Search Results for 'Child sexual abuse'

Once again the Catholic church has disappointed and this week’s Vatican visit by our bishops has proven to have been a ball of white smoke to sufferers of clerical abuse.

Abuse victims are hurting again this week at the apparent disregard of the Vatican for their suffering at the hands of paedophile priests and religious over decades in Ireland. While they may have been naive in thinking that the Church would change the habits of a lifetime and stage some sort of public lynching, the lack of any obvious compassion or regret by the world’s senior churchman has struck a sour note, not only in the minds of victims, but among all those who were viewing this meeting as a turning point for the Church.

Two communities in Kilkenny were affected by two separate tragedies that occurred in their areas over Christmas.

A man has appeared before the District Court charged with two counts of sexually assaulting a female.

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.

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.

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.