via Listverse:
10 The Lies Of Mother Teresa
Although Mother Teresa was beatified as a saint by the Catholic Church in 2003, in reality she was far from the saint the Church would lead you to believe. In fact, Mother Teresa isn’t even her real name; she was born Anjeze Gonxhe Bojaxhiu in Albania. The issues certainly don’t end with her pseudonym. Researchers today have called Mother Teresa an empty “PR ploy” by the Vatican to rehabilitate their tarnished image.
Mother Teresa’s claim to fame is helping poor around the world, but she did quite the opposite throughout her lifetime. Mother Teresa made niceties with right-wing Haitian Dictator Jean-Claude Duvalier and accepted money from him which had been stolen from Haiti’s poor. Duvalier was known for stealing millions from Haiti’s poor so that he could maintain his own lavish lifestyle. He spent $2 million of Haiti’s money to pay for his extravagant wedding. Duvalier also profited from drug trafficking and selling the body parts of deceased Haitians.
Mother Teresa rubbed elbows with another thief by the name of Charles Keating. If that name rings a bell for you, it should; Keating is the banker best known for defrauding American taxpayers out of over $3 billion during the savings and loan crisis of the ’80s and ’90s. Keating donated $1.25 million to Mother Teresa and lent her his private jet so that the missionary could jet set around the world. Keating would later be convicted in state and federal courts of a litany of crimes including racketeering, fraud, and conspiracy. After Keating was convicted, Mother Teresa refused to return the stolen money and asked one of the courts to overturn his sentence.
What she did with the money remains in question. The care she gave to the sick and poor in her hospices was observed to be wholly unsanitary, medical care was wholly insufficient, and crucial pain management for the dying was cruelly inadequate. Her hospices were found to not even distinguish between terminally ill patients and those who could be cured. Consequently, patients with curable illness died from the poor, unsanitary treatment they received from Mother Teresa’s facilities.
Her motivation for setting these hospices may have been less compassion and more fundamentalism. Mother Teresa callously encouraged those who worked in her hospices to baptize dying patients, regardless of the patient’s religious beliefs or consent. Mother Teresa’s fundamentalism stretched beyond the subject of baptism. She claimed that abortion was “the greatest enemy of peace in the world,” and opposed contraception even in the cases of rape and incest.
Mother Teresa also defended a pedophilic priest named Donald McGuire, trying to get him leniency after he was convicted of raping children. She wanted him to be reinstated as a priest despite his heinous crimes.
The greatest irony of it all is that by the end of her life, Mother Teresa didn’t even believe in the fundamentalism she spouted or the religion she spent her life serving. After her death, letters Mother Teresa had written to the Vatican surfaced and revealed that she had stopped believing in the religion she plugged. Mother Teresa wrote: “What do I labor for? If there be no God, there can be no soul. If there be no soul then, Jesus, You also are not true.”
9 Alliance With Radical Islamists
In 1994, 180 countries met to draft a proposal with the United Nations to address the coming crisis of overpopulation. The plan met an unexpected foe in the Catholic Church. In its opposition to the plan, the Catholic Church reached out to unlikely allies: radical Islamists.
The population plan drafted by representatives from 180 countries sought to tamper overpopulation by including measures to increase women’s rights and reproductive rights around the world. The Catholic Church felt the language went against their conservative views on abortion rights and sexual freedom. But the Catholic Church had a hard time finding allies around the world to join in their opposition to the measures, so they allied themselves with “radical and fundamentalist governments and groups in Islamic countries.”
The move received swift denunciation from Western countries around the world. Western diplomats worried that the Vatican was bolstering Islamic radicals with plans to overthrow governments around the Middle East and form their own radical Islamic state.
After Iran signed on with the Catholic Church, Deputy Foreign Minister Mohammad Hashemi Rafsanjani hinted at a grander alliance between the Vatican and Iranian Islamist. Rafsanjani said that “Collaboration between religious governments in support of outlawing abortion is a fine beginning for the conception of collaboration in other fields.”
The Vatican also struck a similar alliance with Libya and other Islamic fundamentalist governments. As a result of the deal, the Vatican tried to help Libya quell its conflicts with Western nations. The Western nations sought to clamp down on the dictatorship after it sponsored the Lockerbie terrorist attack of 1988, which resulted in the deaths of 259 individuals.
8 Jozef Tiso
The Catholic Church is known to have allied itself with fascists in World War II, most notably with Mussolini by signing the Lateran Treaty. However, one lesser-known fascist dictator of the time was actually a practicing Catholic priest.
Before Jozef Tiso got into the dictator game, he cut his teeth in a prestigious seminary in Vienna and became an ordained Catholic priest. Father Tiso then worked as an assistant priest before becoming the Spiritual director of one of Slovakia’s largest seminaries. Soon, Tiso began to moonlight in politics. He joined Slovakia’s fascist party and served as an editor of a Slovakian newspaper in which he published a series of extremely anti-Semitic articles in the run-up to the Holocaust.
It wasn’t long before Tiso became one of the leaders of the fascist Slovak People’s Party. Father Tiso and his confidants shifted the party to the hard right in line with the nearby Nazi party, embracing the clerical nationalism and fascism inspired by Tiso’s own brand of right-wing Catholicism.
Father Tiso was elected into Slovakia’s parliament in 1925, but he would ascend to the role of dictator when Nazi Germany occupied Sudetenland in 1938. Tiso swiftly established a dictatorship and made an alliance with the Nazi party. Slovakia was turned into the Slovak Republic, a puppet state of Nazi Germany.
During this time, 16 of 63 members of Slovakia’s parliament were priests. Slovakia’s fascist parliament quickly began passing anti-Jewish legislation. Slovakia then became the first country to begin deporting its Jewish residents to concentration camps run by Nazi Germany, effectively setting the Holocaust into motion.
According to a December 1940 census, there were 88,951 Jews in Slovakia at the time. First, Tiso’s Slovakia sent 20,000 Jews to the Nazis to be used in work camps before they were killed. By June 1924, around 52,000 Jews were deported from Slovakia—almost 60 percent of Slovakia’s Jewish population. Most were sent to Auschwitz, where they were murdered by the Nazis.
Hitler witnessed one of Tiso’s speeches in 1942 in which Tiso touted his Jewish deportation scheme. After the speech, Hitler remarked, “It is interesting how this little Catholic priest Tiso is sending us the Jews!”
Tiso was removed from power in 1944 during the Slovak National Uprising. Just before being ousted, the Vatican radio told its listeners that Father Tiso retired in his role as a monsignor for the Vatican, “owing to his political activities.” After Slovakia was liberated from Nazi control by the Soviet Union the next year, Father Tiso was captured by American troops in June 1945. He was hanged for treason in 1947.
Throughout the entirety of his political career, he remained a practicing Catholic priest.
Tiso isn’t the only dictator to start off as an aspiring priest in seminary. USSR dictator Joseph Stalin also studied to become a priest at Russia’s leading Orthodox seminary, the Tiflis Spiritual Seminary.
7 Excommunication Policies
n 2009, the Catholic Church in Brazil came under fire for punishing an underaged girl who was raped and subsequently had an abortion. The Church couldn’t excommunicate the girl herself because minors cannot be excommunicated, but the Church did excommunicate her mother. The Church also excommunicated the doctors who performed the emergency abortion. However, they did not excommunicate the girl’s rapist.
In fact, the Catholic Church opposes abortion so vehemently that not only is it worthy of excommunication; the Church believes it’s worthy of death in some cases. The Catholic Church has previously established that it would rather have a woman die than get a life-saving abortion.
The scandal highlighted an even larger problem for the Catholic Church that stems from its core doctrine. First and foremost, it doesn’t consider rape a crime worthy of excommunication, even though having an abortion after a rape an act is worthy of excommunication. The Vatican’s bizarre standards on excommunication also broach its problem with pedophilic priests. The Catholic Church doesn’t consider pedophilia and child abuse crimes worthy of excommunication in and of themselves.
In fact, the Catholic Church didn’t even excommunicate the Nazis for the crimes against humanity they committed, despite the fact that many Nazi leaders were practicing Catholics. There is only one Nazi to be excommunicated by the Catholic Church, and that was Joseph Goebbels. The Vatican didn’t excommunicate him for starting World War II or the Holocaust; instead, the Church excommunicated Goebbels because he married a divorced Protestant.
Until recently, no pedophilic priest who had abused children had been excommunicated by the Catholic Church. Late last year, Pope Francis broke Church precedent and issued the first excommunication of a pedophilic priest who had sexually abused children. The priest had been convicted of the abuse and sentenced to 14 years in prison three years earlier.
But if you think Pope Francis has totally overhauled the Church’s excommunication practices, think again. Pope Francis also excommunicated a priest for advocating that women should be able to be priests and for believing that gay marriage is perfectly reasonable.
6 Money Laundering And Tax Evasion
shady money
The Vatican Bank is notoriously poor, if not corrupt in managing its finances. While congregations in Catholic churches around the world may think the money they pour into collection plates is going to charity or priests, the truth is that the money goes to far more lurid activities.
In 2013, Vatican Bank’s director, deputy director, and senior accountant were all charged with using their positions to engage in a massive money laundering scheme. The Vatican Bank had been under investigation for money laundering for years.
Italian police claimed the Vatican Bank had been operating as a “trust company” that harbored secret monies of the corrupt politicians and companies, along with the Mafia. The bank also used its finances to bribe political parties.
The Vatican bank is so intertwined with the Mafia, that after Pope Francis sought to tamper corruption in the bank months ago, Italian prosecutors believed he was in danger of being assassinated by the Mafia.
The Vatican’s ties with the Mafia are so strong that it accepted one billion lire to bury a notorious Italian crime boss in its basilica next to former popes.
5 Age Of Consent
twelve year olds
The Catholic Church has famously been plagued by cases of widespread child abuse carried out by its priests. Oddly enough, the child abuse wasn’t as illegal in Vatican City as it was in the rest of the world. That’s because the age of consent in the Vatican was only 12 years old. In fact, the age of consent in the Vatican was only 12 until July 2013, when Pope Francis raised the age of consent up to 18 in the wake of the Church’s pedophilia and prostitution scandals.
Until the shockingly recent change, the Vatican had the lowest age of consent in the world. The 12-year-old age of consent tied the Vatican with the Philippines, Mexico, Angola, and Zimbabwe, all of which have a 12-year-old age of consent to this day.
This frighteningly low age of consent may explain why the Catholic Church often doesn’t consider the child abuse carried out by its priests’ pedophilia. High-level church officials like the Vatican’s secretary of state have claimed that homosexuality is to blame for its priests’ child abuse, not pedophilia, calling homosexuality a “pathology.”
4 Fueling The Illegal Ivory Trade
ivory crucifix
The ivory trade is a horrific practice. The often illegal trade has caused numerous species to become endangered, decimating the elephant population in Africa. Elephants, one of the most intelligent species on the planet, are senselessly and inhumanely killed and their ivory tusks are ripped off. The rest of the elephant’s mauled body is discarded as waste. Perhaps the primary reason the illegal practice exists is because of organized religion.
In order to stop the violence, 180 countries got together and formed the CITES treaty, or the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species. The treaty’s purpose is to keep endangered species from going extinct by stopping practices that have obliterated their populations, like the ivory trade or the shark fin trade. There was one notable exception among the signatories: the Catholic Church.
The Catholic Church opposed the attempt to protect endangered species because the Catholic Church buys lots of ivory. It does so not out of necessity, but out of tradition. Many of the decorative crucifixes in Catholic Churches are made out of ivory, which can only be made by slaughtering an elephant.
3 Questionable Charity Policies
lgbt rights
The Catholic Church bolsters its image by labeling itself as a charitable organization. Its congregations are led to believe their donations to the Church fuel charitable causes around the world. However, the Catholic Church’s objective for this charity is often advertising rather than altruism.
Recently, the Catholic Church claimed it would stop all of its charity work in Washington, D.C. if the city passed a law legalizing same-sex marriage. Although they didn’t actually stop working in Washington, D.C. when gay marriage was legalized, the Washington Catholic Charities did cease to provide benefits to all spouses of both homosexual and heterosexual workers. To legally avoid providing benefits to people in gay marriages, they stopped providing benefits to everyone.
The Catholic Church attempted to use its influence to prevent charities around the United States from supporting rights for gay citizens. When the Catholic Church heard that the YMCA was patterning with an organization that supports LGBT rights, the Catholic Church told the YMCA to cut its ties with the group or lose $60,000 of its funding. The YMCA didn’t back down, so the Catholic Church yanked its funding from the YMCA, along with eight other charitable groups. When all was said and done, the Catholic Church yanked over $300,000 in funding for charities solely because they began to support equal rights for the LGBT community.
2 Forced Castration Of Abused Boys
Castrato was a classical style of singing; male singers would sing in a higher range, which can usually only be sung by women. In order to produce this high castrato voice in males, the singer needs to be literally castrated before he begins puberty, preventing his body from reaching sexual maturity and his voice from dropping.
You may be wondering, why not just get women to sing the high notes? Well, the Catholic Church never thought it would be an option to allow women to sing in their church choirs, citing a Bible verse: “let women keep silent in church.” In 2001, it was revealed that the Catholic Church had encouraged choir boys to be castrated in order to alter their singing range. Beginning in the 16th century, the Catholic Church castrated its prepubescent choir boys to deliberately prevent them from reaching sexual maturity.
Some of the castrato singers, like Alessandro Moreschi, were famous among Europe’s opera-goers of the time. Moreschi and those like him were prized for their ability to utilize the vocal strength of the male body with the high register of the female voice. However, the majority of the castrated boys were rendered unable to sing or live normal lives. They were therefore discarded by the Church, thought to be “useless even as circus freaks.”
In 1902, the Catholic Church issued a decree which banned the practice within the Sistine Chapel, but the Vatican continued to tolerate the practice. The last castrato singer thought to be affected by the castration practice retired in 1959.
But the Catholic Church’s use for castration sometimes had an even darker intention. In 2012, it was revealed that the Catholic Church in the Netherlands had been forcibly castrating its choir boys who threatened to tell the police that they had been sexuality abused by its priests. Dutch investigative journalist Joep Dohmmen discovered the story of a young boy in a Catholic boarding school who was sexually abused by a Dutch monk and reported the abuse to the Dutch police in 1956. After the Dutch Catholic Church found out that the boy reported the abuse to the authorities, they put him into a church-run psychiatric ward, declared him to be homosexual, and forcibly castrated him.
There have been at least 10 other similar cases among the boy’s classmates, who were also sexually abused by priests and then forcibly castrated by the Catholic Church when they tried to report it.
