February 17, 2011
By Staff Reporter
Addressing the conference organized by the Sisters of Charity and against the backdrop of the recent Ryan report into child abuse. The conference noted that the sister of Charity was one of the orders under whose care children were abused. However, McAleese also paid tribute to the sisters for the positive work achieved by its members.
Sister Stanislaus Kennedy, a member of the order who campaigns for social justice, took the opportunity to deliver an apology at the conference to those who were abused in the care of the nuns.
She said members were ashamed, shocked and horrified by the physical and sexual abuse of children.
The Ryan report documented decades of sexual, physical and emotional torture inflicted on thousands of children in orphanages, industrial and reformatory schools all over the country and it outlined severe physical and emotional abuse over many years at two of the order’s institutions, St. Patrick’s and St. Joseph’s in Kilkenny.
“We must ensure that wide-scale and systematic abuse of children does not happen again in this country,” she said.
“Abuse happens when power is vested in individuals and institutions who are unaccountable.
“Within St. Joseph’s, there was also sexual abuse, including where 13 boys were brutally abused, sexually and physically by two men employed by the Religious Sisters of Charity as childcare workers who turned out to be cruel and ferocious pedophiles,” said Sr. Stanislaus.
“I am desperately sad and sorry that these abuses took place and that these heinous crimes were committed. All over the country, children entrusted to the care of religious congregations, ours included, suffered enormously in a sickening abuse of power and position and a scandalous exploitation of vulnerability, for which there is no excuse.”
The conference, held at Dublin Castle, was to celebrate the life of Mary Aikenhead, who founded the Sisters of Charity in 1815.
President McAleese said it would be impossible to fully do justice or to quantify the many people whose lives were enhanced and helped by the Sisters of Charity.
“But there is a candle burning here, lit earlier this morning when you held a minute’s silence in commemoration of those whose childhood experiences of institutional abuse are so graphically set out in the Ryan report,” she said.
“Some of that suffering happened to children in the care of the Sisters of Charity. It is a sad chapter in your order’s history and indeed in Irish history, a millstone of biblical proportions and one that calls for Mary Aikenhead’s resilience, determination, humility and focus in the journey of amending and healing which lies ahead.”
The president said the conference focused not on the foundress herself, but on the “difficult time we are living through economically, and the downstream consequences for issues of social justice.”