Victims spokesman John Kelly gives his reaction to the report

An inquiry into child abuse at Catholic institutions in Ireland has found church leaders knew that sexual abuse was “endemic” in boys’ institutions.

It also found physical and emotional abuse and neglect were features of institutions.

Schools were run “in a severe, regimented manner that imposed unreasonable and oppressive discipline on children and even on staff”.

The nine-year inquiry investigated a 60-year period.

About 35,000 children were placed in a network of reformatories, industrial schools and workhouses up to the 1980s.

More than 2,000 told the Commission to Inquire Into Child Abuse they suffered physical and sexual abuse while there.

Police were called to the commission’s news conference amid angry scenes as victims were prevented from attending.

More allegations were made against the Christian Brothers than the other male orders combined.

The report found child safety was not a priority for the Christian Brothers who ran the institutions, the order was defensive in its response to complaints and failed to accept any congregational responsibility for abuse.

Ritual beatings

The report said that girls supervised by orders of nuns, chiefly the Sisters of Mercy, suffered much less sexual abuse but frequent assaults and humiliation designed to make them feel worthless.

The five-volume study concluded that church officials encouraged ritual beatings and consistently shielded their orders’ paedophiles from arrest amid a “culture of self-serving secrecy”.

It also found that government inspectors failed to stop the chronic beatings, rapes and humiliation.
   
The reformatory and industrial schools depended on rigid control by means of severe corporal punishment and the fear of such punishment
Mr Justice Sean Ryan

The commission said overwhelming, consistent testimony from still-traumatized men and women, now in their 50s to 80s, had demonstrated beyond a doubt that the entire system treated children more like prison inmates and slaves than people with legal rights and human potential.

“The reformatory and industrial schools depended on rigid control by means of severe corporal punishment and the fear of such punishment,” it said.

“The harshness of the regime was inculcated into the culture of the schools by successive generations of brothers, priests and nuns.

“It was systemic and not the result of individual breaches by persons who operated outside lawful and acceptable boundaries.

   
CASE STUDY
“You’d be up at 6am and you had to go to two Masses,” said Sadie O’Meara, a 15-year-old Tipperary girl working in Dublin.

“Your cell door was locked every night when you went in and you had a bucket and an iron bed and you couldn’t look out the window. It was all bars.

“The food was absolutely brutal. And my mam died but they never told me she died. She died on Christmas Day but they never told me.”

Ms O’Meara was speaking to Shane Harrison of BBC News in Dublin
Read more

“Excesses of punishment generated the fear that the school authorities believed to be essential for the maintenance of order.”

The report proposed 21 ways the government could recognise past wrongs, including building a permanent memorial, providing counselling and education to victims, and improving Ireland’s current child protection services.

Its findings will not be used for criminal prosecutions - in part because the Christian Brothers successfully sued the commission in 2004 to keep the identities of all of its members, dead or alive, unnamed in the report.

No real names, whether of victims or perpetrators, appear in the final document.

proprio qui che giungono due dei suoi missionari. Il primo è P. Luigi Bonomi, compagno di Comboni nella missione di Delen e poi per tre anni prigioniero del Mahdi. Sopravissuto alla tragedia sudanese, P. Bonomi giunge in Eritrea nel 1888 e vi lavora fino alla morte, nel febbraio del 1927. Il secondo è P. Leone Hanriot, vallone di lingua francese/belga, inviato dal successore di Comboni, Mons. Sogaro. Arriva a Massawa nel 1894, con l’intenzione di aprire una missione fra i Kunama. Riesce a preparare un dizionario Kunama, un catechismo ed una breve Storia della salvezza, prima di morire ad Asmara, fra le braccia del suo compagno P. Bonomi nel 1894. È l’anno in cui l’istituto maschile comboniano, trasformato da poco nella congregazione dei Figli del Sacro Cuore di Gesù, attende che gli sia affidata la nuova Prefettura Apostolica dell’Eritrea, smembrata dal Vicariato Apostolico dell’Abissinia. Il cardinale Prefetto di Propaganda Fide è d’accordo. A Verona ne sono felici. Ma nel frattempo, ricevendo in udienza il provinciale dei Cappuccini, il Papa, senza parlarne col cardinale, affida ai frati la nuova Prefettura! Più fortunate sono invece le suore, invitate ad Asmara nel 1914 proprio dall’anziano P. Bonomi. Cominciano il loro servizio nell’ospedale “Regina Elena”. Alle prime cinque sorelle se ne aggiungono poi altre. Nel 1927 viene aperta la comunità di Massawa, per il servizio presso l’ospedale Umberto I, mentre ad Asmara le suore iniziano l’insegnamento nella prima scuola governativa per gli eritrei. In seguito, gli impegni si moltiplicano e diversificano: scuole, servizio sanitario in vari ospedali militari, assistenza ai bambini dei soldati ascari, o alle donne nelle prigioni femminili, accoglienza di ragazze madri…

Carte geografiche

CARTE GEOGRAFICHE, TOPOGRAFICHE ETNOGRAFICHE, ETC.

