For the Love of God

Posted on May 20, 2009

Now obviously the Roman church has done this sort of thing all over the world, but there have been very few places in the modern world (other then perhaps Franco’s Spain) where the Catholic church has had more power then in Ireland.  I’d go on and rant about the hypocrisy and horror of religion and of the catholic church in particular, but I’ve said it before and I’ve got to run out the door this morning so I don’t really have time.  Instead, I’ll just let this new article from the AP do the talking.

Thousands beaten, raped in Irish reform schools

By SHAWN POGATCHNIK, Associated Press Writer
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090520/ap_on_re_eu/eu_ireland_catholic_abuse

DUBLIN – A fiercely debated, long-delayed investigation into Ireland’s Roman Catholic-run institutions says priests and nuns terrorized thousands of boys and girls in workhouse-style schools for decades — and government inspectors failed to stop the chronic beatings, rapes and humiliation.

Nine years in the making, Wednesday’s 2,600-page report sides almost completely with the horrific reports of abuse from former students sent to more than 250 church-run, mostly residential institutions.

It concluded that church officials always shielded their orders’ pedophiles from arrest to protect their own reputations and, according to documents uncovered in the Vatican, knew that many pedophiles were serial attackers.

The commission said overwhelming, consistent testimony from still-traumatized men and women, now in their 50s to 80s, had demonstrated beyond a doubt that the entire system treated children more like prison inmates and slaves than people with legal rights and human potential.

“A climate of fear, created by pervasive, excessive and arbitrary punishment, permeated most of the institutions and all those run for boys. Children lived with the daily terror of not knowing where the next beating was coming from,” the final report of Ireland’s Commission to Inquire Into Child Abuse concluded.

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