Gardai Investigate If Religious Schools’ Abuse Was “Organised And Coordinated”
Gardai have started their investigations against religious schools and allegations of sexual abuse. Gardai wants to know whether the crime was “organised and coordinated”.
The investigations have been launched after a scoping inquiry report that the cabinet gave a go-ahead for earlier this week. Gardai wants to probe deeper and check whether “organised and coordinated” crime was from any so-called paedophile ring leading to any connection with an organisational element.
(Also read: Religious Order Schools To Face Cabinet Inquiry For Sexual Abuse)
Garda Commissioner, Drew Harris said that with collaborative efforts from the Garda National Protective Services Bureau, several convicted sex offenders have been identified and investigations are already underway against them.
Drew Harris stated that while some of the criminals were still in prison, others had already passed away.
The commissioner was of the view that the collaborative efforts would enable them to keep a follow-up with the investigation steps as well as the convicted ones so that any organisational element related to the religious schools’ sexual abuse of children could be noted.
Mr Harris also realised that the timespan of the investigation was long enough that the other convicted persons passed away. To ease the process, he requested any witnesses and victims to come forward without any hesitation as they would be provided full police protection.
So far, this week Gardai does not have any new contacts that could help generate new leads in the case.
With Gardai’s probe, McEntee wants justice for victims
Helen McEntee, Minister for Justice, declared the abuse as “barbaric” and confessed that they had a moral obligation to undertake the probe seriously for the future of victim kids. Justice for the young victims by uncovering the truth is the prime focus of the case, she verified.
Miss McEntee also emphasised that the religious schools’ criminals should come forward by themselves by “putting their hands up” for the hideous crimes they have committed against the young ones. Following an investigation against the national redress scheme, they would be held responsible for their actions.
She added, “We don’t want to see a redress scheme going on for years. We need to work it through and the religious orders need to come forward, need to contribute to this significantly. They should not have to be asked”.
After the scoping inquiry reports exposed the details of thousands of complaints of young children in the religious schools, the retired Catholic Archbishop of Dublin, Diarmuid Martin was utterly shocked. He said that he was “extraordinarily struck” by the massive number of children falling victim to special schools.
He sadly stated, “Sexual abuse of children is a vile thing, but sexual abuse of particularly vulnerable children is very shocking”.
Dr Martin explained that although a crime like this committed on such a large scale is “frightening”, however, truth needs to come out, which would be “greater and that’s a sad thing”.
He further stressed that criminal prosecutions should not take longer and that the victims need to know the truth first, the young kids need to be compensated fast, he demanded.
He called for a public figure to be appointed as a lead person for handling the issue and taking responsibility both in groupings and individually. He clearly realised that there would be open legal problems and that too, colossal ones. However, the public figure lead would be able to remove those obstacles and make the path smooth to prevent the case from stretching to years before the final results are revealed to the victims.
Moreover, he welcomed fresh inputs from the locals and any person related to the victims so that new information is made available to Gardai for abuse survivors’ relief in the case proceedings.