Le carte conservate sono oltre mille e verrano illustrati col tempo.

CATALOGO­

DELLE CARTE GEOGRAFICHE, TOPOGRAFICHE, ETNOGRAFICHE, ETC.

RELATIVE AL CORNO D’AFRICA (ERITREA, ETIOPIA  (ABISSINIA), SOMALIA)

1784- 2000

CONSERVATE NELLA BIBLIOTECA-ARCHIVIO “AFRICANA”

I: CARTE RELATIVE ALL’ERITREA, ETIOPIA E AL MAR ROSSO, GENERALI E PARZIALI

SCALE VARIE

“ … la maggior parte degli antichi possedimenti coloniali africani e quasi totalmente sprovvista di cartografia recente e completa. Nella maggior parte dei casi (e gli ex-domini italiani non fanno certo eccezione), la migliore documentazione topografica e corografica che sia possibile reperire resta quella dell’epoca coloniale; molto spesso, quella documentazione è semplicemente la sola esistente, buona o cattiva che sia. A questo si aggiunga che, appunto, le carte in questione non risulta che siano conservate nei Paesi più direttamente interessati; fatto, questo, del quale ho avuto più volte e da fonti del tutto diverse circostanziate conferme. Vale a dire che non sono reperibili, o perlomeno non sono accessibili, per esempio in Somalia, le carte corografiche della Somalia che furono pubblicate dall’amministrazione coloniale italiana negli anni ‘30, e che a tutt’oggi risultano essere, nonostante la rispettabile età le più recenti e dettagliate per l’insieme del Paese (almeno fra quelle di pubblico dominio).

“… la sua importanza va molto al di là della semplice documentazione scientifica, giacché investe, a quanto sembra, quasi totalità delle rappresentazioni territoriali di quei Paesi; rappresentazioni il cui valore cesserà di essere attuale - per divenire storico a tutti gli effetti - solo quando per quelle regioni sarà possibile disporre di una diversa immagine cartografica”.

Da: Cerreti Claudio, La raccolta cartografica dell’Istituto Italo-Africano. Presentazione del fondo e guida alla consultazione, Roma, 1987. (Tipolitografia Pioda Gianfranco). 8°, pp. 183 (= Istituto Italo-Africano. Collana di Studi Africani – 11- =), pp. 19-20.

THE PRESIDENT: I just got off the telephone with Justice Souter. And so I would like to say a few words about his decision to retire from the Supreme Court.

Throughout his two decades on the Supreme Court, Justice Souter has shown what it means to be a fair-minded and independent judge. He came to the bench with no particular ideology. He never sought to promote a political agenda. And he consistently defied labels and rejected absolutes, focusing instead on just one task — reaching a just result in the case that was before him.

He approached judging as he approaches life, with a feverish work ethic and a good sense of humor, with integrity, equanimity and compassion — the hallmark of not just being a good judge, but of being a good person.

I am incredibly grateful for his dedicated service. I told him as much when we spoke. I spoke on behalf of the American people thanking him for his service. And I wish him safe travels on his journey home to his beloved New Hampshire and on the road ahead.

Now, the process of selecting someone to replace Justice Souter is among my most serious responsibilities as President. So I will seek somebody with a sharp and independent mind and a record of excellence and integrity. I will seek someone who understands that justice isn’t about some abstract legal theory or footnote in a case book. It is also about how our laws affect the daily realities of people’s lives — whether they can make a living and care for their families; whether they feel safe in their homes and welcome in their own nation.

I view that quality of empathy, of understanding and identifying with people’s hopes and struggles as an essential ingredient for arriving as just decisions and outcomes. I will seek somebody who is dedicated to the rule of law, who honors our constitutional traditions, who respects the integrity of the judicial process and the appropriate limits of the judicial role. I will seek somebody who shares my respect for constitutional values on which this nation was founded, and who brings a thoughtful understanding of how to apply them in our time.

As I make this decision, I intend to consult with members of both parties across the political spectrum. And it is my hope that we can swear in our new Supreme Court Justice in time for him or her to be seated by the first Monday in October when the Court’s new term begins.

“I will seek someone who understands that justice isn’t about some abstract legal theory or footnote in a case book. It is also about how our laws affect the daily realities of people’s lives,” said the president in a surprise appearance in the White House Press Room moments after speaking with Souter by telephone. Word of the impending retirement had leaked Thursday night