It's hard to know where to begin in talking about yesterday's Commission into Child Abuse report in the south of Ireland, but let me try a small number of points that've been neglected, whether through stupidity, cowardice or laziness on the part of the media and commentators.
1. Recent research in Britain shows that just over 2% of allegations of physical and sexual abuse against teachers by pupils actually result in convictions. That means around 98% are either lacking in evidence or lies. Presumably this fact has no relevance to the charges of sexual abuse in Ireland against the teaching orders?
2. What exactly is the nature of paedophilia? Is it a pattern of practice which the perpetrator chooses to follow? If so, he should where possible be apprehended, tried, convicted and imprisoned, as punishment for his crimes and for the safety of other children. Or is it a disease, with the perpetrator incurably recidivistic and unable to control his base urges? If so, he cannot be held culpable either in legal or in moral terms, and belongs in a psychiatric hospital, not a prison.
3. Why do commentators refuse to acknowledge that those guilty of paedophilia might also be responsible for much good work? Or is 100% villainy a more convenient/satisfying label for the media?
4. Why do commentators refuse to set the brutality of some members of the religious orders in the context of the time? I was a child in the 1940s and 1950s, and physical punishment, often of a pretty severe nature, was standard in schools and at home.
I could go on but I'll finish by saying that RTE's Prime Time last night showed all the balance of a witch-hunt. I kept waiting for Miriam O'Callaghan to call on the Christian Brothers' spokesman to prostrate himself on the floor and denounce in a loud voice the Catholic Church and all its works and pomps. Never let it be said that the British mob's appetite for expenses-account blood wasn't matched by the very-moral media on this side of the Irish Sea.
We six guys from Ireland, living in San Francisco, from North South East and West just wanted to say we have not read a more embarrassing piece out of Ireland for a very long time than that by Jude Collins in the San Francisco gael. What a disgrace, we hoped that ireland had moved on from the craw thumping apology for the Catholic Church on display here. Thank God these views have changed,young Irish people today have no time for this non sense, the Churches are empty because of these very views. "Children often lie" My God man, these priests and brothers raped young boys for years with the full knowledge of their bishops. The Christian Brothers denied any wrong took place three days, (yes three days) before the Ryan report was published, and YOU blame the kids them selves, drawn from the poorest sections of society, to be buggered and beaten, shame on you Jude Collins, your time and your generation of knee benders and forelock pullers is over, crawl back under the rock you and your ilk came from, you are an embarrassment to young Ireland.PLEASE STOP WRITING, intelligent Americans and others might read you and believe that there are a lot of people like you still living in Ireland, thankfully there are not. Have you no shame after all that has happened?? Your couple of words of how bad it all was, before you head into a full explanation of how we must understand how things were in those days.
ReplyDeleteI am proud as to be Irish, as I am embarrassed that you are!
Paul Mathews.