The Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse (CICA) was one of a range of measures introduced by the government of Ireland to investigate the extent and effects of abuse on children from 1936 onwards. Commencing its work in 1999, it was commonly known as the Laffoy Commission, after its chairperson, Justice Mary Laffoy. Laffoy resigned as chair in 2003 and was succeeded by Justice Sean Ryan, with the commission becoming known as the Ryan Commission. It published its final public report, commonly referred to as the Ryan report, in 2009.
The commission's remit was to investigate all forms of child abuse in Irish institutions for children; the majority of allegations it investigated related to the system of sixty residential "Reformatory and Industrial Schools" operated by Catholic Church orders, funded and supervised by the Department of Education.
The commission's report said testimony had demonstrated beyond a doubt that the entire system treated children more like prison inmates and slaves than people with legal rights and human potential; that some religious officials encouraged ritual beatings and consistently shielded their orders amid a "culture of self-serving secrecy", and that government inspectors failed to stop the abuses.
Among the more extreme allegations of abuse were beatings and rapes, subjection to naked beatings in public, being forced into oral sex, and subjection to beatings after failed rape attempts by religious brothers. The abuse has been described by some as Ireland's Holocaust. The abuse was said to be "endemic" in the institutions that dealt with boys. The UK based Guardian newspaper, described the abuse as "the stuff of nightmares", citing the adjectives used in the report as being particularly chilling: "systemic, pervasive, chronic, excessive, arbitrary, endemic".
The Report's conclusions section (Chapter 6) supports the overall tenor of the accusations without exception.Ryan Report, Chapter 6; Conclusions section The commission's recommendations were restricted in scope by two rules imposed by the Irish government, and therefore do not include calls for the prosecution or sanction of any of the parties involved.
The Irish government excluded other institutions; survivors at the time advocated for inclusion of the Magdalene Laundries but these were deemed private. Survivors during the child abuse redress process at the last stage were gagged, while the religious orders were given protection against prosecution.
Background Historical context The history of residential institutions for children in Ireland is outlined in Chapter 2 of the Report. UK Acts of Parliament had provided for: Reformatory Schools for younger criminals from 1858 onward, and Industrial Schools in Ireland for destitute and/or orphaned children from 1868 onward,
In these schools they were supposed to learn life skills, be fed and educated. These schools were considered an improvement on the workhouse system of poor relief. The harsh system was improved over decades, particularly by the Children Act 1908 (8 Edw. 7. c. 67) that was enacted by the Liberal Government 1905–1915. Though the 2009 Report deals with each type of school separately, they and similar schools are referred to generally as "residential institutions".
Where children were from Catholic families, the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland insisted on supervising their care and upbringing by running most of these institutions in Ireland. A handful of Irish Catholic authors such as Michael McCarthy in 1904See Rome in Ireland London: Hodder & Stoughton 1904 and Frank Hugh O'Donnell in 1908See O'Donnell's Paraguay on Shannon Hodges & Figgis, Dublin, 1908 criticised the Church's un-audited state funding, and the state's inadequate supervision in 1900–1910. They were generally ignored by the growing Nationalist movement that had firm support from the Church, and also by the British administration based in Dublin Castle.
Continuance by Irish Free State After the establishment of the Irish Free State in 1922, little was done to update the 1908 Act or to ensure that its rules were observed, particularly those on corporal punishment. The purpose of the Act was to humanise reformatory and industrial schools and orphanages, and to reduce physical punishment. The 1908 Act regulations remained in force in Ireland almost unchanged until the 1970s, while elsewhere in Europe more progressive regimes developed, mainly after 1945. In contrast, the 1941 Children's Act, drafted while Éamon de Valera was briefly Minister of the Department of Education, reduced the minimum age of inmates to below 6 years, allowing small children to be detained because of their parents' poverty.
From the 1850s on day-to-day management had passed to several Orders affiliated with the Irish Catholic Church, as it insisted on educating its younger members. Oversight was the duty of the British administration in Ireland, and then of the Irish Department of Education from 1922 on. 5 Protestant schools had also existed, with the last one closing in 1917. Maintenance costs were paid by the department on a capitation (head-counting) basis, but the internal accounts of each school were never published. Over decades the Orders would typically answer any official complaint by pointing to the low capitation amount.
A major review of the system by Thomas Derrig in 1933–36 left it largely unchanged, as did the 1941 Children's Act. It has been suggested that Derrig refused to reform the system in line with the British reforms of 1923 and 1933 because of his strongly anti-British stance during the Irish independence process in 1916–23.Arnold, B. The Irish Gulag Gill & Macmillan, Dublin 2009. at page 41. The critical Cussen Report (1936) that followed, and a report in 1946–48 by the Irish-American priest Father Flanagan, were shelved. In 1946, Flanagan, of Boys Town fame, had returned for a visit to his homeland and toured some industrial schools run by the Christian Brothers. He then held a public lecture at the Savoy cinema in Cork at which he called the schools a national disgrace. Minister for Justice Gerald Boland deprecated the priest's remarks saying that he was “not disposed to take any notice of what Monsignor Flanagan said while he was in this country, because his statements were so exaggerated that I did not think people would attach any importance to them."
