Irish Examiner view: We must learn our lesson

Blackrock abuse

Blackrock College in Dublin. The victims of the Spiritans are entitled to justice in its fullest sense.

Since news broke of the appalling levels of child abuse in Blackrock College and other schools run by the Spiritans religious order, there has been a depressing familiarity to the sequence of events.

First we have had the powerful first-hand testimony of survivors, many of them giving eloquent accounts not only of the abuse suffered at the hands of those in authority in the schools, but also confirming how long the effect of that abuse lasted, how it continued to affect their lives for years afterwards.