Psychology of Child Rape
Here is the quote from Archbishop Martin’s defence team when dealing with historical child sexual abuse case… “You can’t do anything — he is above the law”, he is only answerable to God. A famous refrain of many Irish clerics in the Irish Catholic Church was and is “A male child can’t be raped because he must have wanted it.” Sadly another refrain used by the same Irish clerics, suggested that the man/boy made up the allegations to try and get financial compensation. Another refrain yet again, is by an Irish Catholic Priest, “God doesn't like boys who cry especially when we are having fun”. Than comes obfuscation, with the Irish Catholic Church claiming it did not know the substance of the allegations, the boy/ man or boys /men were and are mentally sick. Why, the good Priest or Cleric had been to confession and received absolution by another Priest and God. But most revealing of all would be the attempt by the Church’s defence team, to turn the spotlight on the complainants' motivation, as in my case before the Irish High Court, to blame the accusers rather than the accused. It has been a familiar pattern all to familiar in all Irish Catholic abuse cases over the many years and will be used again and again in the many years to come. Through all the decades, and all the changes, the behaviour of the Irish Catholic Church towards abuse victims has changed remarkably little. The concept is "clericalism", a word used to describe Priests' sense of entitlement, somethings are critical to understanding the Irish Catholic Church behaviour. That is "scandalising the faithful". Traditionally, the Irish Hierarchy believed the greatest sin was shaking the faith of Catholic congregations, protecting them, meant concealing scandal. This concept of "clericalism", a word often used to describe Irish Priests' sense of entitlements, their demands for deference and their apparent conformity to rules and regulations in public, while privately behaving in a way that suggests the rules don't ever apply to them personally. Governed by its own rules, through Canon Law, all this contributes to the notion that the Irish Catholic Church can and did conduct its own affairs without interference or outside scrutiny. It demanded a voice in Irish Society without ever being fully accountable to it. Child Male Rape is probably the most underreported crime in Ireland. Unfortunately, many Irish police officers are antagonistic toward a child male rape victim. They may feel embarrassed themselves at having to question a fellow male about a sexual assault, never mind a male child. Very often police questioning focuses on the child having “brought on the attack” himself. The police officer may dwell on the sexual aspect of the rape, asking him to describe his feelings during the attack, the rapist’s genitals, or the position in which he raped him. The psychological trauma experienced by a rape victim that includes disruptions to normal physical, emotional, cognitive, and interpersonal behaviour. After the sexual assault, the child often feels troubled by his inability to protect himself, questioning his masculinity, feeling that a sense of control has been taken from him. He will feel ashamed about the incident, making him reluctant to speak out to both family and friends. In fact, most hold the view that “nobody would believe me” as a reason for not reporting the incident. All male child victims report a complex range of emotional difficulties like isolation, anger, sadness, deep shame, guilt, and fear, depression, anxiety are all the most common. You would think, talk of ‘Children First’ and mandatory reporting to the police would lead you to believe that allegations of sexual abuse on children, specially male children are now handled with greater sensitivity, that victims are respected and believed, pedophiles and rapists are punished. Sadly not so, the battle really starts if and when the child many years later as a man wants to bring a high court action against his rapists, especially if the abusers are Irish clerics of the Irish Catholic Church. Until recently in Irish law, male rape was not defined as a criminal offence, a man could only commit rape against a woman. Boys were raped by religious men in positions of power with authority over them in all the Industrial Schools in Ireland. Many people did not take the sexual assault of boys seriously, believing that men, especially men who identify as heterosexual or who are assaulted by men, cannot be victims of rape, male victims of sexual abuse and assault often face a culture that tells them their abuse results from either weakness or homosexuality. Many males are reluctant to label their assault as rape or sexual abuse or even mention it at all, to anybody, out of the stigma or been labeled queer, or other derogatory terms that are things that are unflattering, unkind, and demeaning to the masculine. However, a reluctance to disclose may be a barrier to treatment, when treatment can often be of significant help in resolving the feelings of guilt, shame, anger and depression that would always follow a sexual attack. Male rape victims face 'humiliating' questions once they decide to bring a legal action on their historical sex abuse to light. High profile cases will have and leave a lasting impact on victims’ confidence to report sexual crimes, when all the salacious details come out, both in the court and the press. This is why most male rape victims will not step forward, male victims of sexual abuse will always face the possibility of being humiliated in open court by cleaver lawyers or with the untrained police and boys/man credibility will be undermined by both the defence lawyers and the rapist, asking intimate questions about their sexual partners, and lifestyle, their clothing and their appearance. Even their sex identity will become an issue specially if the victim is gay, and the amount of partners he had and the type of sex he preformed. Sexual violence against boys in all the Industrial Schools in Ireland was alarmingly common, a taboo subject that most boys out of shame didn’t know how to talk about. It was commonly believed at the time that rape can only be against a girl or a woman, but never a boy. The silence surrounding the issue of sexual violence against boys is being broken down slowly, unfortunately effective measures of justice and redress are still not understood or applied in ways that can support male victims, particularly in historical sex abuse case now slowly coming before the Irish Courts. There