state schools and orphanages, The Sydney Morning Herald reports.

It is due to report on Wednesday, and the commission will publish a second report, on how the church handled sex abuse complaints, in July.

Many thousands of children sent to institutions suffered at the hands of religious orders such as the Christian Brothers and Sisters of Mercy.

The commission was founded in 2000 after a documentary for Irish television said there had been widespread sexual, physical and emotional abuse within Catholic institutions.

Mary Raftery, who produced the program, said the abuse suffered was "way off the scale and designed to break children".

At Easter the Archbishop of Dublin, Diarmuid Martin, warned churchgoers that when published the report would "shock us all".

"It is likely that thousands of children or young people across Ireland were abused by priests in the period under investigation, and the horror of that abuse was not recognised for what it is," he said during his Holy Thursday homily.
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Source (CTHN)

SV (ED)