Search Results for 'Abuse'

If crimes are ever scaled on the amount of horror and anger they provoke, then the sexual assault of children is one that is often near the top. There are few offences that cause this sort of outrage in a community, that go to the heart of every family, that cause such division. It is the fear of such an allegation that has sadly led to a reluctance by many people to become involved in activities that bring them into contact with children in intimate situations, for fear that such an allegation may be made in these increasingly litigious times.

A report published yesterday after a ten year delay by the Child Abuse Commission highlighted that sexual abuse was ‘chronic’ in the Christian Brothers’ industrial school at Letterfrack.

Is an apology enough? I don’t know. Only a person who was abused at the hands of the religious nuns, priests and brothers can answer that question. Would prosecutions help in the healing process? Yet another question I have no authority to answer.

Suddenly all this talk of recession and negative equity isn’t so depressing - when compared to this week’s other news.

Suddenly all this talk of recession and negative equity isn’t so depressing - when compared to this week’s other news.

It has been a very historic week for Kilkenny — another name has been added to the list of people honoured with the title Freeman of this City. It is a title that stems from a time many centuries ago when those honoured thus were called upon to defend the integrity and security of the city. It is a title that comes from a time when feudalism and savagery ruled the countryside, when cities like this one were subject to the bombardments of invaders.

A damning report released on Tuesday by the Child Abuse Commission highlighted two Kilkenny institutions where it said sexual abuse of, and violence against children was rife.

We’ve had a week now to come to terms with The Ryan Report. Archbishop Diarmuid Martin warned us to expect the worst, but even so, the scale of the cruelty, neglect, and abuse - physical, emotional, and sexual - documented in the pages of this report will change forever the way the Church is viewed in this country. That those in a position of care to the most vulnerable members of society - those whom the Irish Constitution singled out for particular concern - could have inflicted the immediate pain and suffering, not to mention the long-term emotional consequences that those abused have carried with them into maturity, is terrible enough. That they acted as they did in the name of the Christian faith, whose founder took the child’s trust as a metaphor for humanity’s trust in God, can only be described as blasphemy.

The file on the Ryan report cannot be closed until the guilty are brought to justice and made face the full rigours of the law for their abuse and neglect, Beverley Flynn TD has said.

Sr Stanislaus Kennedy who campaigns for social justice has apologised to children who were abused while under the care of the Sisters of Charity who ran two Kilkenny-based institutions named in the recently published Ryan Report.