is no doubt that the scope of the problem for male victims was very large in the Industrial Schools in Ireland as I personally know and also according to the Ryan Report, (The Commission set up in Ireland to Inquire into Child Abuse ) sexual violence against many boys by the Male Religious Orders was rampant and was a significant problem that was completely ignored by both the Irish Catholic Church and Irish society at large. The sexual violations took many forms, including rape, gang rape, sexual slavery, enforced nudity, and being forced to perform crude sexual acts with the clerics. Very commonly, sexual violence against the vulnerable boys was endemic throughout the Industrial Schools in Ireland. Most male victims experiences of sexual violence continue to be underreported, misunderstood, and mischaracterised in the open Irish Courts. To this day, in all cases, male victims are reluctant to acknowledge the sexual nature of the violations committed against them. Most of the boys, now men talk about sexual abuse in general without saying for example, that they were anally raped or forced to preform fellatio on their tormentors as rape or other crude acts of a sexual nature, forcible committed against the boys at the time in the Industrial Schools in Ireland. This can happen, and did happen to the boys/men in order to avoid the social stigma attached to such acts or due to the fear of being perceived as weak, labeled homosexual, or being accused of having “wanted it.” as was and is used by many of the Irish Clerics as a defence before the High Courts. Even in instances where men report acts of sexual violence, those receiving the reports rarely handle the report with the sensitivity and awareness they require. Medical practitioners, and the police for example, may not be adequately trained to recognise, identify, or treat male victims or they may themselves accuse male victims of sordid homosexuality, as if that is a crime or even prostitution, otherwise perpetuate social misconceptions about these crimes. Sexual violence against boys is slowly becoming a part of the discussion about justice and accountability for crimes, or historical sex crimes that was committed by the Religious Orders in Ireland, and not just in the Industrial Schools, but in almost every parish the length and breadth of Ireland. Despite the fact that this type of violence is pervasive across contexts and causes significant and enduring harm to both victims and their communities, it has typically been ignored or considered as simply physical rather than sexual harm. In addition, sexual violence has often been defined as violence against women, including the courts, doctors, social services, so that male victims are at risk of being excluded from benefits that are normally available to women victims. Owen Felix O’Neill
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Moral Religious Insanity
Many of the children of the Industrial Schools and the Magdalene Laundries, also known as Mary Magdalene's asylums, ended up or were committed to the Irish State Asylums, during and after their time in these dreadful Institutions. They were committed by the very same tormentors, the Religious Orders that raped and flogged, and murdered them in the Industrial Schools and the Magdalene Laundries in Ireland. The Children’s crimes were to complain about their abuses of rape and floggings, in their Institutions, which in all case fell on deaf ears. Once the Irish Church Authorities heard about the complaint, by the ungrateful children and mothers, in their care, and in order to shut the children and mothers up, they committed the children to the Irish State Asylums. The Irish Church Authorities had many willing Doctors, Psychologists and Psychiatrists to do their bidding, one of the most famous was the nephew of The ruler of Ireland, Archbishop Charles McQuaid, Doctor Paul McQuaid, who committed many children to the Irish State Asylums on the word of his uncle, Archbishop Charles McQuaid, and also of the Irish Church Authorities. You see there was nothing wrong with the Children and Mothers of the Industrial Schools and the Magdalene Laundries in Ireland, if the Irish Church Authorities couldn’t control them, they simply committed them to the Irish State Asylums. The Religious Orders used the simple term moral religious insanity, to commit them, these helpless children of the Industrial School gulags. The moral treatment movement was supported by most Psychologists, and Psychiatrists that had adopted the strategy. They became advocates of religious moral treatment, but argued that since the mentally ill often had separate physical/organic problems, medical approaches were also necessary. Making this argument stick has been described as an important step in the profession's eventual success at securing a monopoly on the treatment of “lunacy". The moral treatment movement had a huge influence on asylum construction and practice in Ireland. You see Ireland at the time had the highest rate of committals in the world. The extensive Irish Asylum Institutions hospital system was spectacular in its duration and scale. During the 1950s, 60s and 70s the level of mental hospital usage in Ireland was the highest internationally, "This Irish Asylum Institutions were by far the largest form of institutional intervention ever to have existed in the Republic of Ireland. For example, while about 10,000 women were known to have entered Magdalene Laundries in their entire history, during the mid- 1950s there were in excess of 20,000 individuals resident within mental hospitals on a single night.” "However, unlike the church-run institutions such as Magdalene Laundries and Mother and Baby Homes and Industrial Schools, the mental hospitals were fully state-controlled. While there has been justified public shock at the neglect and abuse experienced within church-run Institutions, responsibility for state mental hospitals must be placed firmly at the door of both the Irish Catholic Church and the Irish State, there was no opaque space that exists between the Irish State and Irish Catholic Church, at the time. We as a society in general cannot in good conscience claim ignorance of the existence of these horrendous Institutions or the primitive conditions operated within them. The Irish Asylum Institutions were an annual feature of public record in the reports of the Inspector of Mental Hospitals, they were intensively utilised and known about by local communities, and especially the Irish Catholic Church. The remarkable