1 The Rwandan Genocide
rwandan genocide
The Rwandan genocide—the slaughter of the Tutsi minority and some Hutus by the Hutu majority—claimed an estimated 800,000 lives in only four months in 1994. As much as 20 percent of Rwanda’s population was senselessly killed, and about 70 percent of the Tutsi minority. After the bloodshed ended, the country—if not the world— frantically looked for the murderous perpetrators to bring them to justice. Many of the killers behind the genocide suddenly vanished, and the Catholic Church may be responsible for their escape.
At the time of the genocide, the Catholic Church was called “the most powerful social institution in Rwanda.” Around two-thirds of the population of Rwanda is Catholic. Human rights groups and survivors’ groups claim the Catholic Church was complicit in allowing the genocide to occur, while some Catholic clergymen participated in the massacre themselves. In addition, the Catholic Church and its clergy have helped some of the perpetrators of the genocide flee Rwanda to escape persecution or shielded them from extradition.
As other priests did with the Nazi ratlines after World War II, an organized network of Catholic priests helped and protected the genocidal priests. The network smuggled the criminals out of Rwanda to Europe, where they could be sheltered from prosecution and even continue preaching in Catholic churches. Many fled to Italy because of the Catholic Church’s strong presence in the country and ability to fight extradition.
One such priest was Father Athanase Seromba. During the Rwandan genocide, Father Seromba told around 2,000 Tutsis that they could take refuge from the violence inside the church he operated. On April 6, 1994, when 2,000 of the Tutsis gathered inside, Seromba ordered the Church to be bulldozed with the Tutsis inside. After the Church was flattened, Father Seromba and his henchmen shot the remaining survivors.
After the genocide was stopped, Father Seromba fled Rwanda with the aid of a network of sympathetic clergymen. He continued to practice as a priest for the Catholic Church under a false name in a church near Florence, Italy. He went unnoticed until 2002, when he was uncovered by investigators working with the International Tribunal for Rwanda. The Chief Prosecutor for the tribunal claimed the Vatican had fought Father Seromba’s extradition to face his trial. The Vatican told the prosecutor that Father Seromba was “doing good works in Italy.”
Human rights advocates around the world have long called for the Catholic Church to apologize for its role in the Rwandan genocide and its aftermath. Thus far, the Catholic Church has not issued any such statement.
Showing posts with label Roman Catholic Church. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Roman Catholic Church. Show all posts
Friday, March 13, 2015
Sunday, November 16, 2014
El Salvador’s Total Abortion Ban Is Driving Pregnant Teens To Commit Suicide
note: El Salvador has the highest rate of teen pregnancy in all of Latin America, no doubt due to the lack of availability of birth control combined with the lack of sex education. These are the real world results of Catholic doctrine, and the work of Catholic secret societies attempting to subvert democratic governance.
via Think Progress
In El Salvador, home to one of the most restrictive abortion bans in the world, teen pregnancy is a leading cause of suicide. That’s because desperate teens, many of whom have become pregnant through rape, don’t feel like they have any other options, according to health officials working in the country. The link between the culture of violence against women, the harsh abortion restrictions, and the suicide rate has become increasingly clear to groups working in El Salvador. Last year, sexual crimes in the country rose by 17 percent, and two thirds of reported rapes were committed against girls under the age of 18. Recent data shows that half of the teens who commit suicide are pregnant when they take their lives.
“There’s a correlation between sexual violence and the high rate of suicides among adolescents — that’s the reality. Pregnancy is a determining factor behind teenage suicides,” Mario Soriano, the head of the program for youth and adolescent development at El Salvador’s health ministry, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation in an interview this week. According to Soriano, despite El Salvador’s high rates of teenage pregnancy, the girls who become pregnant are typically seen as outcasts in their conservative Catholic communities. They are often kicked out of the house, dumped by their boyfriends, and even expelled from school to avoid setting a “bad example” for other students. Rather than risk this type of rejection, many girls choose to resort to desperate measures.
Since abortion is illegal under any circumstances in El Salvador, even girls who have been victims of rape or incest are forced to seek out an illegal procedure if they want to end their pregnancies. According to estimates from El Salvador’s Ministry of Health, about 6,500 clandestine abortions take place every year, and about a quarter of those occur among girls under 18. Advocacy groups like Amnesty International say the real numbers are likely much higher.
Even aside from the risk of dying — something that results from about 11 percent of the illegal procedures in El Salvador — it’s very dangerous to end a pregnancy there. The women who are convicted of having an abortion can land in jail for decades. Even the women who have miscarriages, and weren’t intentionally trying to end their pregnancies, can be charged with aggravated homicide.
These dynamics haven’t escaped international scrutiny. Earlier this week, twelve countries — including Canada, the Czech Republic, Spain, and Sweden, among others — called on El Salvador to fulfill its obligations to the United Nations Human Rights Council by decriminalizing abortion.
“The chorus of countries worldwide calling for El Salvador to end its unjust abortion ban is growing ever larger and louder,” Nancy Northup, the president of the Center for Reproductive Rights, said in a statement at the time. “The Salvadoran government cannot ignore the calls any longer, and must not be allowed to evade accountability for the human rights abuses that countless women continue to suffer.”
Amnesty International, which has been pressuring El Salvador to amend its abortion ban for months, frequently criticizes the country for killing its women and girls. The international organization says that the harsh abortion restrictions are akin to torture, particularly because even women in life-threatening situations aren’t always allowed to legally end their pregnancies. The United Nations has also warned El Salvador that its draconian abortion laws are a violation of human rights.
While the majority of countries around the world don’t have abortions bans as harsh as El Salvador’s, these dynamics are not necessarily specific to Salvadoran citizens. Globally, an estimated 47,000 women die from unsafe abortions every year. And even here in the United States, where abortion remains legal under Roe v. Wade, a mounting number of state-level barriers to the procedure puts it out of reach for some vulnerable women — particularly poor people and people of color. When those individuals are unable to exercise their abortion rights, there’s some evidence to suggest that being forced to carry unwanted pregnancies to term increases their risk of mental health issues and economic hardship.
via Think Progress
In El Salvador, home to one of the most restrictive abortion bans in the world, teen pregnancy is a leading cause of suicide. That’s because desperate teens, many of whom have become pregnant through rape, don’t feel like they have any other options, according to health officials working in the country. The link between the culture of violence against women, the harsh abortion restrictions, and the suicide rate has become increasingly clear to groups working in El Salvador. Last year, sexual crimes in the country rose by 17 percent, and two thirds of reported rapes were committed against girls under the age of 18. Recent data shows that half of the teens who commit suicide are pregnant when they take their lives.
“There’s a correlation between sexual violence and the high rate of suicides among adolescents — that’s the reality. Pregnancy is a determining factor behind teenage suicides,” Mario Soriano, the head of the program for youth and adolescent development at El Salvador’s health ministry, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation in an interview this week. According to Soriano, despite El Salvador’s high rates of teenage pregnancy, the girls who become pregnant are typically seen as outcasts in their conservative Catholic communities. They are often kicked out of the house, dumped by their boyfriends, and even expelled from school to avoid setting a “bad example” for other students. Rather than risk this type of rejection, many girls choose to resort to desperate measures.
Since abortion is illegal under any circumstances in El Salvador, even girls who have been victims of rape or incest are forced to seek out an illegal procedure if they want to end their pregnancies. According to estimates from El Salvador’s Ministry of Health, about 6,500 clandestine abortions take place every year, and about a quarter of those occur among girls under 18. Advocacy groups like Amnesty International say the real numbers are likely much higher.
Even aside from the risk of dying — something that results from about 11 percent of the illegal procedures in El Salvador — it’s very dangerous to end a pregnancy there. The women who are convicted of having an abortion can land in jail for decades. Even the women who have miscarriages, and weren’t intentionally trying to end their pregnancies, can be charged with aggravated homicide.
These dynamics haven’t escaped international scrutiny. Earlier this week, twelve countries — including Canada, the Czech Republic, Spain, and Sweden, among others — called on El Salvador to fulfill its obligations to the United Nations Human Rights Council by decriminalizing abortion.
“The chorus of countries worldwide calling for El Salvador to end its unjust abortion ban is growing ever larger and louder,” Nancy Northup, the president of the Center for Reproductive Rights, said in a statement at the time. “The Salvadoran government cannot ignore the calls any longer, and must not be allowed to evade accountability for the human rights abuses that countless women continue to suffer.”
Amnesty International, which has been pressuring El Salvador to amend its abortion ban for months, frequently criticizes the country for killing its women and girls. The international organization says that the harsh abortion restrictions are akin to torture, particularly because even women in life-threatening situations aren’t always allowed to legally end their pregnancies. The United Nations has also warned El Salvador that its draconian abortion laws are a violation of human rights.
While the majority of countries around the world don’t have abortions bans as harsh as El Salvador’s, these dynamics are not necessarily specific to Salvadoran citizens. Globally, an estimated 47,000 women die from unsafe abortions every year. And even here in the United States, where abortion remains legal under Roe v. Wade, a mounting number of state-level barriers to the procedure puts it out of reach for some vulnerable women — particularly poor people and people of color. When those individuals are unable to exercise their abortion rights, there’s some evidence to suggest that being forced to carry unwanted pregnancies to term increases their risk of mental health issues and economic hardship.
Sunday, August 17, 2014
International tribunal arrests organizers of human sacrifice ritual
via The International Tribunal into Crimes of Church and State:
Public Announcement of the Central Command of the Direct Action Units established by the International Common Law Court of Justice
Global Communique No. 2: August 16, 2014 – Brussels
Striking in the early hours of Friday, August 15, one of our trained Direct Action Units (DAU) in Montreal, Canada successfully disrupted the preparations for a child sacrificial cult ritual at a private residence in the fashionable Outremont district.
In the course of the action and under the authority of warrants issued by the Court, the DAU arrested two cult members who are being held in protective custody prior to their questioning and possible indictment before the Court.
The DAU Commander who headed the action has issued the following report to our Central Office:
“At 0700 hours EST yesterday, 15 August, our Alpha team moved into action against the private residence in Outremont, Quebec that has been under surveillance by us since 4 August. We met no opposition or resistance from the single armed security guard at the said residence, who was immediately detained along with a male cult employee engaged in preparations for the upcoming midnight ritual.
“Under questioning, the private security guard identified the location of the ritual as within a small sub-basement chamber that was reconnoitered and filmed by our team. The chamber included two small prison cells with wall shackles, and a central sound proof chamber containing a stone altar awash with apparent blood stains that were sampled and bagged for analysis. An adjoining room held locked cabinets containing considerable child pornographic material, articles of children’s clothing that was bagged for analysis, metallic torture devices, ceremonial swords, and sophisticated film equipment.
“The male cult employee in our custody refused to answer any of our questions, but in the course of our action a second cult member arrived at the residence and was detained. This member, an older woman, was very unnerved by our presence and combat attire. She therefore admitted to the upcoming ritual that evening and identified three of its participants: a ‘local catholic bishop’ whom she refused to name, a Cargill corporation executive named Kerry Brick, and an American named Stephen Holding from Sun Valley, Idaho, apparently with Sinclair Oil, Ltd.
“This informant also claimed that the two children to be used at the midnight ritual were being held at a separate facility at McGill University, but she claimed not to know where. She said that the normal procedure was to deliver them in a drugged condition just before the ritual began, for security reasons. Finally, she confirmed that the cult members describe themselves as part of the Ninth Circle society and claim they all carry tattoos with a cult insignia of the said Ninth Circle.
“Our team restrained all three prisoners and locked down the premises, while taking more videos and samples from the underground chamber. We then secured a covert perimeter in the neighbourhood in anticipation of the arrival of the cult participants and their victims. Unfortunately, although we maintained our vigil until well after midnight, no-one else arrived at the premises for the rest of that day and evening. We must assume that the participants were somehow alerted to our presence and aborted the ritual.
“The security guard in our custody was released by us after he proved that he had been retained in a private commercial capacity. The two cult members are being held in our DAU prison facility in Montreal prior to their questioning by the Court Prosecutor and his Canadian affiliates. All samples and film we obtained are in transit to Brussels headquarters for analysis.
”We are maintaining our covert surveillance on these cult premises in Outremont until further orders are received from Central Command.
DAU Alpha Team Commander, Montreal 16/08/2014”
Supplementary Report of the Action at Pro Cathedral, Ireland by DAU Beta Team:
Our DAU Beta Team in Dublin, Ireland encountered no ritualistic activity at the Cathedral at the time and date reported by our two Diocese informants. The latter claim that the ritual was either cancelled or moved to another location, but could not confirm anything more. However, the identity of a Ninth Circle adherent in Dublin was shared by one of the Diocese informants: a priest named Damien O’Reilly who is an assistant to the acting head of the catholic church in Ireland, Dublin Archbishop Dermot Martin.
DAU Beta Team is continuing its surveillance procedures at the Pro Cathedral and other reported cult centres in Ireland, and is assisting the Common Law Court being established in Galway to investigate the apparent ritual slaying of babies at the catholic facility in Tuam.
……………………
The Court is proceeding to authorize further follow up actions by our DAU’s at other child sacrificial centres in Rome, Canada, the United States, Ireland, England, Belgium and Holland. Updates are forthcoming.
CC-DAU Communique No. 2
Issued 16/08/2014
Brussels
DAU Central Command Office
Public Announcement of the Central Command of the Direct Action Units established by the International Common Law Court of Justice
Global Communique No. 2: August 16, 2014 – Brussels
Striking in the early hours of Friday, August 15, one of our trained Direct Action Units (DAU) in Montreal, Canada successfully disrupted the preparations for a child sacrificial cult ritual at a private residence in the fashionable Outremont district.
In the course of the action and under the authority of warrants issued by the Court, the DAU arrested two cult members who are being held in protective custody prior to their questioning and possible indictment before the Court.
The DAU Commander who headed the action has issued the following report to our Central Office:
“At 0700 hours EST yesterday, 15 August, our Alpha team moved into action against the private residence in Outremont, Quebec that has been under surveillance by us since 4 August. We met no opposition or resistance from the single armed security guard at the said residence, who was immediately detained along with a male cult employee engaged in preparations for the upcoming midnight ritual.
“Under questioning, the private security guard identified the location of the ritual as within a small sub-basement chamber that was reconnoitered and filmed by our team. The chamber included two small prison cells with wall shackles, and a central sound proof chamber containing a stone altar awash with apparent blood stains that were sampled and bagged for analysis. An adjoining room held locked cabinets containing considerable child pornographic material, articles of children’s clothing that was bagged for analysis, metallic torture devices, ceremonial swords, and sophisticated film equipment.
“The male cult employee in our custody refused to answer any of our questions, but in the course of our action a second cult member arrived at the residence and was detained. This member, an older woman, was very unnerved by our presence and combat attire. She therefore admitted to the upcoming ritual that evening and identified three of its participants: a ‘local catholic bishop’ whom she refused to name, a Cargill corporation executive named Kerry Brick, and an American named Stephen Holding from Sun Valley, Idaho, apparently with Sinclair Oil, Ltd.
