Leo Varadkar is reported by The Irish Times making the following statements.
In this piece I will lay out why I think Ireland needs to host a Public Inquiry into the History of Sexual and Predatory abuse and Violence within State and Church funded and operated schools, on the basis of meeting the unmet needs of the children who were harmed, the unmet needs of the adults they grew up as, the unmet needs of their families and communities and in a sense, the unmet need of Ireland as a population, an ethnic group, a healthy democratic State and a just Society regarding this matter.
Please bear his words and insight in mind as you read on.There is “no perfect option” for the type of inquiry to be set up to examine allegations of abuse at schools run by the Spiritans religious order, Tánaiste Leo Varadkar has said.
The Government has stressed that the process of establishing an inquiry will be victim-led, Mr Varadkar reiterated, adding that he would like to avoid a “a highly legalistic in private, statutory investigation that is so wide-ranging and involves so many lawyers that it doesn’t report for five or six years, and that is a risk”.
But Mr Varadkar also added: “What matters is what the survivors think.”
He said: “There’s no perfect option, and I think it’s important we engage with the survivors and go through with them what the pros and cons of the different models are.”
In this piece I will lay out why I think Ireland needs to host a Public Inquiry into the History of Sexual and Predatory abuse and Violence within State and Church funded and operated schools, on the basis of meeting the unmet needs of the children who were harmed, the unmet needs of the adults they grew up as, the unmet needs of their families and communities and in a sense, the unmet need of Ireland as a population, an ethnic group, a healthy democratic State and a just Society regarding this matter.
Mark Vincent Healy speaks on this, in 2019.
This harm was caused to tens of thousands of children (a chart of estimates of numbers of Survivors across the EU, with numbers given for Ireland) who lived with the trauma and the distress into adulthood, where it impacted every part of their lives...
Reflect for a moment on the cascade of trauma and distress that percolated out from the initial harms. for over 70 years, and try to grasp the scale of the adverse impact on families and communities during that time. This vast well of distress and trauma is what we are draining, and drain it we must, for clear water to emerge.
5. There was a sense of determination that the needs of Survivors be fully met, that the matter be fully and correctly resolved, in the heartfelt standing ovation given to the Ryan brothers at the end of the show.
9. That cannot be done without the direct involvement of Survivors clinicians and advocates as equals with Irish Government officials, in setting out the terms of the Inquiry.
10. Meet the unmet needs of Survivors, allow a healthy and just accounting to emerge, and thus resolve the historical abuse, by learning from our shared history, resolving to never allow such behaviour to emerge ever again. A cognitively and materially changed culture. A healthier culture.
11. The State is not some separate entity from the people, it is of the people, by the people and for the people.
The core social contract of regulating life, of crafting legislation so that the population are safe from avoidable harms, is inherent to the Irish State, and the Irish people.
Likewise the Church. Both Institutions are funded by the population, and both have been entrusted with care of vulnerable adults and children, and both have abused that trust - The Church operated the residential 'care' systems, day schools and boarding schools, under licence from The State.
12. Both institutions failed to protect the vulnerable from avoidable harms, both institutions understood that the Church had a strategy of aggressive action to suppress knowledge of the harms, and that this caused more harm to survivors. They justified it as 'protecting the Institution'. The Church moved predatory clerics from place to place, following allegations or discovery, repeatedly and this enabled yet more predation by these men.
13. Thus the resolution of the matter requires an accurate, honest historical account of what happened, as laid out above.
In terms of the economics of this, consider the cost of tens of thousands of lives afflicted, how those adverse effect reverberated in the lives of their families, colleagues and communities. The cost of prevention, had it been in place, would be nothing by comparison.
Those historical human and material 'costs' and the current unmet needs of living Survivors, their families and of deceased Survivors families ought not be limited or decreased via protocol to 'protect tax payers assets' for the States part in this matter. This ought to apply to the Church equally. Indeed that was the original assessment.
The Survivors are all innocents.
Here is a previous longer blog I wrote about the needs of Survivors.... above all the need for safety to bear witness, to receive validation and to be afforded the empathic care due Survivors, all of whom were vulnerable children exposed to gross predation, whose lives were destroyed through no fault of their own.
Innocents, one and all.
Kindest regards
Corneilius
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