growth of the Irish Asylum Institutions had little or nothing to do with the mental state of the individuals who were institutionalised there. There was no epidemic of 'mental illness' in Ireland, rather this Institutional confinement occurred in response to social forces such as poverty and family dynamics, and the abuses of the Irish Catholic Church, along with the actions of the individuals and professional groups who directly carried out the act of committal mostly at the behest of the Irish Catholic Church. As is known now, a host of social problems were 'managed' in these institutions, with many innocent individuals living out a large portion of their lives in these harsh places of imprisonment because they came from different Institutions, like the Industrial Schools and the Magdalene Laundries run by the Religious Orders to another institution, the Irish Asylum Institutions. Sadly, the diagnostic criteria for admission changed over time and with the active encouragement of the Irish Catholic Church and were very loosely applied. The main four reasons for admission under four headings were;- 1 Moral Causes, 2 Physical Causes, 3 Hereditary 4 Not Known'. Moral causes included 'poverty, reverse of fortune', 'grief, fear and anxiety', 'Religious Excitement', 'domestic quarrels', 'ill-treatment', 'pride', 'anger' and 'love, jealousy and seduction'. Ireland, with the encouragement of the Irish Catholic Church, even introduced legislation requiring local authorities to provide asylums for the local population, and they were increasingly designed and run along moral treatment lines as set out by the Irish Catholic Church. Additional "non-restraint movements" also developed. There was great belief in the curability of mental disorders, through prayer, which the Irish Catholic Church believed that these children and women lost there moral and spiritual way, and could be cured by the power of prayer alone. The Irish Catholic Church was proclaiming that the new moral religious treatment was a form of social repression achieved "by mildness and coaxing, and specially by prayer through solitary confinement, that its implication that the "alleged lunatics" needed re-educating, through constant prayer meant it treated them as if they were children incapable of making their own decisions. You see Moral Religious Insanity referred to a type of mental disorder consisting of abnormal emotions and behaviours in the apparent absence of intellectual impairments, delusions and or hallucinations. The doctrines of moral insanity, (Moral Religious Insanity) and moral treatment gave the Irish Catholic Church a unique claim to expertise in insanity, plus providing a rational for committing children and adults to the asylums in which they controlled. The Irish Catholic Church believed that children and some adults were processed of the devil, by denying their authority and the seven sacraments of the Roman Catholic Church. The real crime here was the abuse of its powers of the Irish Catholic Church and directly enabled by the Irish State at the time. others who must bare responsibility were and are the Psychiatrists, Doctors and Psychologists and the Irish Judiciary who actively support and enabled the corrupt Irish Catholic Church to hide their real horrors, the Rape, Flogging and Death of thousands of both Mothers and Children in its care in the Irish Industrial Schools and the Magdalene Laundries they ran throughout Ireland. It was the Psychiatrists, Doctors and Psychologists and especially the Irish Judiciary who committed the children and women to the Irish State Asylums on the word only of the local Parish Priest at the time. It was also the Irish Judiciary who again incarcerated the same, mother and babies to a life sentence to either the Industrial Schools or the Magdalene Laundries, again on the word of the corrupt Irish Catholic Church. Over 65 % of the inmates of the Irish State Asylums, came directly from the Industrial Schools or the Magdalene Laundries, there was nothing wrong with them, they were simply homeless. The regrettable fact is that the children of the Irish Industrial Schools and the Magdalene Laundries when they reached the age of sixteen, were dumped onto the streets, to defend for themselves, they were now homeless, and that was a crime punishable by detention for life into the Irish State Asylums. In this process of committing the women and children of the Industrial Schools or the Magdalene Laundries to the Irish State Asylums, lay a series of unethical and heinous practices, with many Psychiatrists demonstrating a profound commitment to the transgressions committed by playing central, pivotal roles critical to the success of the Irish Catholic Church policy. Several misconceptions led to this misconduct, including allowing philosophical constructs to define clinical practice, focusing exclusively on preventative medicine, allowing religious pressures to influence practice, blurring the roles of clinicians and researchers, and falsely believing that good science and good religious ethics always co-exist. Psychiatry during this period provides a most horrifying example of how science may be perverted by external forces. It thus becomes crucial to include the Irish Catholic Church’s era psychiatry experience in moral religious principles or ethics training as an example of proper practice gone awry. During the rule of the Irish Catholic Church, Irish Psychiatrists sought to systematically experiment and even undermine the mental health and welfare of their patients, through doubtful experiments, egged on by both the International Drug Companies, willingly promoting untried medical drugs and the Irish Catholic Church, who directly profited. It has been little acknowledged that the medical profession was profoundly involved in hideous experiments against the inmates of the Irish State Asylums during this period of the1940s, 50s, 60, 70s, 80, and well into the 90s, with various publications describing this malevolent period of medical history. It is less known, however, that Irish Psychiatrists were among the worst transgressors. At each stage of the descent of the profession into the depths of criminal and dubious clinical practice lay a series of unethical decisions and immoral professional judgments encouraged and sanctioned by the very powerful Irish Catholic Church. Remember a fifth of the Irish Population were at one time or another were incarcerated into the Irish State Asylums or the Mother and Baby Homes, or the Industrial Schools or the Magdalene Laundries