“This informant also claimed that the two children to be used at the midnight ritual were being held at a separate facility at McGill University, but she claimed not to know where. She said that the normal procedure was to deliver them in a drugged condition just before the ritual began, for security reasons. Finally, she confirmed that the cult members describe themselves as part of the Ninth Circle society and claim they all carry tattoos with a cult insignia of the said Ninth Circle.
“Our team restrained all three prisoners and locked down the premises, while taking more videos and samples from the underground chamber. We then secured a covert perimeter in the neighbourhood in anticipation of the arrival of the cult participants and their victims. Unfortunately, although we maintained our vigil until well after midnight, no-one else arrived at the premises for the rest of that day and evening. We must assume that the participants were somehow alerted to our presence and aborted the ritual.
“The security guard in our custody was released by us after he proved that he had been retained in a private commercial capacity. The two cult members are being held in our DAU prison facility in Montreal prior to their questioning by the Court Prosecutor and his Canadian affiliates. All samples and film we obtained are in transit to Brussels headquarters for analysis.
”We are maintaining our covert surveillance on these cult premises in Outremont until further orders are received from Central Command.
DAU Alpha Team Commander, Montreal 16/08/2014”
Supplementary Report of the Action at Pro Cathedral, Ireland by DAU Beta Team:
Our DAU Beta Team in Dublin, Ireland encountered no ritualistic activity at the Cathedral at the time and date reported by our two Diocese informants. The latter claim that the ritual was either cancelled or moved to another location, but could not confirm anything more. However, the identity of a Ninth Circle adherent in Dublin was shared by one of the Diocese informants: a priest named Damien O’Reilly who is an assistant to the acting head of the catholic church in Ireland, Dublin Archbishop Dermot Martin.
DAU Beta Team is continuing its surveillance procedures at the Pro Cathedral and other reported cult centres in Ireland, and is assisting the Common Law Court being established in Galway to investigate the apparent ritual slaying of babies at the catholic facility in Tuam.
……………………
The Court is proceeding to authorize further follow up actions by our DAU’s at other child sacrificial centres in Rome, Canada, the United States, Ireland, England, Belgium and Holland. Updates are forthcoming.
CC-DAU Communique No. 2
Issued 16/08/2014
Brussels
DAU Central Command Office
Saturday, June 14, 2014
‘The murder of infants’? Symphysiotomy in Ireland, 1944–66: updated
via History Ireland magazine:
In 1944 the National Maternity Hospital (NMH) in Dublin pioneered the use of the symphysiotomy operation (see sidebar) as the procedure of choice in certain cases where the woman’s pelvis was deemed too small to permit a normal birth (termed ‘disproportion’). The NMH was Ireland’s leading Catholic-identified maternity hospital. NMH doctors were motivated by the perceived need to avoid the practice, common among non-Catholic doctors in Britain and elsewhere, of recommending sterilisation to women after a third Caesarean section (CS). The resurrection of symphysiotomy was controversial; one British obstetrician, Chassar Moir, speaking at a Royal Academy of Medicine in Ireland meeting in 1951, called it ‘the murder of infants’. Despite evidence of a high infant mortality rate and other problems, the NMH experiment lasted until 1966. Dublin’s Coombe Hospital also adopted the procedure from 1950 onwards. The Rotunda did not adopt NMH practice, although the Draft report on symphysiotomy notes that, although ‘rarely used,’ symphysiotomy was employed there occasionally, mainly as a post-CS procedure.
Motivation for revival of symphysiotomy
Symphysiotomy was thought to permanently enlarge the pelvis, and therefore, when carried out in a first pregnancy, it might remove the necessity for a woman with ‘disproportion’ to face repeated CS in future pregnancies. This was a particular problem for Catholic doctors. Contraception was practised in most developed countries, making repeat problem pregnancies less common, and non-Catholic doctors advised sterilisation after three CS. Irish Catholic doctors were unable or unwilling to do this. They were aware of criticism by colleagues who believed that Catholic religious strictures disadvantaged patients. In the same period, research had been undertaken in the NMH on pregnant women with heart disease, intending to prove that it was not medically necessary to offer them information on contraception, sterilisation or abortion. One author of that research noted, in a telling phrase, that it ‘proves that good morals and sound medical advice are compatible’.
more from The Journal.ie:
Symphysiotomy victims tell the UN about cruel and barbaric childbirth operations
SYMPHYSIOTOMY WAS EFFECTIVELY banned in France in 1798. The procedure – now described as barbaric, torturous and brutal – was carried out in Ireland until 1987. Young women (and, in some cases, teenage girls) were subjected to the surgery which involved having their pelvises unhinged before, during or after childbirth.
“Their arms held down by midwives, their feet manacled in stirrups, high and wide in the lithotomy or ‘stranded beetle’ position, many recount how they screamed and struggled to get free as they were being operated upon, wide awake, in the height of labour, in front of a large audience of generally male students,” reads a 50-page submission to the United Nations Committee Against Torture (UNCAT)...The Survivors of Symphysiotomy’s (SOS) complaint to UNCAT, submitted today, outlines how 24 hospitals and maternity homes across Ireland favoured the procedure over Caesarean Section, long after the practice had been discontinued in other developed nations. According to the advocacy group, the State failed abjectly in its duty to prevent “dangerous and maverick medical practice”.
“The performance of these mutilating childbirth operations in the absence of medical necessity and without patient consent constituted torture, cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment. Ireland has violated its obligations under international law,” says SOS chairperson Marie O’Connor,” says SOS chairperson Marie O’Connor on the publication of the document, which identifies hospitals and doctors – including the now infamous Michael Neary ...Most of the women left hospital not knowing their pelvises had been broken during childbirth. The majority found out decades later – through the media – after a lifetime of chronic pain, walking difficulties, incontinence, sexual difficulties, PTSD and other associated problems. “In every case,” reads the submission to the UN, “the injuries inflicted by medical practitioners were compounded by their failure to treat them as surgical patients and this negligent care served to maximise the opening of the pelvis.
“Indeed, the success of the surgery in ensuring future vaginal births was premised on the partial recovery of the patient....The operations did not actually deliver a baby. They merely sundered the pelvis and made labour much more severe...
Influence of the Catholic Church
Women who had undergone symphysiotomies and pubiotomies (a variant of the operation which sunders the public bone and results in a compound fracture of the pelvis) were not treated as surgical patients. Often, they were forced to walk on their broken pelvises within a day or two of delivery. Survivor groups contend that the operations were carried out by doctors because of “religious zealotry”. They say that because C-Sections were associated with sterilisation and contraception, doctors hostile to birth control sought to widen the pelvis to enable future childbearing without limitation....Pregnant women were used as “clinical material for training purposes” in the three main Dublin maternity hospitals and the IMTH in Drogheda, according to SOS. For those medical experiments, the young, healthy women on their first child were the preferred choice and historical writings and hospital clinical reports show the selection was quite deliberate.. “At the IMTH, women suspected of disproportion, many of whom were of small stature, were routinely allowed to go over their due dates so that their babies, inevitably, grew bigger and more difficult to birth, thereby testing the potential of symphysiotomy more fully.”
Complaint to the UN
SOS says the performance of symphysiotomy and pubiotomy constituted torture under Article 1 of the Convention Against Torture as severe pain and suffering, both physical and mental, were intentionally inflicted on women and girls, for reasons based on discrimination – but for the fact that they were pregnant, they would not have had these abusive surgeries perpetrated upon them...“These acts were deliberately and knowingly perpetrated – without patient consent – by ‘persons acting in an official capacity’ – consultant obstetricians and midwives – with the consent or acquiescence of public officials (in the Department of Health),” the group writes...About 250 legal actions are due to be heard in the High Court in the coming years.
Here is more information about Michael Neary via Wikipedia:
Michael Neary is a retired Irish consultant obstetrician/gynaecologist. He gained notoriety when it was discovered that he had performed what was considered an inordinate number of caesarian hysterectomies during his time at Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital in Drogheda, County Louth. He was suspended by the Irish Medical Council in 1999 pending their investigations, and then struck off the Register of Medical Practitioners in 2003. As a result of the Medical Council's investigation, which discovered a number of alarming aspects to the case, an inquiry was set up in April 2004 by the then Minister for Health and Children, Micheál Martin to investigate the matter....During the inquiry, Judge Harding-Clarke's offices were broken into at least three times, she has said....The Inquiry found that Dr. Neary carried out 129 of 188 peripartum hysterectomies carried out in the hospital over a 25-year period, some on very young women of low parity. The average consultant obstetrician carries out 5 or 6 of these operations in their entire career. The judge also found that numerous patient files had disappeared from the hospital, obviously removed by people sympathetic to Michael Neary, she wrote. She was unable to find out who removed the files but believes the person to be female. She criticised the 'Catholic ethos' of the hospital at the time. Sterilisation was forbidden, contraception was unavailable, but she reported that 'secondary' sterilisations were commonly and sympathetically carried out on women who did not want more children but were forbidden to use contraception by the Church...A junior consultant pathologist at the hospital in the early 80s asked his senior colleague why a perinatal uterus specimen he received seemed to have nothing wrong with it. The senior consultant replied "that's Michael Neary for you".
Wednesday, January 22, 2014
Files Show Chicago Archdiocese Hid Decades Of Child Sex Abuse
via CBS:
CHICAGO (CBS/AP) – After a 13-year-old boy reported in 1979 that a priest raped him and later threatened him at gunpoint to keep quiet, the Archdiocese of Chicago assured the boy’s parents that although the cleric avoided prosecution, he would receive treatment and have no further contact with minors.
But the Rev. William Cloutier, who already had been accused of molesting other children, was returned to ministry a year later and accused of more abuse before he resigned in 1993, two years after the boy’s parents filed a lawsuit. Officials took no action against Cloutier over his earliest transgressions because he “sounded repentant,” according to internal archdiocese documents released Tuesday that show how the archdiocese tried to contain a mounting scandal over child sexual abuse.
For decades, those at the highest levels of the nation’s third-largest archdiocese moved accused priests from parish to parish while hiding the clerics’ histories from the public. The documents, released through settlements between attorneys for the archdiocese and victims, describe how the late Cardinals John Cody and Joseph Bernardin often approved the reassignments. The archdiocese removed some priests from ministry, but often years or decades after the clergy were known to have molested children.
CHICAGO (CBS/AP) – After a 13-year-old boy reported in 1979 that a priest raped him and later threatened him at gunpoint to keep quiet, the Archdiocese of Chicago assured the boy’s parents that although the cleric avoided prosecution, he would receive treatment and have no further contact with minors.
But the Rev. William Cloutier, who already had been accused of molesting other children, was returned to ministry a year later and accused of more abuse before he resigned in 1993, two years after the boy’s parents filed a lawsuit. Officials took no action against Cloutier over his earliest transgressions because he “sounded repentant,” according to internal archdiocese documents released Tuesday that show how the archdiocese tried to contain a mounting scandal over child sexual abuse.
For decades, those at the highest levels of the nation’s third-largest archdiocese moved accused priests from parish to parish while hiding the clerics’ histories from the public. The documents, released through settlements between attorneys for the archdiocese and victims, describe how the late Cardinals John Cody and Joseph Bernardin often approved the reassignments. The archdiocese removed some priests from ministry, but often years or decades after the clergy were known to have molested children.
Friday, November 30, 2012
Chapter 7 of Ireland's Child Abuse Commission
via Ireland's Child Abuse Commission, first reported on by the Associated Press and linked to by Cryptogon. The AP article has since been removed.
Warning: This post is among the most disturbing that has ever been posted here, so any person with a history of trauma-based mind control may wish to skip it entirely. However, anyone who still perceives the Vatican as a source of moral instruction is urged to read it in full. Please remember that, in 2001, Pope Ratzinger sent an internal memo to Bishops forbidding them from reporting child sexual abuse to legal authorities. It's important to realize that Catholic sex abuse scandals are not isolated incidents of garden variety child molestation but instead a systematic cover up of ritualized torture. What can possibly explain the widespread prevalence of sadistic pedophilia that would turn the stomach of just about anyone? That's the million dollar question that the mainstream media won't touch with a ten foot pole.
This chapter describes the nature and extent of abuse reported in evidence to the Committee by 413 male witnesses in relation to 26 Industrial and Reformatory Schools in Ireland. The 413 witnesses made 482 reports of abuse regarding the four types of abuse defined by the Acts.1 Those four types are physical and sexual abuse, neglect and emotional abuse. Not all 26 Schools were reported for each of the four types of abuse. The report of abuse by a witness may either refer to descriptions of single episodes or to multiple experiences of being abused in a School. In most instances reports of abuse refer to more than one episode of abuse and more than one type of abuse. One hundred and sixty six (166) witness reports (34%) were of all four types of abuse. Sixty eight (68) witnesses reported abuse in more than one School...This section describes reports of actual incidents of physical abuse, non-accidental injury and lack of protection from such abuse given in evidence by witnesses to the Committee. The types of physical abuse reported included hitting, punching, kicking, flogging, and bodily assault with implements. The Committee heard disturbing accounts of severe assaults causing injuries that required medical intervention. Witnesses also reported being abused by being immersed in water, being burned, and subjected to what they believed to be deliberate and persistent physical cruelty...Witnesses reported being physically abused by religious and lay staff and others including: visiting clergy, members of the general public and men in work and holiday placements....Witnesses described a daily existence that involved the possibility of being hit by a staff member at any time, for any reason or for no reason. Witnesses also reported being physically abused by co-residents.
It is notable that witnesses at times described daily, casual and random physical abuse as normal and wished to report only the times when the frequency and severity of the abuse was such that they were injured or in fear for their lives. Three hundred and forty six (346) of the 403 witnesses reported that they were subjected to frequent physical violence; they described a climate of pervasive fear in the Schools and provided consistent reports of generally not knowing why they were being beaten
The forms of physical abuse reported by witnesses to the Committee included punching, flogging, assault and bodily attacks, hitting with the hand, kicking, ear pulling, hair pulling, head shaving, beating on the soles of the feet, burning, scalding, stabbing, severe beatings with or without clothes, being made to kneel and stand in fixed positions for lengthy periods, made to sleep outside overnight, being forced into cold or excessively hot baths and showers, hosed down with cold water before being beaten, beaten while hanging from hooks on the wall, being set upon by dogs, being restrained in order to be beaten, physical assaults by more than one person, and having objects thrown at them....A small number of witnesses stated that Brothers were trained to beat residents and reports were heard of religious Brothers demonstrating the exercise of discipline to trainee Brothers.
