Almost 30 years ago, in October 1979, over one million Irish people gathered in the Phoenix Park in Dublin to receive a benediction from the Holy Father, Pope John Paul II. The immensity of the congregation startled observers, and the Catholic hierarchy, gratified by fields swollen with the pious - not only elders, but their children and grandchildren - no doubt predicted that a mass revival of the faith was at hand. 'Young people of Ireland, I love you', was the ringing proclamation of the Pontiff in Dublin. But this was the zenith of an institutional Church and a national culture that was soon to fall into dramatic disrepute, and in the following decade a sordid procession of ecclesiastical scandals steadily eroded the moral authority of the hierarchy.
But something further was rotten in the state of the Church. Decades of walled-off obscurantism and unquestioned power had managed to disguise the fact that the Irish Catholic Church had been running what was, effectively, an archipelago of brutal prison camps across the country. Financed by the state, and under the jurisdiction of various religious orders, these feared 'Industrial schools' housed, in the ameliorative words of the legislation, 'neglected, orphaned and abandoned children'. The abuse and torment inflicted on these children - sexual, physical, psychological - was pervasive, relentless, and granted, throughout, the imprimatur of the national faith, the complicity of the national government and the silence of the national population.
It has taken until 2009, however, for the full measure of this disgraceful chapter to come into proper focus. This week, in five volumes, the Report of the Commission on Child Abuse, chaired by Mr Justice Sean Ryan, was finally released to the public. Its findings and conclusions - about the type, extent and consequences of the widespread abuse - are devastating. In a style both deadpan and declaratory, it confronts the corroded core of Irish Catholicism: 'A climate of fear, created by pervasive, excessive and arbitrary punishment, permeated most of the institutions and all those run for boys'; 'The harshness of the regime was inculcated into the culture of the schools by successive generations of Brothers, priests and nuns'. The violence was institutional, 'systemic and not the result of individual breaches by persons who operated outside lawful and acceptable boundaries'. Examples of the use of inhumane prison practices abounded: 'Absconders were severely beaten, at times publicly. Some had their heads shaved and were humiliated.'
Reading such descriptions, one would be forgiven for thinking first, not of the pastoral democracy of the Republic of Ireland, ostensibly governed by law, but of the authoritarian regimes of Central and South America in the 1980s: a place where official authority was enforced by promiscuous and off-the-books sadism. But the dorm-rooms of Letterfrack were in fact a mirror image of the dungeons of Santiago, with the same emphasis on arbitrary reprimand and strict regimen. Here 'physical punishment was severe, excessive and pervasive and by being administered in public or within earshot of other children it was used as a means of engendering fear and ensuring control'. The real difference, of course, was that this was all borne by the most vulnerable members of society – abandoned young boys and girls.
It is the stories of sexual abuse, however, that are most disquieting, and which have most arrested public attention. Ireland has been through over a decade of revelations concerning the extent of child molestation in Catholic institutions, but the testimony of survivors, as recorded and compiled in the Report, retains a fresh power to disturb - some, indeed, are frankly unreadable. Asked to document the 'worst thing' that happened to them while in the institutions, survivors relate a catalogue of baroque horror: 'At 6 I was raped by nun and at 10 I was hit with a poker on head by nun'; 'Forced oral sex and beatings'; 'Being raped by the director of the school'; 'Tied to a cross and raped whilst others masturbated at the side'.
The abuse documented in the Report is a strange thing to grasp - random but regimented, aggressive but swaddled in reformatory piety. Beyond its monstrous character, however, is its sheer scale. Between 1936 and 1970, 170,000 children were despatched into a complex of over 50 institutions. As Fintan O'Toole notes, that is more than one child out of every 100 in the relevant age group - an astonishing figure. And so it has left a further toxic legacy: a sub-generation of Irish people wrestling with depression and mental problems. The Irish Times reports that the 'effects of abuse remained with victims long after childhood, with many giving accounts of troubled relationships, alcoholism, mental illness, aggressive behaviour, social isolation and self-harm in later life'. Broken lives, suicides, abuses passed on through generations: such is the evil that the Church has wrought.