in Ireland. Also it is worth knowing that it was Irish Psychiatrists, many of whom were senior Professors in Academia, appointed to their positions by the powerful Irish Catholic Church who sat on planning committees of the Irish State Asylums, for both processes and who provided the theoretical backing for what transpired. It was Irish Psychiatrists who reported their patients to the Irish Catholic Church authorities and coordinated their transfer from all over Ireland. While it would be expected that the involvement of Irish Psychiatrists in such a profound manner would be well-known in the field, this is not the case. The Irish State Asylums, shame, is they have never been properly investigated, not like the Industrial Schools or the Magdalene Laundries, it is known that they, the Irish State Asylums also have many thousands of bodies buried in dark secret chambers on their Asylum grounds, much like the Industrial Schools or the Magdalene Laundries. This is another embarrassment for the field that so many senior members, Professors, Department Heads and internationally known Irish figures, were so intimately involved. Many of those Irish Psychiatrists, old men and women now, who were involved continued to practice and conduct research long after the Irish State Asylums closed and are now actively protected by fellow colleagues, their universities, corrupt shameful Irish political parties and of course the powerful Irish Catholic Church. We mustn’t forget that every senior position in the Irish Universities and Colleges in Ireland were appointed by the Irish Catholic Church, such was their death grip. It was also the Irish Medical Professionals what supervised the monstrous medical experiments, for blood money, paid by the International Drug Companies that carried out the illegal experiments in Ireland’s Mother and Baby Homes, in which babies as young as 6 months were illegally experimented on with new, untried medical drugs, with both the blessing, tacit knowledge and support of the Powerful Irish Catholic Church and The Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland. As as we now, sadly, many of the Babies experimented on, died as a direct result of what the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland and the Irish Catholic Church had planned for the Drug Companies, carried out by Medical Professionals in Ireland’s Mother and Baby Homes. The Blood Money obtained by both the Powerful Irish Catholic Church and The Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland, was very cheap, the results were the cost in most cases of the Baby’s life or the unwed Mother’s helpless life, born into any Mother and Baby Home in Ireland. Owen Felix O'Nell What Makes a Paedophile
A question often asked by many people I met over the years is “What Makes a Paedophile” it’s difficult to reply, Joe down the street with a wife and four children?, Susan in her late 50s around the corner, living alone?, no its difficult, to tell, you see, Paedophiles don’t have horns, tails or hooves. Paedophiles in reality, look and act like you and me. Except for one key difference, they are secretly and sexually attracted to children. According to The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders by the American Psychiatrist Association, Paedophiles are individuals who are preferentially or solely sexually attracted to prepubescent children, generally 13 years or less. So that we are not confused, not all Paedophiles are child sex offenders, and conversely not all child sex offenders are Paedophiles. Some people who sexually abuse children are not preferentially attracted to children at all. The abuse is a matter of opportunity, the child is a sexual surrogate for an unavailable adult or the abuse represents a need to dominate and control another human being. So to my main question, why does the Catholic Church attract Paedophiles, there is no easy answer. The surge of abuse cases in the 1960s and 70s, 80s, and into the 21st. Century can’t be blamed on the 100% male makeup of the Priesthood, the practice of celibacy or, you know, “the gays”. But the alternative explanations offered raised some troubling new questions. Some researchers attribute the uptick to “opportunity” “emotionally ill-equipped Priests” who “lost their way in the social cataclysm of the sexual revolution of the swinging 60s.” Some researchers say, opportunity and cultural change are responsible for the sexual abuse of children, really? That might seem to imply some unsavoury and disheartening things about human sexuality, but I’m no expert. Again according to the Irish Catholic Bishops, own secret survey, by the Iona Institute, they found that less than 9 percent of accused priests are to be considered Pedophiles, according to the Irish Catholic Church, (and they are such experts on the subject), but that figure is based on children aged 10 and younger, but The American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders uses an age ceiling of 13 in its definition of the sexual disorder. A vast majority of the abusers’ victims would have been considered prepubescent” which would make the Pedophilia label seem more apt. So is the rate of sexual offences against children really influenced by “opportunity” I dare to ask…? It is commonly believed by many professional experts both inside and outside of the Roman Catholic Church, that the percentage of closeted gay Priests in the Roman Catholic Church as a whole is hovering over 78%. Most of these Priests for obvious reasons would be hesitant to acknowledge their own sexuality. Fortunately there’s a tremendous body of research data showing that gay men are no more likely to become sexually involved with a boy than are heterosexual men to become involved sexually with a girl. In fact, lets be honest here, I think that’s one of the great mistakes the Roman Catholic Church made early on, thinking they had a gay problem when in reality they really had a Paedophile problem, through child sexual abuse. Nothing to do with been gay, nor straight. Let’s take for example, an alcoholic, there certainly can be a genetic predisposition for alcoholism and yet whether you have a drink is dependent on whether a drink is available or not, your urges can be heightened by stresses of daily living or you may turn to drink because you’re depressed and want to feel better. So, certainly, if someone has a sexual disorder then that acts as a predisposing factor, but whether they’re gonna act on that sexual abnormality of makeup can be influenced by a number of