Witnesses reported being introduced to a strict regime from the moment of their arrival in the School.
In addition to physical abuse as the result of bodily assault by punching, hitting and kicking, witnesses reported a variety of implements were used to beat and physically abuse residents. The ‘leather’ was the most commonly reported implement with 381 witness accounts heard of its use in all 26 Schools. Witnesses described the leather strap as strips of leather sewn together, measuring about two inches wide, half an inch thick and about 18 inches long. One end was described by a number of witnesses as shaped for a handgrip. A number of witnesses reported that some of these leather straps contained metal or coins to add weight. Five (5) witnesses provided accounts of either making or seeing these embellished leather straps being made in the bootmaking workshops.
Witnesses described other leather straps of varying dimensions: some were described as leather belts, others as longer, thinner straps referred to as whips. Two (2) witnesses from two different Schools described being beaten with leather straps with leather thongs attached to the ends, one witness discharged in 1950 referred to the strap as a cat-o’-nine-tails.
There were 232 accounts of being hit or beaten with a variety of sticks, including canes, ash plants, blackthorn sticks, hurleys, broom handles, hand brushes, wooden spoons, pointers, batons, chair rungs, yard brushes, hoes, hay forks, pikes and pieces of wood with leather thongs attached. One hundred and eighteen (118) witnesses reported being beaten with canes and 37 with hurleys. Other implements described included bunches of keys, belt buckles, drain rods, rubber pram tyres, golf clubs, tyre rims, electric flexes, fan belts, horse tackle, hammers, metal rulers, butts of rifles, t-squares, gun pellets and hay ropes. Witnesses also reported having objects thrown at them, such as blocks of wood or sliotars.
Thirty four (34) witnesses described being forced into scalding or freezing showers or baths as deliberate punishments, including a number who reported being hosed with cold water before or after a severe beating. One witness reported that his head was held under water in a sink while working in the kitchen, another reported having his head held under water while bathing.
Twenty two (22) witnesses described various means by which they were physically abused by burning and scalding; all the incidents reported were isolated and included being burned with matches and cigarettes, having fingers put into electric sockets and having scalding water thrown at them while working in the kitchen. One witness who reported being scalded was so badly burned that he was hidden from sight during a subsequent inspector’s visit.
There were reports from three Schools of dogs being used by staff members to assault and frighten residents, the dogs were described in some instances as pets. In other instances witnesses reported staff ‘patrolling’ with large dogs including Alsatians that were believed to be used as a threat against misbehaviour.
There were also four references by witnesses of being threatened and intimidated by Brothers who had dogs and carried guns for hunting.
Methods of physical punishment were also reported to vary both between staff and Schools. For example, witnesses discharged from three Schools in the 1970s and 1980s described being locked out overnight as a punishment, referred to as ‘freezing time’. Being locked out in cold weather and left to sleep outside were reported as alternative punishments to being beaten. Another witness described the following:
n addition to reports of what appeared to be indiscriminate violence, witnesses reported being beaten for other reasons, including: bed-wetting and soiling, inattention in the classroom, left-handedness, stammering, not knowing lessons, disclosing physical and/or sexual abuse, absconding, ‘stealing’ food, talking in line, delay in obeying an instruction, ‘looking the wrong way’ at a staff member, attending the infirmary, complaining of feeling unwell, general wear and tear on clothing and footwear, talking at meals or in bed, talking to girls, playing soccer, losing a game against an outside team, perceived sexual thoughts or actions and not being able to carry out work tasks quickly and properly.
It was frequently reported that residents who wet their bed were made to sleep in either a separate dormitory or in a separate section of the main dormitory. It was also reported that nine of the 26 Schools for boys employed a night watchman who woke habitual bed-wetters during the night to use the toilet. The Committee heard consistent reports of particular practices in relation to the management of bed-wetting, including all bed-wetters being woken, being checked for wet beds, being beaten with a stick while in bed and being forced to wait for lengthy periods in cold bathrooms to use the toilet. Witnesses also reported being hit as they stood waiting; others reported that beds were inspected each morning, followed in some Schools by an immediate beating if the bed was wet.
Witnesses described trying to stay awake so as not to wet their bed. The rules in some dormitories were said to preclude getting out of bed at night. In other Schools witnesses reported being reluctant to go to the toilet during the night for fear of being followed and abused by the night watchman or older co-residents. There were 43 witness reports of being beaten and sexually abused by night watchmen and older co-residents in this context.
Running away was a feature of life in the Schools and the majority of witnesses made some reference to either running away, thinking about doing so, or observing what happened to returned absconders. Witnesses consistently reported that residents who absconded or ran away were severely beaten and flogged upon their return to the School. The public nature and severity of the beatings were described as traumatic, and made a lasting impression on those who witnessed them in addition to serving as a caution against absconding. Reports of running away were frequently accompanied by accounts of persistent physical and sexual abuse.
Four (4) witnesses from two different Schools reported that they were beaten on the soles of their feet with a cane and leather strap as a punishment for running away. Witnesses from three other Schools reported being made to stand or kneel in the recreation yards following their beatings and were ostracised by their peers. Two (2) witnesses from the latter Schools reported being made to kneel in the yard for several hours in their underpants in winter and were incontinent while kneeling there. The punishment for absconding in a number of Schools was reported to include being put on reduced food and being forbidden to associate with others. Witnesses described being made to walk around the yard alone for several weeks. Others reported being made to kneel in the refectory while they ate bread and water. This punishment was described as continuing for days and up to three weeks in one instance. One witness reported that when he was brought back after running away his head was shaved and he was later taken from his bed, stripped and beaten, punched and kicked by a group of six Brothers in front of other residents.
One hundred and fifty seven (157) witnesses reported being physically assaulted in the classroom. Witnesses described the liberal use of the leather, cane and wooden ruler or stick on the face, palms, wrists, tips of the fingers, forearms, legs, backs of the hands, across the shoulders, back and the bottom. Learning was reported to have been dominated by the fear of punishment for various reasons including for not knowing the correct answer, being left handed, being unable to read when called upon and being unable to speak clearly, as described by a witness discharged in the 1960s:
Witnesses who have struggled with poor literacy all their lives described years of humiliation and abuse in the classroom. In four Schools, witnesses described being bent over desks, forced to remove their trousers and being beaten in front of the entire class. Witnesses described being restrained in different ways including having their heads wedged in a window and in a drawer while they were beaten on the bare bottom. The following is an additional account of abuse in the classroom.
Other classroom punishments reported were: ear pulling, being lifted up by the hair or cheeks, beaten on the soles of the feet, having objects thrown at the head or body and being made to stand facing the wall with arms elevated until fatigued, when a beating would ensue. Several witnesses reported having their face slapped or boxed repeatedly while their head was held steady by a tuft of hair. This practice was referred to by witnesses as a ‘jaw warmer’ or ‘rabbit punch’.
Random beatings in bed at night were also described. Night watchmen were reported to have patrolled the dormitories during the night in nine Schools. Both the night watchmen and religious staff are reported to have checked that residents lay in a particular way in their beds, reports of this experience vary over the years and between the different institutions. Witnesses from some Schools consistently reported being beaten if they were found lying with their hands under the bedclothes, others were beaten if they did not have their arms and hands crossed over their chest in a particular way. Witnesses believed the reason for this enforced practice was to avoid what religious staff referred to as the ‘sin’ of masturbation.
Showers were reported as locations of abuse in six institutions. The most commonly reported reasons for being beaten in the showers were not washing properly, ducking out of unbearably hot or cold water or attempting to avoid sexual assault. Religious and some lay staff were reported to supervise the showers, usually alone. Some residents described being checked as they left the shower area and were pulled aside for punishment if not considered to be properly washed, at other times it was reported that they were randomly struck with either a leather strap or a stick as they were showering or as they filed past the supervising staff member. A specific complaint about these beatings was the pain of being beaten on wet skin and the humiliation of being beaten while naked.
Witnesses reported being flogged and severely beaten for many reasons, including: disclosing or reporting abuse, absconding, speaking to visiting girls, riding a visitor’s bike, refusing to clear blocked toilets, taking food, fighting, delay in lining up, not washing properly or having torn clothes.
When I was there 3 blokes ...named co-residents... they ran away and when they were brought back, they were flogged, on one of these vaulting horses. We were all there. Br ...X... said “I’m going to make an example of these boys”, and one by one they came out, no trousers on them ... naked from their waist down, each one individually over the vaulting horse, he flogged them. Well you could see their backsides going red blue, red blue, the whole School watching.
Twenty three (23) witnesses described injuries to their genitalia as a result of being kicked or flogged. Eighteen (18) witnesses described being hosed with cold water or having cold water thrown on them prior to, or in the course of a severe beating. A witness gave the following account of a severe beating when he was found in the company of co-residents who had been talking to some girls visiting their brothers in the School:
Witnesses reported being filled with terror as religious staff appeared to lose control when they were administering physical beatings or floggings. It was reported that such beatings frequently resulted in injury or, in 22 reported instances, rendered the resident unconscious. Eight (8) of the 22 witnesses reported that they passed out while being beaten and woke up in bed unable to move. There were 36 accounts of witnesses being unable to sit or lie on their back for some days after being beaten, and a further 28 accounts of being unable to walk following a beating or flogging.
Eleven (11) witnesses reported that the flogging or beating they received was so severe that they thought they were going to be killed. Five (5) witnesses from two Schools reported that named co-residents were never seen again following a severe beating.
Fifty nine (59) witnesses reported episodes of being physically abused by more than one person simultaneously. Of those reports there were 42 witness accounts of two or more religious staff coming to the dormitories at night and removing residents from their beds. Witnesses reported being brought to either cloakrooms, boot rooms, showers and bathrooms or the rooms of religious staff members where they were stripped and placed across a table, bed or chair and beaten by more than one priest or Brother. The Committee also heard reports of residents being held down by co-residents under the instruction of a Brother. A small number of witnesses reported being held with their head between the thighs of one of the priests or Brothers while another priest or Brother beat them on the bare bottom with a leather strap. Witnesses also reported being severely beaten as part of a group for various reasons, for example when no one admitted to talking during silent periods or when a staff member wanted a resident to admit to a misdemeanour. Many witnesses described the involvement of more than one religious staff in the episodes of severe beating or flogging, and the assault being so severe that they sustained an injury.
There were five accounts of boys being tied down before being beaten; in one circumstance a witness described being tied to a bench and beaten. Another witness reported that a Brother sent him to the office, where he was told to take his clothes off, two Brothers took turns beating him on his body and hands until ‘I thought I was going to be killed’. The witness further reported his legs were swollen with open lacerations.
Witnesses reported a catalogue of injuries to themselves and co-residents as a result of physical abuse by religious and lay staff members in the 26 Schools reported to the Committee. Two hundred and twenty four (224) reports were heard of injuries including: breaks to ribs, noses, wrists, arms and legs, injuries to head, genitalia, back, mouth, eye, ear, hand, jaw, face and kidney. Sixty four (64) witnesses reported being left unable to walk, sit, stand or lie down as a result of those injuries. Other injuries included burns, dog bites, lacerations, broken teeth, dislocated shoulders, injuries to the soles of feet, and burst chilblains. Chilblains were a common ailment in the pre-1970s period and male witnesses reported experiencing severe pain after being struck on hands and legs with chilblains. Witnesses reported that at times they were beaten until their chilblains burst and bled.
Many witnesses reported more than one injury, which included the following:
One hundred and eighty six (186) witnesses reported being marked, bruised or swollen with welts.
Seventy one (71) witnesses reported blood being drawn.
Sixty (60) witnesses reported eye and/or ear injuries.
Forty four (44) witnesses reported head lacerations.
Thirty two (32) witnesses reported injuries to their hand, three of whom reported permanent damage.
Twenty eight (28) witness reported broken ribs, arms or legs.
Twenty three (23) witnesses reported injury to their genitalia.
Twenty two (22) witnesses reported receiving injuries that left them unconscious.
Twenty two (22) witnesses reported being scalded or burned.
Twenty (20) witnesses reported broken noses.
Twenty (20) witnesses reported split lips or broken teeth.
Seventeen (17) witnesses reported injuries to their face or jaw.
Thirteen (13) witnesses reported injuries to their feet.
Eight (8) witnesses reported injuries to their back.
Four (4) witnesses reported suffering kidney damage.
Three (3) witnesses reported being stabbed with farm and kitchen implements.
There were multiple injuries reported in relation to particular Schools and staff members, for instance 126 witnesses from three Schools reported injuries including broken bones, fractured limbs, head injuries, broken teeth and being left bleeding and bruised. Six (6) witnesses from one School named a particular Brother as the perpetrator of severe injuries, including broken noses and facial injuries:
I lost my 2 front teeth because of a whack like that ...demonstrated strike of the hand... out in the yard. If you got too near him...(Br X)... he would just whack you, he’d flatten you. ... A few days later I was sent to the doctor because my mouth was all up. ... He sent me on to the dentist in ...named town....
Twenty five (25) witnesses reported being hospitalised for different non-accidental injuries, as described above. Six (6) of these reports referred to one particular School. Others described co-residents being hospitalised for treatment of their injuries following physical assault by a religious or lay staff member.
Fr ...X... laid me out cold for talking; he walloped me so fast I couldn’t see it coming. He broke my nose, I had to go to hospital. He knocked me clean out. I had 2 big black eyes and the nurse sent me to the hospital.
•
The 2 years I had there I did not get over it for many, many years. I was shattered. ... I suffered fierce violence there. I saw one boy ...named co-resident... battered on the bog, he got such a beating from Br ...X... that his back was broken and he was shifted off to hospital in ...named town....
Witnesses reported that in a number of Schools a member of the religious staff or an older resident accompanied them to the hospital and in most cases spoke to the hospital staff on their behalf. Witnesses reported being warned by the person who had beaten them and by other staff to tell the doctor the injuries were caused accidentally.
The 474 reports of physical abuse heard by the Committee identified 556 individuals by name as physically abusive, 110 of whom were also reported as sexually abusive.7 Witnesses reported being physically abused by a variety of personnel including religious and lay staff who were in positions including Resident Managers, teachers, and care and ancillary staff. It should be noted that Resident Managers or their designated deputies were authorised as Disciplinarians, as regulated. Witnesses also reported being physically abused by older co-residents. Seven (7) witnesses reported being physically abused by members of the public including visitors to the Schools and the employers on work placements.
Sixty-five (65) of the named male religious staff reported as physically abusive were identified by witnesses as being in positions of authority, including Resident Managers within the Schools. The remaining 329 Brothers and priests named by witnesses were reported to be care, teaching and ancillary staff within the Schools. Witnesses described some of the religious staff having different roles within the School and at times were not clear whether the ascribed role was in fact the individual’s dominant function within the institution. For example, witnesses referred to religious staff in authority as the Superior, Reverend Mother, School Master, Officer in Charge, Head Brother or Sister, and Brother or Priest in Charge.
