Ryan Report at 10: No justice for victims of clerical abuse

There are few nations, cultures and institutions of significant size and power that when examining their histories can present a record untarnished by acts of abominable cruelty... undertakings so inexcusable, so far off the moral compass that shapes universal concepts of right and wrong, good and evil that the marks they leave are inerasable.

They endure in our collective memories for decades, even centuries.

Ireland’s ineradicable stain of shame is the systemic emotional, physical and sexual abuse between 1914 and 2000 of children placed in the care of institutions run by Catholic orders and funded by a state whose officials were either unable or unwilling to employ the levels of scrutiny necessary to detect the crimes that were being committed and prosecute offenders.

Our special coverage today marks the 10th anniversary of the 2,600-page report of the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse, established almost a decade earlier by then taoiseach, Bertie Ahern.

His decision to set up the inquiry followed the RTÉ broadcast in which a distinguished and courageous investigative journalist, the late Mary Raftery, revealed the abuse inflicted on children in the country’s reformatory and industrial schools.

That it was to become known almost a decade later as the Ryan Report, after the commission’s second chair-person, Justice Seán Ryan, was the result of an early indication that the state might not have been prepared from the start to play its part squarely and fairly in what Mr Ahern promised would be an apology to the victims of abuse and inquiry into “our collective failure to intervene to detect their pain and to come to their rescue”.

The commission’s first chairperson, Justice Mary Laffoy, resigned three years into the work, citing the Government’s unwillingness to provide the resources that the commission needed.

Alongside this came the revelation of an agreement, signed without public scrutiny or an Oireachtas vote, between the Government and the Church congregations being investigated by the commission.

The religious orders were given an indemnity against all legal claims in exchange for a €128m cash and property payment, leaving the State with a €1.5bn bill.

The Church was given, if not a free pass, then a heavily discounted one, but the bigger and still unresolved question is one of justice for the victims.

They have had none. The final Ryan Report a decade ago identified 800 abusers.

How many of those still living and able to face justice in this world, as distinct from whatever might be faced in the next one, have been brought before a court? One.

It’s reasonable to conclude that despite the commission’s years of labour and the horrifying account of abuse and savagery it uncovered and presented, its legacy has not fully delivered on Mr Ahern’s pledge.

That disheartening verdict on the role the state has played in this profoundly miserable matter is strengthened by its Retention of Records Bill which if passed into law will have the commission’s papers sealed for a minimum of 75 years, making access for historians and criminologists harder and delaying the possibility of justice until at least 2094.

That is unquestionably justice denied.