factors in their environment and that affected them in growing up and so on. Also let there be no mistake sexual abuse of children has been around, long before the 1960s. So how do you spot a Priest with a Paedophile problem, well the best predictor would surely be to look at both his past and future behaviour with children in his parish, maybe by listening to locals in his parish, and if he has a problem with children, not moving him around to different parishes to hide his sexual and criminal crimes. There is sadly, no personality test that could predict sexual abusers or Paedophiles in anybody, including Catholic Priests. To be fair, there isn’t any evidence that this is more of a problem in the Roman Catholic Priesthood than outside of it. I mean, people try and do blame celibacy, but take for example your local GAA Clubs, they too have had comparable problems. I think it’s so much more egregious and so much more shocking when it’s a Catholic Priest because they’re in a very trusted position. Catholic Priests are supposed to be people with the highest moral standards in their local communities. So, the moral shock and outrage that we experience is far greater than occurs in other cases. What is it about the Catholic Priesthood that attracts so many Pedophiles? if one follows the news locally or world-wide lately there appears to be a tsunami of male rape victims of child abusing Catholic Priests which just seems to keep rippling outward in country after country, decade after decade. I thought the problem in Ireland was an anomaly and the Roman Catholic Priests in other countries were made of sterner stuff, but this molestation chronicle never seems to end. What is it about the Catholic Priesthood that seems to attract Pedophiles like flies to sticky honey? For a very long time, here in Ireland if a Priest got caught, raping a child, boy or girl, he wasn’t punished. He would be moved, and his heinous crimes were covered up. Soon word spread, among similar Pedophile Priests in the wider community that this Parish is the place to be. Another myth to bust, Priests don't become Pedophiles. Pedophiles become Catholic Priests. Its been suggest by some that some men are trying to hide from their Pedophilia and give in and those men that join for the ability to exercise their Pedophilia. I may be very wrong but I have never bought the idea that celibacy causes Pedophilia, I have seen no evidence to support the case. Does the Catholic Priest become a Pedophile or the Pedophiles become a Catholic Priest. There was a long-standing tradition of Irish Catholic families steering their un-marriageable sexually suspect children towards religious vocations, it's only in the last 30 years or so that gay and lesbian teenagers had better options, then joining the Religious Orders. If a Pedophile Priest tells the church about himself, it's generally under the cover of the confessional, where it's considered a sin that can be forgiven or an illness that can be treated, not a crime that must be prosecuted with full and open cooperation with police authorities. The alternative is to admit that Mother Church has been complicit in enabling this behaviour for hundreds of years. If the Roman Catholic Church wants to survive, it needs to drop the celibacy requirement as quick as it can. The other major problem was the molesting Catholic Priest were given a great deal of aid and support in their illegit activities by a very sympathetic Church Hierarchy that would hush up the allegations against one of its own members. The Catholic Priest, would then be moved on to greener pastures, a new Parish mile and miles away, to start all over again working his favourite hobby, raping children. This the Roman Catholic Church is seemingly the only church with an institutional problem here, which it resolutely fails to acknowledge. Has there been a single statement by the Roman Catholic Church that apologises not just for the presence of Pedophile Priests in its ranks, but for the role of Roman Catholic Church higher-ups, like the Bishops and Cardinals in actively protecting the Pedophile Catholic Priests and finding them new Parishes to prey on the most vulnerable children there. The worse problem was the extreme devotion and trust by the Irish Catholic people toward their Priests. At the time, Irish Catholics considered Priests to be practically infallible and not too far removed from the Pope himself. So if any vulnerable child told his family or friends what the local Priest was abusing him or her, nobody would have believed him or her. The vulnerable child would have been severely punished or locked up in a psychiatric institution for spreading malicious lies about their local holy Priest. We know that the total number of Priests in Ireland between 1956 to 1960 was about 5,489, according to the Irish Catholic Directory. A survey in 1989 revealed a total of 11,415 Nuns in Ireland, and Religious Brothers working in Ireland were numbered at 9,876 by the late 1960s. Which give us a grand total of 26,780. So according to the Irish Catholic Bishops own figures and survey of 9% of 26,780 is equal to—--2,410;- The Religious Orders at the time in Ireland in the 1960s;- would be the home of 2,410 active Paedophiles. Many leading experts in this field, now believe that this figure is much higher, according to some, just multiply by two for a more realistic figure and even that is to low. But when you take one well known active Paedophile, Brendan Smyth (8 June 1927 – 22 August 1997) was a Roman Catholic Priest from Belfast in Northern Ireland who became notorious as a Child rapist, using his position as a Priest to obtain access to his victims. During a period of over 40 years, Smyth sexually abused and raped over 200 plus children, that is known, and maybe a few hundred more unknown in Parishes in Belfast, Dublin and the United States. His actions were frequently hidden from police and the public by Roman Catholic officials. After his arrest in 1991, he fled to the Irish Republic, where he spent the next three years on the run, enabled and hidden by fellow Catholic Priests. So 200 raped children on average by one active Paedophile, like Father Brendan Smyth and apply that to 2,410 other active Paedophiles known within the Religious Orders, and we have 482,000 raped children. Please don’t take my word for it, research website below….If you want a list of Catholic Priests who sexually abused children, then the excellent website is…..http://www.bishop-accountability.org/ Owen Felix O'Neill Slavery in Ireland.