Forty two (42) of the lay staff who were reported as physically abusive were ancillary staff employed as night watchmen, drill masters, farm workers, maintenance and trade workers. Witnesses reported that contact with lay ancillary staff was mainly in the dormitories, showers or in the context of work activity on the farm, in the kitchens or in trade shops where they were in constant contact with the staff who abused them.
This section summarises the evidence provided by witnesses of sexual abuse ranging from contact sexual abuse including rape and associated physical violence to non-contact abuse such as enforced nakedness and voyeurism. Witnesses were generally distressed when describing their experiences of sexual abuse. They spoke in as much or as little detail as they wished. Some witnesses provided detailed and disturbing accounts of sexual abuse, other accounts were sufficient to clarify the acute or chronic nature of both contact and non-contact sexual abuse....Two hundred and forty two (242) male witnesses (59%) made 253 reports of sexual abuse in relation to 20 Schools.9 Eleven (11) witnesses reported sexual abuse in relation to two separate Schools. Witnesses described their experience of sexual abuse as either acute incidents or multiple episodes that, for some, occurred throughout their entire admission in the School. Witnesses reported being sexually abused by religious and lay staff in addition to other adults, most of whom had some association with the Schools.
The frequency of sexual abuse reports varied widely between Schools:
Four (4) Schools were collectively the subject 156 reports.10
Five (5) Schools were the subject 10-17 reports, totalling 67 reports.
Eleven (11) Schools were the subject of 1-6, totalling 30 reports.
Witnesses described contact sexual abuse including: inspection of genitalia, kissing, fondling of genitalia, forced masturbation of, and by, an abuser, digital penetration, penetration by objects, oral and anal rape and attempted rape, by individuals and groups. Witnesses also reported several forms of non-contact sexual abuse including detailed interrogation about sexual activity, indecent exposure, inappropriate sexual talk, voyeurism, and forced public nudity. Some witnesses gave accounts of isolated incidents of sexual abuse and others reported being sexually abused on many occasions, over a period of months or years...Sixty eight (68) witnesses reported being anally raped. There were a further 14 reports of attempted rape and six reports of digital penetration. Many of these reports were associated with violence, of which there were 88 reports in total, including 23 reports of injuries to genitalia by beating with a leather and kicking.
The secretive and isolated nature of sexual abuse was frequently described. Many witnesses reported that the fear of severe punishment and the threat of either them or their siblings being sent to a more restrictive institution inhibited them in both resisting and disclosing sexual abuse. Witnesses further reported that the culture of obeying orders without question, the authority of the abuser and the experience of not being believed and being severely beaten after they reported abuse, rendered them powerless to stop the abuse....Sexual abuse was also reported to occur off-site when residents were taken out of the institution for holidays, outings or work placements, by individuals who sexually abused them. Witnesses reported that sexual abuse was often preceded by physical violence that they believed was intended as an intimidating threat...Witnesses repeatedly stated that co-residents who had no family contact were the most common victims of sexual abuse.
There were 88 witness reports of sexual abuse and associated physical violence, 15 of these reports related to one School. Many of the reports heard were of witnesses being beaten while their abusers masturbated, or of the witnesses being beaten on their bare buttocks while they were held against the abusers’ genitals. Witnesses described physical abuse perpetrated in the context of sexual abuse as serving to both enforce compliance with the sexual assault and as a means of securing the silence of the witness concerned. Witnesses who reported being sexually abused, including being anally raped, named Brothers about whom the Committee heard a number of reports of sexual abuse...Sexual abuse associated with violence was also reported to be accompanied at times by serious threats of physical harm, including risk to life, for the perceived purpose of instilling fear and enforcing compliance. For example, witnesses reported being threatened that if they ever told anyone what happened to them they would be ‘drowned in the slurry pit’, ‘sent to a worse place’, ‘killed’ or in one instance, ‘cut up and buried in a bag in the bog’. This latter threat was issued by a lay ancillary worker who the witness reported challenged him with a knife.
There were 16 witness accounts of sexual abuse being perpetrated by more than one religious staff simultaneously, generally in association with physical assault...Sexual abuse associated with severe physical violence involving more than one staff member was generally reported as having occurred at night. Witnesses reported being taken from their beds and brought to staff members’ bedrooms, bathrooms or other areas, where they were abused by two or more Brothers and/or priests...In relation to one School, four witnesses gave detailed accounts of sexual abuse, including rape in all instances, by two or more Brothers and on one occasion along with an older resident. A witness from the second School, from which there were several reports, described being raped by three Brothers:
Two hundred and forty six (246) lay and religious staff and others were reported as sexual abusers by male witnesses. One or more reports of sexual abuse were made against each of those identified as sexual abusers. Witnesses identified 186 perpetrators of sexual abuse by name, 110 of whom were also named by witnesses as physically abusive. A further 60 unnamed perpetrators were identified by their position or occupation....witnesses also reported that they were sexually abused by external clergy and Brothers who were visiting the Schools or others to whom witnesses were sent to work. As previously stated external clergy included priests and others of higher rank. These visiting religious were described as either friendly with religious staff or visiting the School in a pastoral role. There were also four reports of sexual abuse by either a clerical student or visiting members of the congregation in relation to four other Schools....The Committee heard reports of sexual abuse by visitors and volunteer workers from seven witnesses in relation to one specific School. These men were members of the general public, each of whom was believed to be known to religious staff. The witnesses described being collected by car and taken to men’s homes, the cinema or on trips to the seaside or country. Four (4)) witnesses reported being taken with co-residents on a regular basis, one by a group of men overnight and the other three witnesses by a man in a van who bought them sweets and ice-cream and sexually abused them by fondling or masturbation, either in the van or in his home. Four of the 11 witnesses reported being taken alone for overnight excursions where they shared rooms and beds with identified abusers in their homes, guesthouses or other accommodation. Witnesses described these outings as apparently spontaneous.
...Three hundred and sixty seven (367) male witnesses (89%) made 408 reports concerning the neglect of their care and welfare in 22 Schools. There were 379 witness reports of food provided to residents being inadequate in both quality and sufficiency. The reports referred to 21 Schools. Three hundred and forty nine (349) reports of poor and inadequate food were made by witnesses who were discharged before 1970. Some witnesses reported having so little to eat that at times they were starving.
In the morning you got 2 cuts of bread and dripping, the dripping was put on the night before. The food was terrible there, you were hungry, it was rationed even though the place was self-sufficient. They had their own tomatoes and orchard too, but we never got them.
Throughout all decades reported to the Committee witnesses noted differences between the quality and quantity of food available to them and that which was provided for the religious staff, as observed by witnesses who worked in kitchens preparing and serving food for both residents and staff.
I had to serve breakfast for the Brothers, as you got older you used to serve breakfast. I couldn’t believe the breakfast they had.... I can’t believe what we get and what they get. One day I nicked an orange, they get a whole orange! There was a woman there. She cooked breakfast for them.
Many witnesses said that although there were large farms attached to their Schools the produce from the farms was generally not provided for the residents. Witnesses from six Schools described preparing potatoes and other vegetables for sale and being involved in the distribution of various types of farm produce for sale outside the School. Witnesses who were prescribed special diets or extra milk and eggs reported that the recommended food was not always provided for them although they stated that in some Schools it was available for sale. In addition to reports about the inadequate amounts of food provided to residents, witnesses also reported that the lack of supervision in the refectories meant that in several Schools the youngest or most recently arrived residents were dependant on older residents leaving enough food for them to eat in the rush for what was provided. Witnesses reported being frequently left without any food:
The area of neglect in healthcare most frequently reported by witnesses was the absence of investigation into the cause of non-accidental injury to residents. Witnesses reported being attended by visiting doctors and nurses attached to the Schools’ infirmary, as well as attending doctors’ surgeries and local hospitals with injuries received as a result of abuse. In the majority of instances witnesses stated that the doctors and nurses who treated these injuries failed to make inquiries as to the cause of the injuries and most witnesses reported being returned to abusive environments without investigation or an assessment of risk...Nurses were generally remembered as non-committal about non-accidental and other injuries. Repeated wounds from beatings were reported to have elicited no query from most nurses as to their cause, while some were sympathetic but unable to intervene on the residents’ behalf: ‘what could she do, they employed her’. One witness stated that in recent years he met a School nurse who had treated his injuries following a particularly severe beating. She remembered the incident and told him she ‘could do nothing about it’, as she had been sworn to secrecy. In one School witnesses were attended by a nurse who ‘did not want to know what happened when boys turned up badly beaten’. Sixty six (66) witnesses gave accounts of inadequate medical attention including being ignored, punished or ridiculed when they complained of being unwell or injured. Accidental injuries and childhood illnesses were reported by many witnesses to have been left untreated. Witnesses in a number of Schools reported never seeing a doctor or that the doctor was only ever called to see someone who was ‘really ill’. One witness who reported his finger and thumb were broken when he fell off a cart in a farm accident, had to continue working and received no subsequent treatment, ‘it mended by itself’. A number of witnesses reported that their parents brought them to hospital while they were at home on leave, two of whom had their broken arms examined and treated. Their injuries were sustained as a result of physical assault in the School by religious staff. Both witnesses said they had not received any treatment at the time of the initial injury in the School. Another witness was hospitalised while on weekend leave for treatment of abscesses that had been neglected in the School. Three (3) witnesses reported the death of boys who they described were ignored or neglected when they complained of being sick. One witness reported his belief that a co-resident died as a result of eating poisonous berries. Two (2) witnesses reported being hospitalised following suicide attempts in the context of abuse episodes. They were transferred back to the institution without psychological assessment or treatment.
Sixty seven (67) witnesses reported being deprived of contact with their parents, brothers and sisters while they were in the Schools. They also reported being actively denied information about their parents and siblings. Some witnesses commented that they were too young when they were first admitted to know who their brothers or sisters were and were never told. The deprivation and loss of contact with parents and siblings was reported to be a matter of deep distress, grief and anger that led to the fragmentation and loss of family networks by the time many witnesses were discharged from the Schools...Forty four (44) witnesses described how contact with their siblings was actively discouraged or denied. They reported being separated from their sisters and brothers while in the Schools and being denied contact with them. Witnesses also reported being punished if found attempting to communicate with their siblings who were in other sections of the same School. Some witnesses reported that their brothers were transferred or discharged from the School without them being told or having an opportunity to say goodbye...Witnesses reported that the experience of living in the regimented School system contributed to a sense of having no individual identity. The use of an allocated number instead of a name was reported by 25 witnesses and many others stated that they were either not spoken to individually or were only ever referred to by their surname.
Due to the generally public and frequent nature of the physical and emotional abuse inflicted on residents, witnesses stated that staff and co-residents were unavoidably aware of its occurrence. Witnesses also reported disclosing abuse to their parents, relatives and people in authority, both within the institution and outside, including to gardaí and other professionals. The Committee also heard and was presented with documentary evidence of correspondence between parents and the Department of Education regarding complaints of abuse. Witnesses stated that the response to their disclosures of abuse ranged from being punished and further abused, being ignored or to being protected from harm. In a small number of instances witnesses stated that they were aware that some investigation took place following disclosures of abuse.
One hundred and forty six (146) of the 413 witnesses (35%) reported that they told an adult they were being physically or sexually abused, 42 of them reported disclosing abuse to more than one person. The disclosures were to adults in positions of perceived trust and authority both within and external to the Schools...A number of witnesses reported being threatened that if they told anyone about the abuse they had experienced there would be more severe repercussions. Five witnesses stated that members of the religious staff visited them or their parents at home to reinforce their warning not to report or disclose their abuse.
Fifty seven (57) witnesses reported that when they disclosed abuse or it was evident by their injuries that they were being abused they were ignored and the abuse continued, leading them to believe that aggression and violence was part of the culture of the School. A number of witnesses stated that it was their belief that both religious and lay staff knew that residents were being abused and were at times sympathetic but were powerless or unwilling to change anything. Many witnesses reported that the risk of being deprived of family visits or being prevented from going home on leave deterred them from disclosing abuse. Others reported that when they did tell someone they were being abused they were either ignored or not believed and as a result they learned to remain silent, believing that nobody would listen to them. A witness who told a priest in Confession about being sexually abused reported that he was told to ‘keep your thoughts to yourself as you could hurt so many people’....more...
Warning: This post is among the most disturbing that has ever been posted here, so any person with a history of trauma-based mind control may wish to skip it entirely. However, anyone who still perceives the Vatican as a source of moral instruction is urged to read it in full. Please remember that, in 2001, Pope Ratzinger sent an internal memo to Bishops forbidding them from reporting child sexual abuse to legal authorities. It's important to realize that Catholic sex abuse scandals are not isolated incidents of garden variety child molestation but instead a systematic cover up of ritualized torture. What can possibly explain the widespread prevalence of sadistic pedophilia that would turn the stomach of just about anyone? That's the million dollar question that the mainstream media won't touch with a ten foot pole.
This chapter describes the nature and extent of abuse reported in evidence to the Committee by 413 male witnesses in relation to 26 Industrial and Reformatory Schools in Ireland. The 413 witnesses made 482 reports of abuse regarding the four types of abuse defined by the Acts.1 Those four types are physical and sexual abuse, neglect and emotional abuse. Not all 26 Schools were reported for each of the four types of abuse. The report of abuse by a witness may either refer to descriptions of single episodes or to multiple experiences of being abused in a School. In most instances reports of abuse refer to more than one episode of abuse and more than one type of abuse. One hundred and sixty six (166) witness reports (34%) were of all four types of abuse. Sixty eight (68) witnesses reported abuse in more than one School...This section describes reports of actual incidents of physical abuse, non-accidental injury and lack of protection from such abuse given in evidence by witnesses to the Committee. The types of physical abuse reported included hitting, punching, kicking, flogging, and bodily assault with implements. The Committee heard disturbing accounts of severe assaults causing injuries that required medical intervention. Witnesses also reported being abused by being immersed in water, being burned, and subjected to what they believed to be deliberate and persistent physical cruelty...Witnesses reported being physically abused by religious and lay staff and others including: visiting clergy, members of the general public and men in work and holiday placements....Witnesses described a daily existence that involved the possibility of being hit by a staff member at any time, for any reason or for no reason. Witnesses also reported being physically abused by co-residents.
