Generations failed by ‘submissive’ department

GENERATIONS of children who suffered savage institutional abuse at the hands of religious orders were also failed by the Department of Education, which ignored its own regulations and kowtowed to the Church.

The Commission into Child Abuse Report concludes various arms of the state failed to properly check on the care and well-being of children in industrial schools, where they suffered horrendous abuse and lived in “a climate of fear”.

The commission concludes that physical and emotional abuse and neglect were rife in the institutions, while sexual abuse occurred in many of them. Shockingly, the report states while the system of large-scale institutionalisation was an outdated response to a 19th century social problem, the combination of a “deferential and submissive attitude” by the Department of Education to the congregations and generous capitation grants meant children needed to be committed to the schools “for reasons of economic viability of the institutions”.