Oxford Dictionary;- A Slave;-
The Irish Catholic Church was glorified for their adherence to a code of honour most closely paralleled by medieval history. The relationship between the Irish Catholic Church and their slaves, the unwed women and their children, provides a glaring example of how passages in the Catholic Bible have been cherry-picked by the Irish Catholic Church and their various Religious Orders to justify all kinds of actions and ideologies, nowhere does the Christian Bible condemn slavery, and the good book even instructs slave holders, the Religious Orders on how they should treat their slaves. I would say that some translations of the Christian Bible use the word “servant” rather than “slave” to, presumably, soften the language so as to not make it seem so arcane and inhumane. Many of the women and their children were in a kind of indentured servitude to the Irish Catholic Church, that these same women would enter into when they became pregnant with no financial support from either their male partner nor family. The women were shackled by vicious cycle of scandals and shame in their perspective communities. Where the master is the Irish Catholic Church, the benevolent priest figure to his grateful flock. What slave really meant in the Bible is central to our understanding of a holy book that claims to be the inspired word of a benevolent god. A god who a) condones human ownership in his book to mankind and b) does not condemn the practice at all seems decidedly malevolent and is depicted exactly as we would expect him to be depicted as if this book was written by a superstitious people in the ancient Middle East. Slavery was never abolished in the Republic of Ireland, sadly Ireland held thousands of slaves until 1996, in addition, Ireland sold "thousands of children into slavery” the repulsive idea of having to work long and dangerously hard, with little food or water, and all the time without proper remuneration or appreciation. Many other women were also sold into domestic slavery, and their children, separated and illegally sold abroad, mostly into America. The vile practice or system of owning slaves was established by the Irish Catholic Church as going lucrative business, a ruthless opportunity for over 200 years ago, and most if not all the slaves the Irish Catholic Church owned were women and children. These Irish Slaves were housed in peculiar institutions of Irish Catholic Convents and Religious Industrial Schools throughout Ireland, at one time it was estimate over time, that tens of thousands women and children were housed in slave work camps of the Catholic Convents and Religious Industrial Schools dotted throughout Ireland. Irish Catholic Convents and Religious Industrial Schools throughout Ireland, implicit message was that slavery in Ireland was different from the very harsh slave systems existing in other countries and that Irish slavery had no impact on those living in the real Ireland. Their righteous slavery, the religious men and women of the Irish Catholic Church were acting in accordance with the divine will and God’s moral law, and were morally right and justifiable in the eyes of the Roman Mother Catholic Church. Whose duty was to save the women and children, wanton women who behave in a sexually immodest or promiscuous way, by enticing boys and men into wicked, sinful acts. As was explained by a senior Irish Catholic Archbishop, “these whores who used their sexually immodest and promiscuous behaviour on unsuspecting boys and corrupting Catholic men”. In the eyes of the Irish Catholic Church which was obsessed with sex of all kinds, women were viewed as wanton “seductress" and all were whores, promiscuous, immoral, shameless, unchaste, unvirtuous and especially sinful of easy virtue, wanton “seductress”, according to the Archbishop. Sexually immoral and promiscuous women where a great danger to the Irish Catholic Family unit, according to the rules of the Holy Mother Church and their offsprings, their children were the true spawn of the devil. In reality the Irish People were shackled to a rich vein of Celtic superstitions and religion, a wealth of traditional beliefs and superstitions which have been held by Irish people for thousands of years. That in reality were the few things in their dreary lives that gave them, the Irish people any sort of comfort or meaning whatsoever, and they were literally shackled to that way of life, its folklores and its many strifes. These arcane superstitions and religion, that was ingrained at birth, entrenched in both Irish identity and culture, gave the Irish Catholic Church immense power over their fellow conscious creatures through its doctrines, a set of unshakeable principles laid down by the Irish Catholic Church as incontrovertibly truths, "the dogmas of Catholic faith" societal rules and morality, which the Irish People took in as absolute truths, unalterable facts preached hourly by the robust Irish Clerics, beating daily into their children at their religious madrassas, run exclusively by the Clergy. Irish People, blindly clung to their superstitions and faith through despairing times of immense personal poverty, wretched human suffering and violent social upheavals. So what is Slavery, in the strictest sense of the term, any system in which principles of property law are applied to people, allowing individuals to own, buy and sell other individuals, as a de jure, (legally recognised by official state laws) form of property. A slave is unable to withdraw unilaterally from such an arrangement and works without remuneration. Many scholars now use the term Chattel