Chai Brady and Brandon Scott
The Government’s statutory inquiry into abuse must include all schools or “rapidly lose credibility” the Head of the Journalism in Griffith College Dublin has warned.
Following the publication of a scoping inquiry into religious run Catholic schools last week Dr Niall Meehan told The Irish Catholic that the Commission of Investigation should follow the report’s recommendation to include all types of school or victims will be overlooked.
He said: “The statutory inquiry has to look at all schools, if it does not then it will not have credibility. With the scoping inquiry they got away with that because it was scoping, it was to establish the extent of abuse – it was still wrong that it had a sectarian basis – but if they have a statutory inquiry on that basis, I think it will rapidly lose credibility and it will be questioned.”
Senator Ronan Mullen echoed the need to include all victims saying that “every person’s story is of equal importance and every person, if they have been victimised in their school years, deserve to be treated with seriousness”.
“It seems to be in everyone’s interest, starting with victims who all deserve to be taken seriously, regardless of where they went to school, but also in fairness to religious orders and their members,” he added.
The report of the scoping inquiry stated: “In our view, an approach that excludes from consideration all other schools where historical sexual abuse may have occurred would be arbitrary and difficult to justify. We recommend, therefore, that consideration be given to extending the remit of the future commission to all schools in due course.”
The report added that this “should not delay the setting up of the commission to deal with sexual abuse in day or boarding schools run by the religious orders”.