It is notable that witnesses at times described daily, casual and random physical abuse as normal and wished to report only the times when the frequency and severity of the abuse was such that they were injured or in fear for their lives. Three hundred and forty six (346) of the 403 witnesses reported that they were subjected to frequent physical violence; they described a climate of pervasive fear in the Schools and provided consistent reports of generally not knowing why they were being beaten
The forms of physical abuse reported by witnesses to the Committee included punching, flogging, assault and bodily attacks, hitting with the hand, kicking, ear pulling, hair pulling, head shaving, beating on the soles of the feet, burning, scalding, stabbing, severe beatings with or without clothes, being made to kneel and stand in fixed positions for lengthy periods, made to sleep outside overnight, being forced into cold or excessively hot baths and showers, hosed down with cold water before being beaten, beaten while hanging from hooks on the wall, being set upon by dogs, being restrained in order to be beaten, physical assaults by more than one person, and having objects thrown at them....A small number of witnesses stated that Brothers were trained to beat residents and reports were heard of religious Brothers demonstrating the exercise of discipline to trainee Brothers.
One day it was ...visitor’s day... they used to pick about half a dozen lads. You would be called to the hall. I was picked once and they would actually show the ...visiting student Brothers... how to do the hiding. The Brother who was in charge of the playground, mostly Br ...X... or Br ...Y... would show them how it’s done, they would give you a hiding to show them and then they would have a go, with the black jack ...(leather)... with loops of lead in it or steel.
Witnesses reported being introduced to a strict regime from the moment of their arrival in the School.
We were met by Br ...X... he ruled the roost, he told us about the rules, said if we ran away there was severe punishment, the second time our head would be shaved and the third time we would be sent to ...named School.... He then stripped us off, told us to bend over the desk; he hit the desk with a leather strap and said, “Say the Our Father”. I could not say it. He hit me across the legs and warned me not to step out of line. He told us to get in the shower, cold water, “to scrub away your sins”, with carbolic soap. He then left and came back with clothes, comb ... he hit me with the strap when I had the clothes on because I should be in pyjamas. We went to the dormitory, the boys were asleep, he said, “This will always be your bed unless you wet the bed, then you will end up with the smellies with Mr ...Y...”. It was dark, there was no food. I was very upset and frightened. Then that night Mr ...Y... came walking down with his walking stick, he touched my penis with the stick and said, “Don’t ever let me catch you”. Later I could hear kids crying as he lashed kids with a stick, getting them up for the toilet. That was my first night in ...named School....
In addition to physical abuse as the result of bodily assault by punching, hitting and kicking, witnesses reported a variety of implements were used to beat and physically abuse residents. The ‘leather’ was the most commonly reported implement with 381 witness accounts heard of its use in all 26 Schools. Witnesses described the leather strap as strips of leather sewn together, measuring about two inches wide, half an inch thick and about 18 inches long. One end was described by a number of witnesses as shaped for a handgrip. A number of witnesses reported that some of these leather straps contained metal or coins to add weight. Five (5) witnesses provided accounts of either making or seeing these embellished leather straps being made in the bootmaking workshops.
They used the leather for the least excuse. It was heavy, stitched and with waxed ends. It was very painful, you would scream in pain. As convent boys we didn’t have a chance. The other boys, the city kids who were tough, and the Brothers, all picked on us. We stuck together which wasn’t a good idea.
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Some of the Brothers had different leathers, I know because I made them when I was 14, in the boot room, some of them had little tiny leads in them, some had coins, some were straight. They weren’t soft, they were hard.
Witnesses described other leather straps of varying dimensions: some were described as leather belts, others as longer, thinner straps referred to as whips. Two (2) witnesses from two different Schools described being beaten with leather straps with leather thongs attached to the ends, one witness discharged in 1950 referred to the strap as a cat-o’-nine-tails.
I’ll never forget the cat-o’-nine-tails, 10 tongs ...(thongs)... it used to have knots across the bottom. Observing other boys stripped and the blood running down as they were being flogged across the body, it was terrible. There must have been a new rule by the Government at some stage because it happened no more.
There were 232 accounts of being hit or beaten with a variety of sticks, including canes, ash plants, blackthorn sticks, hurleys, broom handles, hand brushes, wooden spoons, pointers, batons, chair rungs, yard brushes, hoes, hay forks, pikes and pieces of wood with leather thongs attached. One hundred and eighteen (118) witnesses reported being beaten with canes and 37 with hurleys. Other implements described included bunches of keys, belt buckles, drain rods, rubber pram tyres, golf clubs, tyre rims, electric flexes, fan belts, horse tackle, hammers, metal rulers, butts of rifles, t-squares, gun pellets and hay ropes. Witnesses also reported having objects thrown at them, such as blocks of wood or sliotars.
I was crying, I wouldn’t stop crying. He ...(Br X)... caught me by the hair. I was down in the ground and the first thing he could lay his hand on was a hammer and he hit me and damaged me ... (described and displayed mark to hand)... if you moved out of turn or something you got hit..
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Br ...X... flogged me on the bog. We, another fella, were messing laughing and grinning. He ...(Br X)... hadn’t got his leather and he walked over to a tree and got a branch and he peeled it and said “take off your trousers”. I thought he was only joking, he got ...named co-resident... to hold me and he ...(Br X)... lashed me. He should be in hell now, he lashed me. I was bleeding, I was sent to the nurse
Thirty four (34) witnesses described being forced into scalding or freezing showers or baths as deliberate punishments, including a number who reported being hosed with cold water before or after a severe beating. One witness reported that his head was held under water in a sink while working in the kitchen, another reported having his head held under water while bathing.
Twenty two (22) witnesses described various means by which they were physically abused by burning and scalding; all the incidents reported were isolated and included being burned with matches and cigarettes, having fingers put into electric sockets and having scalding water thrown at them while working in the kitchen. One witness who reported being scalded was so badly burned that he was hidden from sight during a subsequent inspector’s visit.
There were reports from three Schools of dogs being used by staff members to assault and frighten residents, the dogs were described in some instances as pets. In other instances witnesses reported staff ‘patrolling’ with large dogs including Alsatians that were believed to be used as a threat against misbehaviour.
There was this man there he had ... 3 dogs, he was an outsider ...(lay ancillary worker)... I was sent over to the hay barn to stack hay as punishment, the 3 dogs were set on me and the scar is there now where they bit me, you can see the mark on that finger ...(displayed scar to Commissioners)... I asked to go down to the nurse and he said “no”. Anyway, the next morning it was gone all septic and I had to go down to ...named hospital... where they put all stitches in it.
There were also four references by witnesses of being threatened and intimidated by Brothers who had dogs and carried guns for hunting.
Methods of physical punishment were also reported to vary both between staff and Schools. For example, witnesses discharged from three Schools in the 1970s and 1980s described being locked out overnight as a punishment, referred to as ‘freezing time’. Being locked out in cold weather and left to sleep outside were reported as alternative punishments to being beaten. Another witness described the following:
One new lad came and he was covering himself getting dressed. This Brother decided he was going to make a man out of him, so he pulled off his clothes. The young fella started crying and Br ...X... hung him out the window ...(from a height)... by the 2 legs, we all saw it. You were always in fear of that sort of thing. Different Brothers did different things.
n addition to reports of what appeared to be indiscriminate violence, witnesses reported being beaten for other reasons, including: bed-wetting and soiling, inattention in the classroom, left-handedness, stammering, not knowing lessons, disclosing physical and/or sexual abuse, absconding, ‘stealing’ food, talking in line, delay in obeying an instruction, ‘looking the wrong way’ at a staff member, attending the infirmary, complaining of feeling unwell, general wear and tear on clothing and footwear, talking at meals or in bed, talking to girls, playing soccer, losing a game against an outside team, perceived sexual thoughts or actions and not being able to carry out work tasks quickly and properly.
It was frequently reported that residents who wet their bed were made to sleep in either a separate dormitory or in a separate section of the main dormitory. It was also reported that nine of the 26 Schools for boys employed a night watchman who woke habitual bed-wetters during the night to use the toilet. The Committee heard consistent reports of particular practices in relation to the management of bed-wetting, including all bed-wetters being woken, being checked for wet beds, being beaten with a stick while in bed and being forced to wait for lengthy periods in cold bathrooms to use the toilet. Witnesses also reported being hit as they stood waiting; others reported that beds were inspected each morning, followed in some Schools by an immediate beating if the bed was wet.
I was beaten stark naked for wetting the bed, 2 or 3 different people would beat me. You would be called up after breakfast by Br ...X.... He was evil. He liked beating kids naked, he would put your head between his legs ...(while he beat you)... for wetting the bed, and more bed-wetting boys would be there as well ...(watching)... The night watchman would get you up at night with a stick, every night. He would beat you out of the bed. You’d have to bring the sheets up to be washed to the laundry and a bigger boy would beat you with a stick there, he was the senior in the laundry.
Witnesses described trying to stay awake so as not to wet their bed. The rules in some dormitories were said to preclude getting out of bed at night. In other Schools witnesses reported being reluctant to go to the toilet during the night for fear of being followed and abused by the night watchman or older co-residents. There were 43 witness reports of being beaten and sexually abused by night watchmen and older co-residents in this context.
Running away was a feature of life in the Schools and the majority of witnesses made some reference to either running away, thinking about doing so, or observing what happened to returned absconders. Witnesses consistently reported that residents who absconded or ran away were severely beaten and flogged upon their return to the School. The public nature and severity of the beatings were described as traumatic, and made a lasting impression on those who witnessed them in addition to serving as a caution against absconding. Reports of running away were frequently accompanied by accounts of persistent physical and sexual abuse.
I ran away a few times. He ...(Br X)... was trying always to put his hand down my leg.... (On return to the School)... I was put up on rafters. There was an old shed there, it was a barn, I was tied to the rafters, he ...(Br X)... had the rope over the top, I was like that ...demonstrated spread out facing down... he lashed me with the leather, over the back and down the arms, that happened on 4 or 5 occasions, I ran away again after that.
One day a gang of us went for a walk into a field, we were told we could. They had farm workers out with dogs looking for us. We were caught and brought back. We were taken onto the yard, they let the dogs go ...(attacking)... and the boys would line up and hit you with whatever they had in their hand, kick you, you had to run through the line. This was a punishment to let the boys know that if it ever happened again this is what would happen. That night you were beaten again, you were thrown over the bed ...crying....
Four (4) witnesses from two different Schools reported that they were beaten on the soles of their feet with a cane and leather strap as a punishment for running away. Witnesses from three other Schools reported being made to stand or kneel in the recreation yards following their beatings and were ostracised by their peers. Two (2) witnesses from the latter Schools reported being made to kneel in the yard for several hours in their underpants in winter and were incontinent while kneeling there. The punishment for absconding in a number of Schools was reported to include being put on reduced food and being forbidden to associate with others. Witnesses described being made to walk around the yard alone for several weeks. Others reported being made to kneel in the refectory while they ate bread and water. This punishment was described as continuing for days and up to three weeks in one instance. One witness reported that when he was brought back after running away his head was shaved and he was later taken from his bed, stripped and beaten, punched and kicked by a group of six Brothers in front of other residents.
One hundred and fifty seven (157) witnesses reported being physically assaulted in the classroom. Witnesses described the liberal use of the leather, cane and wooden ruler or stick on the face, palms, wrists, tips of the fingers, forearms, legs, backs of the hands, across the shoulders, back and the bottom. Learning was reported to have been dominated by the fear of punishment for various reasons including for not knowing the correct answer, being left handed, being unable to read when called upon and being unable to speak clearly, as described by a witness discharged in the 1960s:
If he ...(Br X)... asked a question and you put the hand up, you got a beating if you could not ...(give the right answer).... If you were too slow with the answer you got beaten. ... I got to the stage that I didn’t answer because I would get a beating. Everything operated on fear. There was one Br ...X... if you done it too slow he hit you, he had 2 leathers, if he appeared on the scene there was fear. No matter what you done, you would always get it wrong. If you frowned or a flinch ... he would hit you.
Witnesses who have struggled with poor literacy all their lives described years of humiliation and abuse in the classroom. In four Schools, witnesses described being bent over desks, forced to remove their trousers and being beaten in front of the entire class. Witnesses described being restrained in different ways including having their heads wedged in a window and in a drawer while they were beaten on the bare bottom. The following is an additional account of abuse in the classroom.
Other classroom punishments reported were: ear pulling, being lifted up by the hair or cheeks, beaten on the soles of the feet, having objects thrown at the head or body and being made to stand facing the wall with arms elevated until fatigued, when a beating would ensue. Several witnesses reported having their face slapped or boxed repeatedly while their head was held steady by a tuft of hair. This practice was referred to by witnesses as a ‘jaw warmer’ or ‘rabbit punch’.
One time in the class, my arms would be black and blue, both arms, because I couldn’t read a couple of lines in Irish, he ...(Br X)... beat me.... He’d put you in the corner, your hands would be up like that ...(displayed arms raised)... if you dropped them you’d get the leather. He put me in the back of the class and he’d tell you to run to him, he’d put his fist out like that ...(indicated fist and outstretched arm)... and you’d run into it.... It would be the kick in the shins you would get off him. As soon as you hit the deck he would pull you up by the ears for what we used to call the rabbit punch, you know, like that ...indicated hand movement... with the side of his hand on the neck, he’d chop you, you’d go down on the deck. I was out ...(unconscious)... that day, you’d be reeling ... an 11 year old child.
Random beatings in bed at night were also described. Night watchmen were reported to have patrolled the dormitories during the night in nine Schools. Both the night watchmen and religious staff are reported to have checked that residents lay in a particular way in their beds, reports of this experience vary over the years and between the different institutions. Witnesses from some Schools consistently reported being beaten if they were found lying with their hands under the bedclothes, others were beaten if they did not have their arms and hands crossed over their chest in a particular way. Witnesses believed the reason for this enforced practice was to avoid what religious staff referred to as the ‘sin’ of masturbation.
You couldn’t sleep on your back, your ass would be so sore ...(after a beating)... you’d want to sleep on your belly, but they wouldn’t let you sleep, you had to sleep in a particular way, on your back.
Showers were reported as locations of abuse in six institutions. The most commonly reported reasons for being beaten in the showers were not washing properly, ducking out of unbearably hot or cold water or attempting to avoid sexual assault. Religious and some lay staff were reported to supervise the showers, usually alone. Some residents described being checked as they left the shower area and were pulled aside for punishment if not considered to be properly washed, at other times it was reported that they were randomly struck with either a leather strap or a stick as they were showering or as they filed past the supervising staff member. A specific complaint about these beatings was the pain of being beaten on wet skin and the humiliation of being beaten while naked.
Witnesses reported being flogged and severely beaten for many reasons, including: disclosing or reporting abuse, absconding, speaking to visiting girls, riding a visitor’s bike, refusing to clear blocked toilets, taking food, fighting, delay in lining up, not washing properly or having torn clothes.
When I was there 3 blokes ...named co-residents... they ran away and when they were brought back, they were flogged, on one of these vaulting horses. We were all there. Br ...X... said “I’m going to make an example of these boys”, and one by one they came out, no trousers on them ... naked from their waist down, each one individually over the vaulting horse, he flogged them. Well you could see their backsides going red blue, red blue, the whole School watching.