slavery (personal property) of the owner, like the Irish Catholic Church who bought and sold women and children as commodities. Chattel Slavery refer to this specific sense of legalised, de jure slavery. In a broader sense, however, the word slavery may also refer to any situation in which an individual is de facto ("in fact" or "in practice") forced to work against their own will. Scholars also use the more generic terms such as unfree labour or forced labour, to refer to such situations. Many children born in the Irish Mother and Baby Homes became automatic Chattel Slaves from the time of their birth, to single mothers. Most of of the women and their daughters were forced to work in the Magdalene Laundries, while their sons, the boys were forced to work in the Industrial Schools. All the women and their children were Slaves, subjected to cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment on a daily basis. While Irish slavery was unique institutionally and recognised and supported by the Irish Catholic Church, Human Trafficking of Irish Children and Babies were most common during the 1930s, 40s, 50, 60s, and even into the late 70s., it was never outlawed. The most common form of this Chattel slave trade was commonly referred to as domestic servants, women and their children, their daughters as young as five, were used in the Magdalene Laundries, these women and children were kept in captivity, and some times the children were forcefully adopted in which these children were dehumanised as slaves and sex workers. As for the young boys, most were funnelled into slavery, raped and disappeared, brutality through the Irish Catholic Industrial School systems or work camps. In other areas, slavery or the free labour of these women and children continued through practices such as debt bondage to the Irish Catholic Church, or sold into Serfdom to rural Farmers or nearby hotels or great houses as domestic servants, or indentured labourers. Most if not all the women and children weren’t paid, many were both sexual and physically abused. Forced Labour was used to refer to when an individual, woman or child was forced to work against their own will, under threat of great violence and rape, and other daily punishments and humiliations, but the generic term unfree labour is also used to describe Chattel Slavery, as well as any other situation in which a person is obliged to work against their own will and a person's ability to work productively is under the complete control of another person, say like a Farmer or an institution like the Irish Catholic Church. Human trafficking primarily involves women and children forced into prostitution or sexual exploitation of both the women and children. As I said in a previous post, over 60,000 vulnerable Irish Children were illegally sold this way by the Irish Catholic Church, into bondage and slavery in America. Many of these abused children that were sold were frequently subjected to every form of coercion, such as physical violence, and brutal rape. All experienced restrictions on their normal childhood activities and movement once adopted by their new American Families, most ended up as both domestic workers and sex slaves. Ireland has a written Constitution, but in reality it never applied to the Irish Catholic Church, after all they, the Irish Catholic Church, wrote most of the Irish Constitution. As can be seen and read, Article 4 speaks for itself, in a clear concise manner and is a noble effort to protect the unprotected. It’s a shame that Article 4 of the Irish Constitution at the time was never enforced in the slave camps that were both the Magdalene Laundries and the Industrial Schools in Ireland. The Irish Clerics gorged over the written Irish Constitution, they did this because they could and worse still they rampaged over the written Irish Constitution, and better still, the Clerics got away with it. Furthermore, not to speak in too contemptuous a tone, but, here is what the The Irish Bishops had to say;- “These findings demonstrate how as a Church and as a society we have failed to protect the most vulnerable members of our community. In life and in death, Women and Children should be treated with the utmost care, dignity and respect.” And now not to be ungracious to The Nuns who ran the Mother and Baby Homes and the Magdalene Laundries in Ireland; - “All Women and Children should be loved unconditionally and treated with equality and dignity.” The Irish Constitution (Bunreacht na hÉireann) Article 4 protects your right not to be held in slavery or servitude, or made to do forced labour • Slavery is when someone actually owns you like a piece of property. • Servitude is similar to slavery - you might live on the person’s premises, work for them and be unable to leave, but they don’t own you. • Forced labour means you are forced to do work that you have not agreed to, under the threat of punishment. Owen Felix O’Neill The Irish Catholic Hammer-Lock on Ireland
