Children’s Minister Barry Andrews today insisted Irish people no longer have the deference towards the Catholic Church that allowed institutional child abuse to thrive for decades.

A SURVIVOR of abuse in a Catholic industrial school has spoken of his delight at receiving a letter from Justice Minister Dermot Ahern formally stating that he has not, and never had, a criminal record.

PRESIDENT Mary McAleese has told survivors of abuse in Catholic institutions that the people of Ireland are with them as they strive to recover from the horrors of their stolen childhoods.

BOYS number 117 and 146 hadn’t been in touch for over 40 years but when they spotted each other in the crowd, they were instantly back in the childhoods they had tried hard to forget.

“MY story, which is true, should be published in my own name.”

The Catholic Church and Irish Government covered up decades of brutal sexual abuse and beatings by priests and nuns on thousands of children in state care, one of the most damning reports on clerical abuse revealed today.

A RELIGIOUS brother was described as a “menace” and a “danger” in the internal reports of a Cork industrial school, but no documents survive to reveal the nature of his behaviour or if steps were taken to address it.

Four people who attended an industrial school in Galway have complained of suffering sexual abuse, it emerged tonight.

A PARISH priest decided that no prosecution should be taken against a painter who had allegedly been sexually abusing nine young girls at an industrial school.

A CARE WORKER who habitually abused a 12-year-old boy in an institution brought the child to a cabbage patch late at night and told him he would be buried there if he informed anyone of the abuse, the High Court heard yesterday.

TWO former Christian Brothers falsely accused of sexually abusing boys in their care spoke yesterday of the torment the allegations had caused them.

A man who was sexually abused as a child by a care worker when he visited a friend in a Kilkenny orphanage in the 1970s, was today awarded €75,000 by the High Court.