Twenty three (23) witnesses described injuries to their genitalia as a result of being kicked or flogged. Eighteen (18) witnesses described being hosed with cold water or having cold water thrown on them prior to, or in the course of a severe beating. A witness gave the following account of a severe beating when he was found in the company of co-residents who had been talking to some girls visiting their brothers in the School:
Br ...X... met the boys coming up from talking to the girls, he sent them down to the washroom, he told me to go too, but I wasn’t with them. He told the 3 of us to get into bathing togs. He went out and got the leather strap, like the cut-throat razor, he came in, took off his coat and his collar and I never in all my life seen anything like what he done. He started beating us, saying we were talking to the girls ... he took off his shirt ... he didn’t beat me so much as the others. One of the lads started soiling themselves, he beat them so much, grabbing himself saying, “I’ll give ye girls”, rubbing himself. One of the lads was in bits, they were in a terrible state.
Witnesses reported being filled with terror as religious staff appeared to lose control when they were administering physical beatings or floggings. It was reported that such beatings frequently resulted in injury or, in 22 reported instances, rendered the resident unconscious. Eight (8) of the 22 witnesses reported that they passed out while being beaten and woke up in bed unable to move. There were 36 accounts of witnesses being unable to sit or lie on their back for some days after being beaten, and a further 28 accounts of being unable to walk following a beating or flogging.
I remember another boy who would not cry. I remember one day he got 50 slaps on one hand and then 50 on the other and then another 50. This Brother got so mad that he ...(co-resident)... would not cry. He, Br ...X... kicked the legs from under him and kicked him to the ground and kicked him until he went unconscious. He was just lying there with his eyes staring up to the sky.
Eleven (11) witnesses reported that the flogging or beating they received was so severe that they thought they were going to be killed. Five (5) witnesses from two Schools reported that named co-residents were never seen again following a severe beating.
I remember this one Brother. The boys would be crying in the morning going into class. He’d start with sums, always an awkward division. I remember one boy in the class ...named co-resident.... He was asked a question this time, he made the awful mistake of saying he knew the answer but couldn’t get the answer out, and with that this Br ...X... went absolutely berserk.... The brutality of that man, he hit him everywhere, with the leather. He ...(co-resident)... was trying to avoid being hit. I never saw him ...(co-resident)... again. I often did think about him, whether he went blind or not, I don’t know. I never saw him again.
Fifty nine (59) witnesses reported episodes of being physically abused by more than one person simultaneously. Of those reports there were 42 witness accounts of two or more religious staff coming to the dormitories at night and removing residents from their beds. Witnesses reported being brought to either cloakrooms, boot rooms, showers and bathrooms or the rooms of religious staff members where they were stripped and placed across a table, bed or chair and beaten by more than one priest or Brother. The Committee also heard reports of residents being held down by co-residents under the instruction of a Brother. A small number of witnesses reported being held with their head between the thighs of one of the priests or Brothers while another priest or Brother beat them on the bare bottom with a leather strap. Witnesses also reported being severely beaten as part of a group for various reasons, for example when no one admitted to talking during silent periods or when a staff member wanted a resident to admit to a misdemeanour. Many witnesses described the involvement of more than one religious staff in the episodes of severe beating or flogging, and the assault being so severe that they sustained an injury.
Named School... ruined my life. Night-times were the worst; if you weren’t taken out of bed and beaten you were listening to it happening to someone else. You could hear the screams all over the whole building at night it was so quiet. Up to 4 Brothers would come and take a boy out of bed on some pretext and give him a hammering, make you take off your nightshirt, they would do what they wanted. They were like a pack of hunting animals.
There were five accounts of boys being tied down before being beaten; in one circumstance a witness described being tied to a bench and beaten. Another witness reported that a Brother sent him to the office, where he was told to take his clothes off, two Brothers took turns beating him on his body and hands until ‘I thought I was going to be killed’. The witness further reported his legs were swollen with open lacerations.
Witnesses reported a catalogue of injuries to themselves and co-residents as a result of physical abuse by religious and lay staff members in the 26 Schools reported to the Committee. Two hundred and twenty four (224) reports were heard of injuries including: breaks to ribs, noses, wrists, arms and legs, injuries to head, genitalia, back, mouth, eye, ear, hand, jaw, face and kidney. Sixty four (64) witnesses reported being left unable to walk, sit, stand or lie down as a result of those injuries. Other injuries included burns, dog bites, lacerations, broken teeth, dislocated shoulders, injuries to the soles of feet, and burst chilblains. Chilblains were a common ailment in the pre-1970s period and male witnesses reported experiencing severe pain after being struck on hands and legs with chilblains. Witnesses reported that at times they were beaten until their chilblains burst and bled.
Many witnesses reported more than one injury, which included the following:
One hundred and eighty six (186) witnesses reported being marked, bruised or swollen with welts.
Seventy one (71) witnesses reported blood being drawn.
Sixty (60) witnesses reported eye and/or ear injuries.
Forty four (44) witnesses reported head lacerations.
Thirty two (32) witnesses reported injuries to their hand, three of whom reported permanent damage.
Twenty eight (28) witness reported broken ribs, arms or legs.
Twenty three (23) witnesses reported injury to their genitalia.
Twenty two (22) witnesses reported receiving injuries that left them unconscious.
Twenty two (22) witnesses reported being scalded or burned.
Twenty (20) witnesses reported broken noses.
Twenty (20) witnesses reported split lips or broken teeth.
Seventeen (17) witnesses reported injuries to their face or jaw.
Thirteen (13) witnesses reported injuries to their feet.
Eight (8) witnesses reported injuries to their back.
Four (4) witnesses reported suffering kidney damage.
Three (3) witnesses reported being stabbed with farm and kitchen implements.
There were multiple injuries reported in relation to particular Schools and staff members, for instance 126 witnesses from three Schools reported injuries including broken bones, fractured limbs, head injuries, broken teeth and being left bleeding and bruised. Six (6) witnesses from one School named a particular Brother as the perpetrator of severe injuries, including broken noses and facial injuries:
I lost my 2 front teeth because of a whack like that ...demonstrated strike of the hand... out in the yard. If you got too near him...(Br X)... he would just whack you, he’d flatten you. ... A few days later I was sent to the doctor because my mouth was all up. ... He sent me on to the dentist in ...named town....
Twenty five (25) witnesses reported being hospitalised for different non-accidental injuries, as described above. Six (6) of these reports referred to one particular School. Others described co-residents being hospitalised for treatment of their injuries following physical assault by a religious or lay staff member.
Fr ...X... laid me out cold for talking; he walloped me so fast I couldn’t see it coming. He broke my nose, I had to go to hospital. He knocked me clean out. I had 2 big black eyes and the nurse sent me to the hospital.
•
The 2 years I had there I did not get over it for many, many years. I was shattered. ... I suffered fierce violence there. I saw one boy ...named co-resident... battered on the bog, he got such a beating from Br ...X... that his back was broken and he was shifted off to hospital in ...named town....
Witnesses reported that in a number of Schools a member of the religious staff or an older resident accompanied them to the hospital and in most cases spoke to the hospital staff on their behalf. Witnesses reported being warned by the person who had beaten them and by other staff to tell the doctor the injuries were caused accidentally.
One day I was on the farm and we were messing, me and ...named co-resident... squirting milk at each other. There was a Mr ...X (named lay ancillary worker)... there and he told Br ...Y.... He ...(Br Y)... came over and dug his nails into the back of my ears and then he hit me with his clenched fists on the jaw and of course I went down. I was in the infirmary myself for 6 or 7 weeks after that because they smashed my jaw, my gum was all gone, inside of my face was all ripped. Br ...Y... took me to ...named hospital... he done all the talking and he said “if anyone asks you, you have an abscess on your gum”. I was back in the infirmary, the treatment I was getting was hot salty water. It started getting a bit easier for me after that.
The 474 reports of physical abuse heard by the Committee identified 556 individuals by name as physically abusive, 110 of whom were also reported as sexually abusive.7 Witnesses reported being physically abused by a variety of personnel including religious and lay staff who were in positions including Resident Managers, teachers, and care and ancillary staff. It should be noted that Resident Managers or their designated deputies were authorised as Disciplinarians, as regulated. Witnesses also reported being physically abused by older co-residents. Seven (7) witnesses reported being physically abused by members of the public including visitors to the Schools and the employers on work placements.
Sixty-five (65) of the named male religious staff reported as physically abusive were identified by witnesses as being in positions of authority, including Resident Managers within the Schools. The remaining 329 Brothers and priests named by witnesses were reported to be care, teaching and ancillary staff within the Schools. Witnesses described some of the religious staff having different roles within the School and at times were not clear whether the ascribed role was in fact the individual’s dominant function within the institution. For example, witnesses referred to religious staff in authority as the Superior, Reverend Mother, School Master, Officer in Charge, Head Brother or Sister, and Brother or Priest in Charge.
Forty two (42) of the lay staff who were reported as physically abusive were ancillary staff employed as night watchmen, drill masters, farm workers, maintenance and trade workers. Witnesses reported that contact with lay ancillary staff was mainly in the dormitories, showers or in the context of work activity on the farm, in the kitchens or in trade shops where they were in constant contact with the staff who abused them.
They had a large shower area. We had one shower per week. The showers were back to back. The person in charge of the baths, he was a lay person, if he wasn’t happy he used to examine boys. To his reckoning if the boys weren’t clean enough, he’d examine you, he would poke and hit you with a stick. I was walloped ... quite a few times, you’d cower in the shower, he would wallop you, in the genital area and on the posterior.
This section summarises the evidence provided by witnesses of sexual abuse ranging from contact sexual abuse including rape and associated physical violence to non-contact abuse such as enforced nakedness and voyeurism. Witnesses were generally distressed when describing their experiences of sexual abuse. They spoke in as much or as little detail as they wished. Some witnesses provided detailed and disturbing accounts of sexual abuse, other accounts were sufficient to clarify the acute or chronic nature of both contact and non-contact sexual abuse....Two hundred and forty two (242) male witnesses (59%) made 253 reports of sexual abuse in relation to 20 Schools.9 Eleven (11) witnesses reported sexual abuse in relation to two separate Schools. Witnesses described their experience of sexual abuse as either acute incidents or multiple episodes that, for some, occurred throughout their entire admission in the School. Witnesses reported being sexually abused by religious and lay staff in addition to other adults, most of whom had some association with the Schools.
The frequency of sexual abuse reports varied widely between Schools:
Four (4) Schools were collectively the subject 156 reports.10
Five (5) Schools were the subject 10-17 reports, totalling 67 reports.
Eleven (11) Schools were the subject of 1-6, totalling 30 reports.
Witnesses described contact sexual abuse including: inspection of genitalia, kissing, fondling of genitalia, forced masturbation of, and by, an abuser, digital penetration, penetration by objects, oral and anal rape and attempted rape, by individuals and groups. Witnesses also reported several forms of non-contact sexual abuse including detailed interrogation about sexual activity, indecent exposure, inappropriate sexual talk, voyeurism, and forced public nudity. Some witnesses gave accounts of isolated incidents of sexual abuse and others reported being sexually abused on many occasions, over a period of months or years...Sixty eight (68) witnesses reported being anally raped. There were a further 14 reports of attempted rape and six reports of digital penetration. Many of these reports were associated with violence, of which there were 88 reports in total, including 23 reports of injuries to genitalia by beating with a leather and kicking.
The secretive and isolated nature of sexual abuse was frequently described. Many witnesses reported that the fear of severe punishment and the threat of either them or their siblings being sent to a more restrictive institution inhibited them in both resisting and disclosing sexual abuse. Witnesses further reported that the culture of obeying orders without question, the authority of the abuser and the experience of not being believed and being severely beaten after they reported abuse, rendered them powerless to stop the abuse....Sexual abuse was also reported to occur off-site when residents were taken out of the institution for holidays, outings or work placements, by individuals who sexually abused them. Witnesses reported that sexual abuse was often preceded by physical violence that they believed was intended as an intimidating threat...Witnesses repeatedly stated that co-residents who had no family contact were the most common victims of sexual abuse.
There were 88 witness reports of sexual abuse and associated physical violence, 15 of these reports related to one School. Many of the reports heard were of witnesses being beaten while their abusers masturbated, or of the witnesses being beaten on their bare buttocks while they were held against the abusers’ genitals. Witnesses described physical abuse perpetrated in the context of sexual abuse as serving to both enforce compliance with the sexual assault and as a means of securing the silence of the witness concerned. Witnesses who reported being sexually abused, including being anally raped, named Brothers about whom the Committee heard a number of reports of sexual abuse...Sexual abuse associated with violence was also reported to be accompanied at times by serious threats of physical harm, including risk to life, for the perceived purpose of instilling fear and enforcing compliance. For example, witnesses reported being threatened that if they ever told anyone what happened to them they would be ‘drowned in the slurry pit’, ‘sent to a worse place’, ‘killed’ or in one instance, ‘cut up and buried in a bag in the bog’. This latter threat was issued by a lay ancillary worker who the witness reported challenged him with a knife.
There were 16 witness accounts of sexual abuse being perpetrated by more than one religious staff simultaneously, generally in association with physical assault...Sexual abuse associated with severe physical violence involving more than one staff member was generally reported as having occurred at night. Witnesses reported being taken from their beds and brought to staff members’ bedrooms, bathrooms or other areas, where they were abused by two or more Brothers and/or priests...In relation to one School, four witnesses gave detailed accounts of sexual abuse, including rape in all instances, by two or more Brothers and on one occasion along with an older resident. A witness from the second School, from which there were several reports, described being raped by three Brothers:
‘I was brought to the infirmary...they held me over the bed, they were animals....They penetrated me, I was bleeding’.Another witness reported he was abused twice weekly on particular days by two Brothers in the toilets off the dormitory:
One Brother kept watch while the other abused me ...(sexually)... then they changed over. Every time it ended with a severe beating. When I told the priest in Confession, he called me a liar. I never spoke about it again. I would have to go into his ...(Br X’s)... room every time he wanted. You’d get a hiding if you didn’t, and he’d make me do it ...(masturbate)... to him. One night I didn’t ...(masturbate him)... and there was another Brother there who held me down and they hit me with a hurley and they burst my fingers ...displayed scar....