We here in Ireland have a cancer within—very close to the Irish Government that’s growing. It’s growing daily. It’s compounding. It grows geometrically now because it compounds itself. Well, it’s at least premature, and quite possibly an exaggeration, to say that the Irish Catholic Church is a cancer on the Irish People, but at the very least it is a high-grade raging fever, the kind that frequently warns of serious infections. Does this fever break soon or does it linger, and what does it portend. The Good Shepherd Magdalene Laundry in Limerick City at the corner of Pennywell Road and Old Clare Street in Limerick City. The building which now houses the very recently renovated Limerick School of Art and Design (LSAD) The Magdalene Laundry opened its doors in 1848, The Good Shepherd Institution continued its operations in Clare Street until 1990. The complex consisted of a commercial laundry, an industrial school, a reformatory school for girls, an orphanage, convent and church. 1000's of women and children passed through this building during its lifetime as aMagdalene Laundry. Tens of thousands of women were kept against their will in the 10 or 11 Magdalene Laundries in Ireland run by four religious congregations between 1922 and 1996. The Magdalene Laundry in Limerick City held over 120 women and their children every year since 1922-1996. The Irish State gave lucrative laundry contract to this Laundry Institution, which included washing the laundry of the entire Limerick Army Barracks. Half of the girls and women incarcerated in the Magdalene Laundry in Limerick City were under the age of 18. The youngest entrant was 7 years old and the eldest was 90. 80% of the girls and women spent more than a year incarcerated in this Magdalene Laundry and its system. Penitents as the Nuns called them were the slave women and children who worked in the Magdalene Laundries and all had to endure a ‘harsh and physically brutal’ work environment with many suffering from ‘confusion and fear’. The Official Report found that 93 Limerick women died at the Good Shepard Laundry in Limerick City during the 60-year span and 15 of these women’s deaths were not registered properly. The true figure was and is much higher, more like 800 to 1,000. The Nuns, The Good Shepherd, deliberately doctored legal documents, and underreported deaths in their Convent, of both Women and their Children. In a written statement, the Good Shepard Order of Nuns said it ‘sincerely regrets the women’s experienced hurt and hardship, but sidestepped accepting the Women’s and Children’s deaths. The Good Shepherd Nuns continued “We were part of the system and the culture of the time. We acted in good faith providing a refuge. It saddens us deeply to hear that the time spent with us, often as part of a wider difficult experience, has had such a traumatic impact on the lives of these women. Of course nothing about the good experience of the murder and death of the Women and Children who were beaten and died as a result at the hands of Good Shepard Order of Nun. "The ordinary response to atrocities is to banish them from consciousness. Certain violations of the social compact are too terrible to utter aloud: this is the meaning of the word unspeakable. Atrocities, however, refuse to be buried. Equally as powerful as the desire to deny atrocities is the conviction that denial does not work… Survivors challenge us to reconnect fragments, to reconstruct history, to make meaning of their symptoms in the light of past events." There were 11 Catholic and two Protestant-run Laundries in The Irish Republic. 1. High Park Convent Laundry, Dublin 2. St. Finbarr's Cemetery, Cork 3. Good Shepherd Laundry, Mount St. Laurence Cemetery, Limerick 4. Mercy Laundry, Galway 5. Good Shepherd Laundry, New Ross, Wexford 6. The Bethany Home, Orwell Road, Rathgar;- Protestant-run 7. 35 Ballsbridge Terrace Laundry, Dublin;- Protestant-run 8. DunLaoghaire Laundry, 12 Crofton Roat, Dublin 9. Donnybrook Laundry, 6 Floraville Road, Pembroke West, Dublin 10. Gloucester Street Laundry, No. 63 Gloucester Street Lower, Dublin 11. Good Shepherd Sundays Well Laundry, Carrignaveigh, Cork 12. Good Shepherd Waterford Laundry, College Street, Waterford 13. St. Joseph’s Orphanage & Industrial School, Cavan Town, Cavan The last Magdalene Laundry in Ireland ceased operations at Gloucester/Seán MacDermott Street, Dublin in October 1996. It is estimated that over 30,000 women were confined in the Magdalene Laundries in Ireland, another 10,000 girls and women were admitted since Ireland's independence in 1922. The real numbers is more depressing and much higher, for example we do not know how many women resided in the Magdalen institutions after 1900. Vital information about the women's circumstances, the number of women, and the consequences of their incarceration is still unknown. We have no official history for the Magdalene Laundries in 20th. century Ireland. Due to the Catholic Church’s "policy of secrecy", their penitent registers and Convent books remain closed to this day, despite repeated requests for any information. As a direct result of these missing records and the deliberate Catholic Church policy of destroying any and all written records and the religious institutes' commitment to complete secrecy, the Magdalene Laundries can only exist "at the level of story rather than history". Though Ireland's last Magdalene Laundry that imprisoned women closed in 1996, there are no records to account for "almost a full century" of women and children who now "constitute the nation's disappeared", who were "excluded, silenced, and punished”. A secret ledger as come to light in recent years that listed some of the famous Houses and business names in Ireland, in which the Nuns that ran the Magdalene Laundries had written contracts with famous Irish Institutions of both Government and Business, to launder their laundry. They were;-
The list about had written contracts with the Magdalene Laundries for million of pounds at the time, all the contracts which "contain a fair wages clause", but what is now sadly known the slave women and children that worked and died in those wretched Magdalene Laundries did not receive any wages. Owen Felix O’Neill |
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