Emer O'Kelly on strong words from the bench in the Brother Ambrose case and a history of mealy-mouthed apologies from the Church authorities Emer O'Kelly on strong words from the bench in the Brother Ambrose case and a history of mealy-mouthed apologies from the Church authorities

LET us give thanks for men like Judge Anthony G Murphy. He spoke of ``bottomless evil rendering the victims' lives little short of a permanent execution'' when he sentenced James Kelly, the 74-year-old Brother Ambrose of the Brothers of Charity, to 36 years' imprisonment on Tuesday for the sexual and physical abuse of children at Lota Home for boys in Cork.

We need the language of outrage as much as we need the exemplary sentencing of child molesters when they are brought before our courts. We need language that matches the tormented outpourings of the victims.

``I want to see justice coming to a country that never had it,'' said one victim. In 1999, a 48-year-old Irishman has to feel the shame and rage of living in a country without justice.

``They'd just say `The brothers wouldn't do that','' said another. ``People like that shouldn't be in the world.'' That was the lost child-like cry of a 58-year-old man. But they are in the world, deferred to for generations by a society that gave total power to people who had supposedly dedicated their lives to God.

In turn, those deviants were protected by their own superiors because the reputation of God's supposed elite mattered above all else, while the welfare, indeed the sanity, of little children mattered not at all.

And they're still working at protecting their reputations. Every word of apology from the religious orders and other Catholic church authorities for the vile deeds perpetrated under their powerful sway has been measured, reluctant, defensive, and surrounded by caveats.

Over the past few years we have seen and heard a sickening litany of monstrous cruelty, dastardly torture, and sadistic brutality as the men and women who operated their horrendous regimes in confident darkness have been forced into the blessed light of day.

No punishment could be strong enough, no retribution satisfying enough, to deal with what these people did to the helpless. The death penalty would be an escape; and a society which uses it is acknowledging its own inability to cope. Even a life sentence does not mean what it says. Judge Murphy tried to express our collective horror in sentencing Kelly to consecutive sentences amounting to 36 years. But the criminal molester is an old man, and it's possible that he'll ultimately be released, rather than ending his life in a prison more merciful than the one to which he subjected his victims.

``It's not enough,'' said a friend of mine briefly, a happy-go-lucky, compassionate man in his forties. He was thinking not just of his own two beautiful children, as all parents who hear of these terrible events must; he was thinking of the desolate weeping that echoes down the black nights from 40 years ago.

But the men who run the Brothers of Charity today don't seem to hear that weeping. Or if they do, they mention it in the context of what a long time ago it was.

PATRICK McGinley, the Order's Director of Services was interviewed on Morning Ireland during last week. He told Aine Lawlor that the order ``apologises very sincerely for any hurt caused in those times, generally 30 or 40 years ago''.

Asked about the ``good'' brothers (who stayed silent about what they knew their colleagues were doing) he appeared to misunderstood the question. He replied, ``It is one of the features that the men who come forward to talk about those awful things that occurred 30 and 40 years ago; it's amazing how they can bring along an account of the good brothers, and what great care, and how much they were cared for by the good brothers. It is a mystery. I suppose that the people who perpetrated these acts did so very carefully and very secretly.'' And he sailed serenely on, ignoring the quiet repetition of the fact that the abuse must have been known to nearly all the brothers. He also distanced himself from the molesters, calling them ``the people''. They weren't just ``people'', they were members of the Order he was representing.

``I think of course that the situation is very considerably transformed today, where there are many more staff, and there's very clear policies in place today, where any allegation of abuse must be brought forward and handled in accordance with a very clear policy,'' said Brother McGinley. Surely they didn't in the past require a policy to enable them step in and protect children from torment? But he added kindly, ``And I agree with you, it's absolutely inexplicable how that culture of secrecy prevailed 30 and 40 years ago.''

No, it's not. It's very easily explained children didn't matter, and the people who had taken religious vows were above the law, and wrote their own hideous codes of behaviour, knowing that they would be protected from retribution. And no, Brother McGinley, we're not going to bow to your mantra of ``30 and 40 years ago''. It's last night for the men subjected to abuse by your brothers in religion.

And we all remember that a couple who tried to find out what had happened to their baby, dead in the hell-hole that was Goldenbridge, were told, ``It's only a baby''.

IT would seem that when Catholic religious are given unbridled authority, they care more for people before they are born then when they're alive and weeping in pain and fear.

When the former Mercy nun Nora Wall was vindicated, and an announcement was made that she was not to be retried for rape, there was an outcry from some members of the public about the way she had been vilified before her conviction was set aside.

The horrible reality of our society is that so many appalling crimes of abuse of children by Catholic religious have been proved in the courts that many people are inclined to believe that no cleric, man or woman, accused of such crimes can possibly be innocent.

And that is not the fault of public opinion. It is in large measure the fault of the religious authorities who seem more concerned with limiting the damage to their own reputations and standing than in acknowledging their collective guilt and active negligence.

There is an implied indignation in every expression of regret that anybody should dare hold them accountable. Phrases like ``30 or 40 years ago,'' ``a tiny minority,'' ``little understanding of deep-seated nature of the problem'' abound. Words like ``abhorrent,'' ``apologise humbly,'' ``overwhelming remorse'' never feature.

There's an inherent arrogance and resentment in every mealy-mouthed apology issued.

The men and women who suffered as children at the hands of religious torturers (and yes, we do believe that there is a far higher percentage of them in Catholic religious life than in other walks, and I for one do not apologise for believing it) were not ``hurt,'' to use the most frequent word employed by the religious orders.

They were destroyed in mind, heart and body in other words, in the soul that the Catholic authorities are so fond of telling us they cherish, whatever the ``ethos of the prevailing era''.

http://www.independent.ie/opinion/analysis/judge-reflects-a-nations-outrage-521549.html