Child abuse report - Heads should roll in State department

Ms JUSTICE MARY LAFFOY’S third interim report of the commission inquiring into child abuse in State and Church-run institutions was due to be published last November but was delayed due to her resignation.

The report, which was published yesterday, is not only an indictment of the State, the Church and individuals who were responsible for the care of the abused children, but also an indictment of those who have frustrated the work of her commission.

Before she resigned in frustration, she insisted that the commission did not receive the proper level of co-operation from the Department of Education in compliance with requests for records and documents.

From the historical perspective, that department was responsible for the welfare of the children who had to endure horrific conditions in institutions such as the one in Baltimore, highlighted in yesterday’s report.

In coming years, what happened in such institutions will probably be depicted as our 20th century equivalent of the kind of sordid abuse and exploitation of children that went on a century earlier in Dickensian England.

The people in the Department of Education who frustrated the Laffoy Inquiry were not just behaving in the same contemptible way as their predecessors, they have behaved worse, because there is no longer any doubt about the nature of the abuse that went on. In frustrating the Laffoy Inquiry, the authorities in the Department of Education have effectively become active accessories to what is probably the greatest scandal of modern Ireland.

Are these people fit to supervise the education of children? The answer must be no. Heads should roll, if only to demonstrate that this country will never again tolerate such abuse of children.

Ms Justice Laffoy’s criticism was not confined to the Department of Education. She was also scathing about the way that most of the religious congregations involved frustrated her inquiry by adopting an adversarial, overly defensive and legalistic approach. They refused to accept the most obvious failings and have insisted on a degree of forensic proof that could drag out the proceedings for years.

This has the impact of not only extending the inquiry and running up the costs for the State, which has naively undertaken to underwrite the bulk of those expenses, but more importantly, it will likely delay justice for the victims, many of whom are already in their late twilight years.

Ms Justice Laffoy was careful to exonerate the Rosminian Institute and the Presentation Brothers from her criticism, because they provided “real co-operation” or “proffered assistance in a constructive manner”.

Those who have frustrated the work of the commission may be temporarily protecting the reputations of paedophile religious, but they are doing enormous damage in the process, because they expose others to unfair suspicion. Worse, by their frustrating tactics, they are, in old age, further abusing those who were abused as children.

Ultimately, those who have been frustrating the inquiry will deserve to share in the opprobrium of the paedophiles they are protecting. They should also realise that their behaviour is a gross betrayal of all the decent men and women who answered their vocations in the true spirit of Christianity.