The following article appeared in ‘The Times’ newspaper and was shared with me by a friend.
The writer of the article is called ‘Gary Murphy’. One could be forgiven for believing him to have roots in Ireland!
That makes the article all the more compelling. I would sincerely and earnestly ask Irish Roman Catholics, indeed Roman Catholics everywhere, to consider the picture that is painted here of the Roman Catholic institution.
Any professing Christian may fall into sin. That is very obvious from the Bible’s record of David and Peter for example.
But if again and again it is reported that wickedness is uncovered within the life of an individual who claims to be a Christian, then it would be justifiable to say of that person that they are ‘false professors’ and not true believers!
Paul writes concerning the true Christian and what it is Christ has done for them: “Who gave himself for us, that he might redeem us from all iniquity, and purify unto himself a peculiar people, zealous of good works,” Titus 2:14.
When within the ranks of an organisation which professes to be the ‘church of Jesus Christ’, there are universal instances of repeated perversions of the most unspeakable kind and these are covered over and lied about again and again by those who hold the highest positions of authority within that organisation, what is one to think of it?
Reformers
There is only one conclusion that can be drawn. It is that of the Protestant Reformers in the 16th century whose eyes were opened by the grace and mercy of God — “We are in an organisation that is not what it claims to be and its teachings are entirely in opposition to the Holy Scriptures! We must immediately remove ourselves from it and seek to walk in obedience to God’s Holy Word.”
That has ever been the will of God for any who seek to obey Him.
Consider these words which carry us forward to a time in the not too distant future:
“And after these things I saw another angel come down from heaven, having great power; and the earth was lightened with his glory. And he cried mightily with a strong voice, saying, Babylon the great is fallen, is fallen, and is become the habitation of devils, and the hold of every foul spirit, and a cage of every unclean and hateful bird. For all nations have drunk of the wine of the wrath of her fornication, and the kings of the earth have committed fornication with her, and the merchants of the earth are waxed rich through the abundance of her delicacies. And I heard another voice from heaven, saying, Come out of her, my people, that ye be not partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues. For her sins have reached unto heaven, and God hath remembered her iniquities,” Revelation 18:1-5.
If we would escape the judgment of God and enter heaven, we must separate ourselves from that which, by its history of iniquitous activities, shows it is not the ‘Church of Christ’ but is indeed the system of Antichristianity.
Dear Reader, Please give heed to these words for your soul’s sake.
Sincerely in Christ’s name,
Rev Ivan Foster (Rtd)
Abusers’ names were common knowledge, yet no one dared speak
One was Our Lady’s psychiatric hospital in Shanakiel, which loomed over the Lee Fields from the northside of Cork and seemed to cast a pall over the whole city. The second was Bessborough mother and baby home in the southside suburb of Blackrock. The third was the Lota special school in Glanmire, on the city’s outskirts, which catered for children with learning disabilities.
Bessborough, where more than 900 children died, closed its dark doors in 1998, having been in existence since the founding of the state in 1922. My late father worked there for a short time when an apprentice painter and decorator. He described it as a grim, joyless place without laughter. He also worked for a brief period in Our Lady’s hospital, where there was laughter but of a manic, unfunny kind.
Lota special school operated from 1939 to 1999 and was the subject of no fewer than six separate garda investigations. The Ryan report, a 2009 publication on the abuse of children at Irish institutions, devoted an entire chapter to the school, in which it condemned the Brothers of Charity who ran it, but lamented the lack of documentation available about living conditions there.
While rudimentary inspection reports about diet and the weight and height of the students left some contemporary evidence about living conditions in industrial schools, the Ryan report said that no such documentation existed for Lota.
Records are central to investigating the abuse of victims, and these have shamed official Ireland over the past quarter of a century. This has been documented in no fewer than eight reports featuring the Catholic church and religious orders since the investigation of clerical sexual abuse in Ferns reported in 2005. It was Micheál Martin who, as minister for education, ordered school records to be released to the groundbreaking documentary-maker Mary Raftery, which allowed her to make States of Fear for RTE in 1999. Those records enabled her and Eoin O’Sullivan to write the personal stories of the victims of industrial school abuse in their book Suffer the Little Children: The Inside Story of Ireland’s Industrial Schools.
But one of the most startling things about the 700-page scoping inquiry examining the abuse of children in schools run by religious orders published last Tuesday is the absolute lack of records by official Ireland, and particularly the Department of Education. Where are these records? And why weren’t they made available to its author, Mary O’Toole?
Shocking sexual abuse was perpetrated on dozens of pupils at Lota. James Kelly, known as Brother Ambrose, who was stationed there for more than 20 years, was described as an evil monster in the Ryan report. He later admitted he lost count of the number of youngsters he had abused in his two-decade reign of terror.
In 1999 he was jailed for 36 years after being convicted of a horrific catalogue of abuses against children as young as ten in both Lota and the Holy Family School in Renmore, Co Galway. It comes as no surprise that these two schools alone account for more than half of the abuse allegations in special schools revealed by O’Toole.
There are 166 allegations against 50 alleged abusers at Lota and 119 allegations of abuse involving 49 alleged abusers in Renmore. Overall, there are 528 allegations of abuse at special schools across the state against 194 separate alleged abusers.
The O’Toole inquiry was commissioned on the back of the outstanding 2022 RTE radio Documentary on One programme Blackrock Boys, which revealed the heinous abuse that the brothers Mark and David Ryan were exposed to in the late 1970s and early 1980s at Blackrock College.
The scoping report discloses 55 allegations of abuse against 13 alleged abusers at Blackrock College, and another 130 allegations against 24 alleged abusers at its primary feeder school, Willow Park Junior. These are but two of 308 schools named in the report.
One astonishing thing about the report is the cross-class basis of the schools, ranging from Blackrock College, probably the most well-known fee-paying school in the state, to a whole range of schools run by the Christian Brothers in some of the most deprived parts of the country.
The religious who ran these schools did so with impunity. They were moved regularly by their superiors, which tells its own grim tale. They knew that it was a brave child indeed who told their parents about abuse, no matter their social class. They also knew that for the most part any reported abuse would be treated with the utmost scepticism.
This is not to fault the children or the parents. It is simply the way independent Ireland worked throughout the 20th century. Figures in authority such as the judiciary and gardai were placed on pedestals in an Ireland where, until the late 1960s, most people did not go to secondary school. Priests and religious figures were placed on an even higher pedestal, and this was a cross-class phenomenon.
It was with some trepidation that I made my way through the report this week, sure in the knowledge that the schools I attended in the 1970s and 1980s, Sullivan’s Quay CBS Primary and Deerpark CBS Secondary in the south inner city, would appear on the list.
Sure enough there were two allegations against one alleged abuser in the secondary school, and five allegations against three alleged abusers in the primary school. Their names were common knowledge in the school yard, and most boys, pretty much all from working-class families where deference to authority ran deep, just hoped to avoid ever catching their eye.
Talking to contemporaries in the North Monastery school on the northside of Cork city this week, where 19 allegations against ten alleged abusers at the secondary school and eight allegations against five alleged abusers at the primary school were detailed in the report, it is clear that this eye-avoiding phenomenon was commonplace.
If boys all across the country knew about the abuse and the abusers, then surely responsible adults did so as well. The only plausible explanation for the continuance of this abuse in schools over the decades must be that deference to the religious ran deep in a state that was by design a Catholic country.
That country is gone, but it leaves a legacy of pain and heartache as the victims of this scoping inquiry can testify. But the hushed voices are hushed no more.