Report reveals decades of child abuse in Irish institutions

(CNN) -- Thousands of children suffered sexual abuse, beatings, malnutrition and emotional abuse for decades in the Irish institutions where they were raised, an Irish government commission said Wednesday. Sean Ryan, chairman of the commission appointed by the Irish government, announces his findings Wednesday. Catholic clergy ran the vast majority of the reformatories and orphanages where the abuse allegedly took place, it said. There were institutions where sexual abuse was a "chronic problem" and where "floggings" that "should not have been tolerated in any institution" were "inflicted for even minor transgressions," the commission's wide-ranging report says. The report details the case of one "serial sexual and physical abuser" who "physically terrorized and sexually abused children in his classroom" in six schools over a period of 40 years -- and was "persistently protected" by church and educational authorities. The man, identified only by a pseudonym, was finally convicted of sexual abuse in the 1980s, the report says. Adults were not the only ones inflicting abuse, the report charges -- in some schools older boys harmed younger ones. Children with special needs were among the victims, the report says. Boys were far more likely to be sexually abused than girls, the report says. About half of all witnesses who testified to the commission's confidential committee said they were sexually abused. More than nine out of 10 said they were physically abused.
http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/europe/05/20/ireland.catholic.report.abuse/index.html