(Dublin) The findings of a report into decades of sexual abuse in Catholic schools in Ireland were described as “shocking” by the government on Tuesday and will prompt 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 scale of violence in Ireland’s Catholic education system.
Saluting the courage of the victims who testified, 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.
The body representing Catholic orders in Ireland has apologised, saying it was “deeply sorry” that students may have been victims of sexual violence at its schools and vowed 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 the 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 told reporters 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 investigation was commissioned after a television documentary revealed past allegations of sexual abuse at a Dublin school.
Covering only schools run by Catholic institutions, it could be expanded in the future to focus on other types of establishments.