Archbishop McQuaid of Dublin sought a private report on Artane from Father Moore in 1962, but this was also shelved.
Other bodies such as the Irish Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (ISPCC; before 1956 the NSPCC) were also involved in sending needy children to the institutions, for want of alternatives. Some 60% of their cases were referred by the parents. In the 1940s the Society had pointed out that higher social welfare payments to poor families would be cheaper than paying the capitation amounts to industrial schools.
The numbers of child inmates peaked in the early to mid-1940s. Numbers declined after the introduction of "children's allowance" payments in the 1940s. The Adoption Act 1952 and increased wealth and other social welfare measures reduced the number of needy children in the 1950s. Family shame often sent the mothers of illegitimate children to similarly run Magdalene asylums.
Reform starts in the 1960s The OECD reported on Irish schools and levels of education in 1962–68, as an essential part of the process of Ireland's 1973 accession into the EEC, providing the vital external stimulus for reform.Arnold B., op.cit., chapter 5. Finally the 1970 Kennedy Report, prepared in 1967–70, though flawed in parts, led to the abolition of the schools over the next decade, starting with Artane in 1969. In the interim, tens of thousands of children had been inmates, some from infancy. Despite frequent complaints and enquiries that called for reforms, the official line until the 1990s was that nobody in government, the church or the civil service really knew what was taking place. Notably, Micheál Martin stated on 13 May 1999 that: The concept of the child as a separate individual with rights came late to this country.Statement of 13 May 1999; see Arnold, B. op. cit., page 16.
The CICA legislation, 1999–2005 in the 1990s, a series of media revelations led to legal actions by former inmates that the government realised would succeed, resulting in substantial damages and legal costs. Principally the "States of fear" television series made by Mary Raftery for RTÉ caused questions to be raised in the Dáil in April 1999.
In May 1999 the Taoiseach Bertie Ahern promptly apologised: "On behalf of the State and of all citizens of the State, the Government wishes to make a sincere and long overdue apology to the victims of childhood abuse for our collective failure to intervene, to detect their pain, to come to their rescue." In April–May 2000 his government passed the "Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse Act, 2000". The institutions were renamed "residential institutions" inclusively comprising "a school, an industrial school, a reformatory school, an orphanage, a hospital, a children’s home and any other place where children are cared for other than as members of their families. The Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse (CICA) was initially envisaged as an independent statutory body for the former inmates to record their experiences. Under a 2002 Act a "Redress Board" was created alongside CICA, which would pay compensation as recommended.
CICA's investigations were made through two sub-committees: A Confidential Committee that allowed the complainants to recite their experiences "in a confidential setting". A more pro-active Investigation Committee where witnesses could be compelled to attend.Ryan Report, sections 1.07-1.16.
Though funded by the Department of Education, the CICA has found itself occasionally hindered by it and by various church bodies, particularly for lack of documents. As a result, its first chairman, Judge Laffoy, resigned in 2003, in part because of a lengthy review process that caused a 9-month delay. This review was sponsored by the department and headed by Sean Ryan, a senior barrister, who then became CICA's next chairman.
Mr Ryan's appointment was accompanied by a government comment by Noel Dempsey that he was also to be made a judge. This was a surprise at the time, as Irish High Court judges are limited in number by law, and no vacancies then existed.Arnold B., op.cit., pp. 215-216. Questions arose on the impartiality of CICA, but in the event its final Report has been thoroughly researched. CICA's limitations were imposed by the 2000 Act, and it reconsidered its approach and focus in the "Emergence Hearings" which began in mid-2004, requiring all the parties involved to complete a series of questionnaires.Emergence Hearings; Ryan Report section 2, 141-146. It also published a number of interim reports.
Following the Emergence Hearings the 2000 Act was amended by a further Act in 2005. A principal reform (section 8) was to prohibit the identification of an alleged abuser unless convicted of the abuse in question.
Notably, while every witness to the Commission gave evidence of frequent corporal punishment, applied contrary to the regulations and therefore criminally, no Church witness came forward to certify a single such case. Difficulties arose where complainants or the accused were involved in parallel criminal or civil cases, such as the vaccine trials performed on inmate children. With such divergent views the CICA's task has been difficult and contentious, but it has agreed with the evidence given by the complainants. Given Mr. Ahern's general apology in 1999, it would be hard to conclude otherwise.
Establishment and functions