The Ryan Report Revisited

My earlier posting on the Ryan Report drew this response. It confirms my impression that the Ryan Report demands critical sifting:

"350 of us from the Irish Industrial schools came together to form the group 'Let Our Voices Emerge'. We ranged from those who were inmates in the schools in the 40's to the late 60's. Our purpose was to make it known that although many of us had suffered abuse either in the schools, or in our own homes on being returned to our parents, we would not support those fellow inmates that we knew were making fraudulent allegations of abuse in the Redress Board. The Ryan Commission refused to take our evidence on board - evidence that would have proven many were using the abuse experiences of others for finiantial gain or 'celebrity victimhood'. I salute you Joseph for your work here. And you're right - when and if the report is ever fully examined by independent investigators with no secular/religious agenda - there will be a very different outcome to the media reportage." Florence Hogan

Comments

[Spirit of Vatican II]

See http://www.independent.ie/unsorted/features/the-compassionate-side-of-our-states-of-fear-208116.html

[Spirit of Vatican II]

Good comments from Fr Tony Flannery:

"Catholic Church authorities need to distinguish between the paedophile priest and the cleric who committed a minor indiscretion with a teenager 30 or more years ago, according to a spokesman for the new Association of Catholic Priests. Father Tony Flannery said many priests who attended a meeting in Co Mayo Tuesday afternoon sympathised with colleagues who had been excluded from ministry even though their behaviour since the transgression had been blameless.

"He said there was a strong feeling that a distinction needed be made between the paedophile, whose history involved a pattern of child abuse and who had to be kept away from children, and the man who had behaved inappropriately towards a teenager shortly after emerging from a seminary three decades ago.The question was asked at the meeting whether it was just that both types of offenders had been publicly shamed in their parishes and religious communities by being withdrawn from ministry."

[Rory Connor]

I have a website regarding false allegations of child abuse against Catholic clergy and religious - and also laypeople. See http://www.irishsalem.com/
for the home page and highlights.

Among the highlights please note a number of allegations of child killing directed against the Christian Brothers and the Sisters of Mercy. These allegations were made by leading members of "Victims" groups as well as by journalists. ALL had been discredited by the time the Ryan Report was published in 2009 but the report simply ignored them. (I was a member of "Let Our Voices Emerge" myself and I had made representations to Ryan both orally and in writing.)

It seems to have been the policy of the Ryan Commisssion to ignore claims that were OBVIOUSLY false in order to avoid hurting the feelings of the accusers!

The following article contains a summary of most of the child killing allegations:
http://www.irishsalem.com/irish-controversies/allegations-of-child-killing-1996to2005/SunTribune25May06.php

Also try Googling the phrases "Murder of the Undead" and "Victimless Murders". I coined these because many of the allegations relate to times when no child died of ANY cause!

Rory Connor

[Rory Connor]

The above article deals with child killing allegations made against the Christian Brothers in the 5 years after the broadcast of Mary Raftery's "States of Fear" TV series in 1999.

At the time I wrote it, I had forgotten that the FIRST accusation of that type had been directed against the Sisters of Mercy three years before. This also followed a TV "documentary" - Louis Lentin's 'Dear Daughter' broadcast by RTE in February 1996. I have a separate article on that allegation:
http://irishsalem.com/individuals/accusers/christine-buckley/CBuckleyandChildKilling.php

Again the claim was completely discredited long before the publication of the Ryan Report. Again Ryan ignored it completely even though the head of a major "Victims" group had loudly supported the claim.

Allegations of child ABUSE made decades after the alleged events cannot be verified. However many prominent individuals who made such claims have also claimed that children were murdered. The latter allegations are clearly false and reflect upon the credibility of the former. I suspect that is why the Ryan Report ignores the homocide claims; they interfere with its preferred scenario of Villains vs Victims.

[Spirit of Vatican II]

Fr Sean McDonagh has a good article in December's Furrow: Pedophilia in True Perspective. He points out that the Murphy Report systematically ascribes an up-to-date awareness of the problems of pedophilia to bishops in the 1970s, and how completely far from historical reality this ascription is. Seminary courses never touched on pedophilia. A lecture on this problem by the pediatrician Neil O'Doherty as recently as 1980 was met with pained silence, with people walking out. Many people saw the distortions of the Murphy Report but "were unwilling to speak because the public mood at the time was very hostile." "An empirical study would show that the reputation of all priests has in fact been tarnished, even though only a small minority offended."

[shane]

Patricia Casey, professor of psychiatry at UCD, wrote an interesting piece in the Irish Independent a few months ago about that....

http://www.independent.ie/opinion/analysis/patricia-casey-psychiatrists-must-take-share-of-blame-on-abuse-2105623.html

[Rory Connor]

I have read the articles by Fr. McDonagh and by Patricia Casey. They are very good but in my opinion miss the main point. It is true that the Murphy Report systematically ascribes an up-to-date awarenesss of paedophilia to the Bishops of the 1970s AND that psychiatrists must share the blame for how child abuse was dealt with in the past.

However the elephant in the drawing room is the fact that most allegations are false. As I have stated above, leading members of FOUR victims groups have accused the Christian Brothers and the Sisters of Mercy of killing children. The allegations are clearly false and the Ryan Report ignores them. What credibility can be given to other claims made by these people? Why did the members of these groups not rise up in outrage and denounce their leaders? Presumably because they share their attitudes!

[Spirit of Vatican II]

The following story is circulating in the internet: http://illinoisreview.typepad.com/illinoisreview/2011/01/with-both-hands-oh-snap-clergy-abuse-cases-inflated-claims-la-investigating-attorney-no-media-report-on-this-bom.html?cid=6a00d834515c5469e20147e13ff2fa970b
http://www.themediareport.com/jan2011/special-steier-declaration.htm