Former archbishop says scoping inquiry may be underestimating extent of abuse in religious schools

The former Archbishop of Dublin Diarmuid Martin has said the revelations of the scoping inquiry into sexual abuse in schools is worse than what he encountered in his previous role.
An emotional Dr Martin reiterated what he said in 2018 that Irish Catholicism had been a “cruel, authoritarian, harsh religion” and that Pope Francis agreed with his assessment when he visited Ireland that year.
Dr Martin was Archbishop of Dublin from 2004 to 2020. He told the RTÉ Claire Byrne show that, in that role, he spent a day reading files alleging abuse by diocesan priests and “threw them on the ground”.
“This is worse,” he said. The revelations that widespread sexual abuse went on in 17 special schools was especially shocking, he said, as the children there were so vulnerable.
“I’m extraordinarily struck by the numbers in the special schools. I think that sexual abuse of particularly vulnerable children is very shocking and that the second thing is that the numbers are very high,” he said.
“For example, if you look at the three paying schools, one of the reasons for this is that I think most people may have thought this scoping inquiry was primarily about those schools. And this would mean, I think, that the numbers regarding other schools is probably underestimated and probably higher.”
He criticised the Brothers of Charity for moving abusers from one place to another even as the Catholic Church had norms in relation to dealing with abusers in the 1970s and 1980s.
“The leaders in some organisations were simply not following the norms. Many of these orders took decisions to safeguard their own institutions. Not only did they do immense harm to children, they also damaged their own institution’s good name.”
Dr Martin said the Government should therefore appoint a senior person to take charge and ensure that victims are compensated for their ordeals. He praised sexual abuse victim Louise O’Keefe who had gone to the European Court of Human Rights to challenge the assertion that the State was not responsible for abuse which went on in Irish schools.
“The lead should be the responsibility of the State. If we don’t have that lead, it will drift on,” the former Archbishop suggested.
He said religious orders named in the scoping inquiry should be forced to pay compensation if it was found they were “responsible for the foreseeable consequences of their actions”.
Dr Martin added that he had been pleased to see a garda statement asking people to come forward. “I think if people realised they would have a safe and friendly reception, they would come forward. And the more we learn about this, I think in the long term it’s better.”
One of the most important aspects of any inquiry was to examine the area of safeguarding, he said.
“Sexual abusers don’t abuse small children because they’re sexually starved. They’re only interested in abusing small children.”
The moving of known abusers was something that he found “very hard to stomach”.
While he dealt with many “fires” over the years, the people for whom he had the highest regard were “poor, ordinary working class women who came to my predecessors and said to them, I would not like any other child to have to go through what my child did, and they were not listened to”.
Minister for Justice Helen McEntee said the religious orders “must put their hand up and come forward” to play their role in uncovering abuse and also dealing with the redress for victims.
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“It shouldn’t be the case that they’re asked, they should be part of any redress scheme but that all has to be worked through,” she said in response to media questions while launching the next phase of the Garda bodyworn camera roll-out in Waterford City on Thursday morning.
“Nobody should be under any illusion, the religious orders themselves need to come forward, they need to put their hands up and they need to contribute to [redress] significantly.”
“It’s hard to put into words, what we’re reading at the moment and what happened, many years ago but not that long ago as well,” she said of the abuse documented in the report. “It truly was barbaric. And there’s a moral obligation on us to ensure the truth is uncovered and we have justice for those individuals and redress.”
Further inquiries into the abuse at schools, or the mooted redress scheme, could not “go on for years” as many victims were already elderly, she said.
Garda Commissioner Drew Harris said gardaí would probe whether there was “an organised” element to any of the abuse.
“What we can now do, in terms of the overall report and the scale of what has been described, is take that wider view,” he said. “We have a national unit now and that unit, as it follows individuals, should be able to identify whether there’s been an organised element. Whether that [identifies] further victims, we’ll have to see.”
Blackrock College and Willow Park schools have issued a statement following the publication of the scoping inquiry which was chaired by barrister Mary O’Toole.
Both schools have the highest number of allegations of abuse attached to any institution, a total of 185 allegations in total. Blackrock had been the subject of a separate inquiry after two brothers came forward in a documentary in 2022 to reveal they had been abused. To date 300 former pupils of Spiritan schools have come forward with allegations of abuse.
In response to the scoping inquiry, a joint statement by the heads of Blackrock College and Willow Park schools said the “scale of the abuse and the duration of the time frame over which the abuse was perpetrated is shocking and a shameful period in the history of the schools”.
They encouraged those who suffered to contact their restorative justice programme.
The Spiritan Order, which ran a number of schools, including Blackrock, Rockwell College and Templeogue College, “unequivocally” condemned all forms of sexual abuse that took place in their schools as “heinous crimes perpetrated against the most vulnerable”.
The Order stated that there were now safeguards in place in all their schools to protect their current students.
Rockwell College principal Audrey O’Byrne said the abuse which went on in that school was a “source of profound shame and sorrow to us all” and she urged victims to get involved in the Spiritans’ restorative justice programme.
The fee-paying school in Co Tipperary has a total of 60 allegations against it carried out by 18 perpetrators.