Roscommon abuse case - We all have questions to answer

AT LEAST Josef Fritzl, the Austrian who locked his daughter in a cellar for 24 years and fathered seven children with her — one of whom he murdered by neglect — felt the need to conceal his depravities.

The couple at the centre of the Roscommon abuse nightmare, where they drunkenly and openly abused and neglected their children for 15 years, felt no such compunction.

On Monday, a 52-year-old man, who cannot be named, was found guilty at the Central Criminal Court of 47 charges of sexual abuse and rape of his son. The jury heard that the son had been orally and anally raped by this man from the age of 12 to 15, when he was taken into care. The perpetrator — calling him a father demeans every man who loves and protects his children — awaits sentencing. His wife is serving a seven-year sentence for incest with another son, and for abuse and neglect of all six of their children.

During her trial the court was told the children were terribly neglected. They had head lice “crawling down their faces”. They wore shoes two sizes too small; they urinated on walls and defecated in their underwear.

There was State intervention but it was ineffective. “These children were failed by everyone around them,” was how the judge described their nightmare.

The health board first became aware of the family in the early 1990s. There were reports of serious drunkenness and of the children being left alone. Anonymous letters alleged neglect, drunkenness, prostitution and a general lack of hygiene. The children’s school also recorded its concerns. Unbelievably, in a society that imagines itself civilised and Christian, these children were left to their fate.

Ten years ago the mother sought an injunction preventing the health board from removing the children from her care. She admitted she “had help” in drafting the affidavit which secured the high court order. This help came from “a right-wing organisation”.

This is, by any standards, a shocking case, one of depravity driven by alcohol but facilitated by silence and inefficiency, both official and communal. It is unimaginable that no one — relative, neighbour, teacher, social worker, garda, cleric, or any of the scores of others who must have been aware of the abuse — had neither the courage nor determination needed to intervene before the children were so terribly damaged. So great were the crimes openly inflicted on these children — and others in similar situations — that we are all, to some degree, culpable. It was almost as if we all colluded to protect the imagined virtue of our society. How else could these outrages have been repeated over 15 years?

That charge of collusion is one that brought the Irish bishops to Rome for two days of talks with Pope Benedict over the role of Irish Catholicism in child abuse, paedophilia and the protection predatory clerics.

The Catholic church behaved appallingly and has lost respect and authority because of its failings. It repeatedly expressed regret and a determination to reform.

But, as the Roscommon case shows, the consequences are the same whether you collude with the perpetrators or ignore them. If we are to be all judged by the same standards is seems that the Catholic hierarchy are not the only ones with questions to answer.