Two hundred and forty six (246) lay and religious staff and others were reported as sexual abusers by male witnesses. One or more reports of sexual abuse were made against each of those identified as sexual abusers. Witnesses identified 186 perpetrators of sexual abuse by name, 110 of whom were also named by witnesses as physically abusive. A further 60 unnamed perpetrators were identified by their position or occupation....witnesses also reported that they were sexually abused by external clergy and Brothers who were visiting the Schools or others to whom witnesses were sent to work. As previously stated external clergy included priests and others of higher rank. These visiting religious were described as either friendly with religious staff or visiting the School in a pastoral role. There were also four reports of sexual abuse by either a clerical student or visiting members of the congregation in relation to four other Schools....The Committee heard reports of sexual abuse by visitors and volunteer workers from seven witnesses in relation to one specific School. These men were members of the general public, each of whom was believed to be known to religious staff. The witnesses described being collected by car and taken to men’s homes, the cinema or on trips to the seaside or country. Four (4)) witnesses reported being taken with co-residents on a regular basis, one by a group of men overnight and the other three witnesses by a man in a van who bought them sweets and ice-cream and sexually abused them by fondling or masturbation, either in the van or in his home. Four of the 11 witnesses reported being taken alone for overnight excursions where they shared rooms and beds with identified abusers in their homes, guesthouses or other accommodation. Witnesses described these outings as apparently spontaneous.
...Three hundred and sixty seven (367) male witnesses (89%) made 408 reports concerning the neglect of their care and welfare in 22 Schools. There were 379 witness reports of food provided to residents being inadequate in both quality and sufficiency. The reports referred to 21 Schools. Three hundred and forty nine (349) reports of poor and inadequate food were made by witnesses who were discharged before 1970. Some witnesses reported having so little to eat that at times they were starving.
In the morning you got 2 cuts of bread and dripping, the dripping was put on the night before. The food was terrible there, you were hungry, it was rationed even though the place was self-sufficient. They had their own tomatoes and orchard too, but we never got them.
Throughout all decades reported to the Committee witnesses noted differences between the quality and quantity of food available to them and that which was provided for the religious staff, as observed by witnesses who worked in kitchens preparing and serving food for both residents and staff.
I had to serve breakfast for the Brothers, as you got older you used to serve breakfast. I couldn’t believe the breakfast they had.... I can’t believe what we get and what they get. One day I nicked an orange, they get a whole orange! There was a woman there. She cooked breakfast for them.
Many witnesses said that although there were large farms attached to their Schools the produce from the farms was generally not provided for the residents. Witnesses from six Schools described preparing potatoes and other vegetables for sale and being involved in the distribution of various types of farm produce for sale outside the School. Witnesses who were prescribed special diets or extra milk and eggs reported that the recommended food was not always provided for them although they stated that in some Schools it was available for sale. In addition to reports about the inadequate amounts of food provided to residents, witnesses also reported that the lack of supervision in the refectories meant that in several Schools the youngest or most recently arrived residents were dependant on older residents leaving enough food for them to eat in the rush for what was provided. Witnesses reported being frequently left without any food:
I was always cold and hungry, smaller and weaker boys missed out in the general grab for food which was not supervised or was supervised and condoned by the Brothers ... and in the refectory it meant older boys ate most of the food.
The area of neglect in healthcare most frequently reported by witnesses was the absence of investigation into the cause of non-accidental injury to residents. Witnesses reported being attended by visiting doctors and nurses attached to the Schools’ infirmary, as well as attending doctors’ surgeries and local hospitals with injuries received as a result of abuse. In the majority of instances witnesses stated that the doctors and nurses who treated these injuries failed to make inquiries as to the cause of the injuries and most witnesses reported being returned to abusive environments without investigation or an assessment of risk...Nurses were generally remembered as non-committal about non-accidental and other injuries. Repeated wounds from beatings were reported to have elicited no query from most nurses as to their cause, while some were sympathetic but unable to intervene on the residents’ behalf: ‘what could she do, they employed her’. One witness stated that in recent years he met a School nurse who had treated his injuries following a particularly severe beating. She remembered the incident and told him she ‘could do nothing about it’, as she had been sworn to secrecy. In one School witnesses were attended by a nurse who ‘did not want to know what happened when boys turned up badly beaten’. Sixty six (66) witnesses gave accounts of inadequate medical attention including being ignored, punished or ridiculed when they complained of being unwell or injured. Accidental injuries and childhood illnesses were reported by many witnesses to have been left untreated. Witnesses in a number of Schools reported never seeing a doctor or that the doctor was only ever called to see someone who was ‘really ill’. One witness who reported his finger and thumb were broken when he fell off a cart in a farm accident, had to continue working and received no subsequent treatment, ‘it mended by itself’. A number of witnesses reported that their parents brought them to hospital while they were at home on leave, two of whom had their broken arms examined and treated. Their injuries were sustained as a result of physical assault in the School by religious staff. Both witnesses said they had not received any treatment at the time of the initial injury in the School. Another witness was hospitalised while on weekend leave for treatment of abscesses that had been neglected in the School. Three (3) witnesses reported the death of boys who they described were ignored or neglected when they complained of being sick. One witness reported his belief that a co-resident died as a result of eating poisonous berries. Two (2) witnesses reported being hospitalised following suicide attempts in the context of abuse episodes. They were transferred back to the institution without psychological assessment or treatment.
Sixty seven (67) witnesses reported being deprived of contact with their parents, brothers and sisters while they were in the Schools. They also reported being actively denied information about their parents and siblings. Some witnesses commented that they were too young when they were first admitted to know who their brothers or sisters were and were never told. The deprivation and loss of contact with parents and siblings was reported to be a matter of deep distress, grief and anger that led to the fragmentation and loss of family networks by the time many witnesses were discharged from the Schools...Forty four (44) witnesses described how contact with their siblings was actively discouraged or denied. They reported being separated from their sisters and brothers while in the Schools and being denied contact with them. Witnesses also reported being punished if found attempting to communicate with their siblings who were in other sections of the same School. Some witnesses reported that their brothers were transferred or discharged from the School without them being told or having an opportunity to say goodbye...Witnesses reported that the experience of living in the regimented School system contributed to a sense of having no individual identity. The use of an allocated number instead of a name was reported by 25 witnesses and many others stated that they were either not spoken to individually or were only ever referred to by their surname.
Due to the generally public and frequent nature of the physical and emotional abuse inflicted on residents, witnesses stated that staff and co-residents were unavoidably aware of its occurrence. Witnesses also reported disclosing abuse to their parents, relatives and people in authority, both within the institution and outside, including to gardaí and other professionals. The Committee also heard and was presented with documentary evidence of correspondence between parents and the Department of Education regarding complaints of abuse. Witnesses stated that the response to their disclosures of abuse ranged from being punished and further abused, being ignored or to being protected from harm. In a small number of instances witnesses stated that they were aware that some investigation took place following disclosures of abuse.
One hundred and forty six (146) of the 413 witnesses (35%) reported that they told an adult they were being physically or sexually abused, 42 of them reported disclosing abuse to more than one person. The disclosures were to adults in positions of perceived trust and authority both within and external to the Schools...A number of witnesses reported being threatened that if they told anyone about the abuse they had experienced there would be more severe repercussions. Five witnesses stated that members of the religious staff visited them or their parents at home to reinforce their warning not to report or disclose their abuse.
Fifty seven (57) witnesses reported that when they disclosed abuse or it was evident by their injuries that they were being abused they were ignored and the abuse continued, leading them to believe that aggression and violence was part of the culture of the School. A number of witnesses stated that it was their belief that both religious and lay staff knew that residents were being abused and were at times sympathetic but were powerless or unwilling to change anything. Many witnesses reported that the risk of being deprived of family visits or being prevented from going home on leave deterred them from disclosing abuse. Others reported that when they did tell someone they were being abused they were either ignored or not believed and as a result they learned to remain silent, believing that nobody would listen to them. A witness who told a priest in Confession about being sexually abused reported that he was told to ‘keep your thoughts to yourself as you could hurt so many people’....more...
Thursday, October 11, 2012
Pope's butler discovered documents on occultism, Freemasonry
via New York Post:
VATICAN CITY - Pope Benedict's former butler stole highly sensitive papers the pontiff had marked "to be destroyed" and compromised Vatican security through his actions, the Holy See's police told his trial on Wednesday..."You can understand our unease when we saw these documents. This was a total violation of the privacy of the papal family," said police agent Stefano De Santis, one of the four agents who said they found the papers in Gabriele's home, using a Vatican term for the pope's closest aides...The mass of incriminating documents, most of which were hidden in huge piles of papers stashed in a large wardrobe, included personal letters between the pope, cardinals and politicians on a variety of subjects.
Some papers, De Santis said, bore the pope's handwriting and had been marked "to be destroyed" by the pontiff in German. He did not say what those papers concerned.
Some of the documents were copies of encrypted documents. "One photocopy was enough to threaten the operations of the Holy See," De Santis told the court, without elaborating. The agents said they found a mass of documents and books filled with newspaper clippings on the occult, secret services, Masonic lodges, yoga, political scandals in Italy, scandals involving the Vatican bank and other subjects...Bishop Francesco Cavina, who knew Gabriele in the Vatican, told Italian newspaper La Repubblica on Wednesday that the butler, a father-of-three, may have a "disturbed mind" and "a split personality".
Two of the four policemen who testified on Wednesday also rejected Gabriele's accusations, made on Tuesday, that he was mistreated for several weeks after his arrest...Gabriele told the court's previous hearing that for up to 20 days he was held in a room so small he could not stretch out his arms and that the light was left on 24 hours a day, causing him eye damage....The letters to the pope included one in which a senior Vatican functionary expressed concern about corruption in the Holy See's business dealings with Italian companies.
The letter-writer, Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano, was posted to Washington after raising the issue, despite begging to be allowed to stay at the papal state. more...
VATICAN CITY - Pope Benedict's former butler stole highly sensitive papers the pontiff had marked "to be destroyed" and compromised Vatican security through his actions, the Holy See's police told his trial on Wednesday..."You can understand our unease when we saw these documents. This was a total violation of the privacy of the papal family," said police agent Stefano De Santis, one of the four agents who said they found the papers in Gabriele's home, using a Vatican term for the pope's closest aides...The mass of incriminating documents, most of which were hidden in huge piles of papers stashed in a large wardrobe, included personal letters between the pope, cardinals and politicians on a variety of subjects.
Some papers, De Santis said, bore the pope's handwriting and had been marked "to be destroyed" by the pontiff in German. He did not say what those papers concerned.
Some of the documents were copies of encrypted documents. "One photocopy was enough to threaten the operations of the Holy See," De Santis told the court, without elaborating. The agents said they found a mass of documents and books filled with newspaper clippings on the occult, secret services, Masonic lodges, yoga, political scandals in Italy, scandals involving the Vatican bank and other subjects...Bishop Francesco Cavina, who knew Gabriele in the Vatican, told Italian newspaper La Repubblica on Wednesday that the butler, a father-of-three, may have a "disturbed mind" and "a split personality".
Two of the four policemen who testified on Wednesday also rejected Gabriele's accusations, made on Tuesday, that he was mistreated for several weeks after his arrest...Gabriele told the court's previous hearing that for up to 20 days he was held in a room so small he could not stretch out his arms and that the light was left on 24 hours a day, causing him eye damage....The letters to the pope included one in which a senior Vatican functionary expressed concern about corruption in the Holy See's business dealings with Italian companies.
The letter-writer, Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano, was posted to Washington after raising the issue, despite begging to be allowed to stay at the papal state. more...
Tuesday, August 14, 2012
Boston priest arrested on child porn charges
via: CNN
(CNN) -- A South Boston priest has been placed on administrative leave after his arrest on child pornography charges, which allegedly involved the use of a parish rectory computer.
Rev. Andrew Urbaniak, pastor of Our Lady of Czestochowa, is barred from functioning as a priest and was arraigned Wednesday after detectives uncovered pornographic images of young girls on his computer.
The children are thought to be between the ages of 8 and 10, police said. more..
(CNN) -- A South Boston priest has been placed on administrative leave after his arrest on child pornography charges, which allegedly involved the use of a parish rectory computer.
Rev. Andrew Urbaniak, pastor of Our Lady of Czestochowa, is barred from functioning as a priest and was arraigned Wednesday after detectives uncovered pornographic images of young girls on his computer.
The children are thought to be between the ages of 8 and 10, police said. more..
Thursday, July 19, 2012
Prosecutors investigate Vatican Bank mafia link
via: The Telegraph
Anti Mafia prosecutors have asked the secretive Vatican Bank to disclose details of an account held by a priest in connection with a money laundering and fraud investigation, it emerged on Sunday.
The official request was made more than a month ago but so far the Vatican Bank, known as the Institute for Religious Works, has refused to disclose any records of the account held by father Ninni Treppiedi – who is currently suspended from serving as a priest.
Investigators want to know more about vast sums of money that are said to have passed through his account to establish if they were money laundering operations by on the run Mafia Godfather, Matteo Messina Denaro.
The reports emerged in the Italian media and came just two weeks after the head of the Vatican Bank, Ettore Gotti Tedeschi, was sacked amid claims of power struggles and corruption within the Holy See which have been linked to the leaking of sensitive documents belonging to Pope Benedict XVI.
More in line with a Dan Brown thriller, it is not the first time that the Vatican Bank has been embroiled in claims of Mafia money laundering. Thirty years ago this month financier Roberto Calvi was found hanging under London's Blackfriars Bridge with cash and bricks stuffed into his pockets.
Initially City of London police recorded the death as suicide but Italian authorities believe it was murder after it emerged Calvi, known as God's Banker because of his links to the Vatican Bank, had been trying to launder millions of pounds of mob money via its accounts and through his own Banco Ambrosiano which had collapsed spectacularly. more...
Anti Mafia prosecutors have asked the secretive Vatican Bank to disclose details of an account held by a priest in connection with a money laundering and fraud investigation, it emerged on Sunday.
The official request was made more than a month ago but so far the Vatican Bank, known as the Institute for Religious Works, has refused to disclose any records of the account held by father Ninni Treppiedi – who is currently suspended from serving as a priest.
Investigators want to know more about vast sums of money that are said to have passed through his account to establish if they were money laundering operations by on the run Mafia Godfather, Matteo Messina Denaro.
The reports emerged in the Italian media and came just two weeks after the head of the Vatican Bank, Ettore Gotti Tedeschi, was sacked amid claims of power struggles and corruption within the Holy See which have been linked to the leaking of sensitive documents belonging to Pope Benedict XVI.
More in line with a Dan Brown thriller, it is not the first time that the Vatican Bank has been embroiled in claims of Mafia money laundering. Thirty years ago this month financier Roberto Calvi was found hanging under London's Blackfriars Bridge with cash and bricks stuffed into his pockets.
Initially City of London police recorded the death as suicide but Italian authorities believe it was murder after it emerged Calvi, known as God's Banker because of his links to the Vatican Bank, had been trying to launder millions of pounds of mob money via its accounts and through his own Banco Ambrosiano which had collapsed spectacularly. more...
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