The Irish government is to set up a commission of inquiry into potential sexual assaults and violence in Catholic schools. According to a report, 2,400 incidents have been reported to religious orders since 1970.
The findings of a report into decades of sexual abuse in Catholic schools in Ireland were described as “shocking” by the government on Tuesday, September 3, and will lead to the opening of a commission of inquiry.
The report, commissioned by the Irish government, found some 2,400 allegations of sexual violence since the 1970s, reported to religious orders running more than 300 schools in the country.
Education Minister Norma Foley called the findings “deeply shocking” and said they showed for the first time the extent of violence in Ireland’s Catholic education system.
Welcoming the courage of the victims who came forward, Prime Minister Simon Harris regretted that this violence constitutes “a shadow of the past which continues to weigh on so many lives, so many families, so many communities”.
He said the government would “do the right thing” to follow up on the findings of the preliminary report, focusing its approach on victims.
Irish Catholic order vows to ‘cooperate’
The body representing Catholic orders in Ireland has apologised, saying it was “deeply sorry” that pupils may have been victims of sexual violence at its schools and vowing to “cooperate fully”.
The charges target a total of 884 people who worked in schools or boarding schools run at the time or still run today by religious orders.
The oldest date back to the 1970s and the most recent to 2023. According to this report, half of the alleged attackers are now dead.
“The scale of this violence is shocking, as is the number of alleged attackers,” Norma Foley said in Dublin.
This “preliminary” report should now lead to the creation of a real commission of inquiry on the subject, it was announced.
Its authors explained that they had directly contacted 73 religious orders that ran or still run Catholic schools in Ireland. Among them, 42 had archives containing accusations of sexual assault and violence.
The inquiry was commissioned after a television documentary revealed past allegations of sexual abuse at a Dublin school. It will focus only on schools run by Catholic institutions, but could be expanded to include other types of schools in the future.