But how to explain this bizarre and depraved crevice of Irish life? Some see the institutions simply as micro-manifestations of the Church's inherent will to dominate, with its attendant creed of submission and sin; others view what happened as the inevitable 'Lord of the Flies' degeneration all such institutions are fated to, with the strong exercising their dominion over the weak. These explanations hold a kind of truth. What is less frequently mentioned, however, is that the schools themselves were profit-making units integrated into the economy of the Church: blunt sadism commingled with canny opportunism. As the Report dryly concludes, 'the industrial training afforded by all schools was of a nature that served the needs of the institution rather than the needs of the child', and 'child labour on farms and in workshops was used to reduce the costs of running the Industrial Schools and in many cases to produce a profit'.
But the real explanation as to how it all happened is more mundane and more troubling – simply put, the Church got away with it because they were allowed to. As John Banville has written, 'Ireland from 1930 to the late 1990s was a closed state, ruled - the word is not too strong - by an all-powerful Catholic Church with the connivance of politicians and, indeed, the populace as a whole, with some honourable exceptions'. The confessional nature of Irish politics meant that the Church maintained a vast hegemony over social policy - divorce, contraception and abortion were all proscribed, and public debate was set, for the most part, within narrow Catholic limits. Challenges were met with vituperation and hostility.
Mostly, however, there was a kind of cultural deference, a national stoop, which meant that what the Church was doing simply wasn't seriously questioned. The report makes this quite clear: 'The deferential and submissive attitude of the Department of Education towards the Congregations compromised its ability to carry out its statutory duty of inspection and monitoring of the schools'; 'The Departments' Secretary General, at a public hearing, told the Investigation Committee that the Department had shown a "very significant deference" towards the religious Congregations'. In effect, the state ceded its jurisdiction to the Church; indeed, in certain circumstances the Church became the state.
While this order of things has, thankfully, passed, its vestiges remain - not least in the hasty deal done between the Government and the religious orders as to who would be liable for compensation to victims. Under a deal brokered by Dr Michael Woods and approved by Taoiseach Bertie Ahern - two Fianna Fáil politicians of the old dispensation - the state agreed to indemnify the Church, at a cost to the latter of a mere €128 million. The full cost of compensation is now generally thought to exceed €1 billion. Mary Raftery wrote of the deal: 'When protecting their own (usually financial) interests, the religious orders displayed a zeal and even ferocity notably absent from their attempts down the years to control the criminal battery, assault and rape perpetrated by their member Brothers, priests and nuns against small children.'
Thus the orders that ran, staffed and profited from the schools will see their liability capped at 10 per cent, with the remainder being borne by the taxpayer. (It has emerged that the Church's contribution won't even cover the state's legal bill). What is more, the deal ensured that abusers were to be entirely shielded from public scrutiny. Although justified recently by Dr Woods in the language of magnanimity and atonement, in reality the deal faithfully reflected the balance of power that pertained in the old regime - deference and excuses from the state, authority and silence from the Church. Only now, in a landscape of fiscal crisis, has serious public anger forced some bishops and politicians to make noises about re-examining some aspects of the settlement.
Things have changed in Ireland. The publication of Mr Justice Ryan's Report is only one instance of many where light is being flooded into the dark corners of national life. The Catholic Church is no longer a minatory presence 'guarding' public debate, and as a result there is a stark and welcome frankness to discussions about its past conduct. But elements of the old ways still persist. Education in Ireland is still subject to the overwhelming dominance of the Church. Social care and child protection are still an outrageously low priority for the state. Thousands of people in the care of the state are still 'vulnerable to abuse'. Ireland is still, in far too many cases, failing its children and its citizens.
In the Phoenix Park, at the site where the Pope spoke, there now stands a massive crucifix of white metal, the Papal Cross, erected to commemorate the event, and which looms over the area just north of the city centre. Often we walk the dog in the park, and on sunny evenings, amid people running laps, or sitting on the grass, the Cross takes on a strange aspect. In the 30 years since the triumphant summit of Catholic Ireland, it has been transformed from an emblem of religious victory into an almost-Pop Art monument, its very size and presence a commentary on the diminished influence and centrality of the Church. Ireland has changed. But we are still learning by how much, and how much more change is needed. (Sean Coleman)