Child Sexual Abuse Endemic in Schools and Institutions.

A new report published yesterday described how sexual abuse was endemic in boys’ institutions and a chronic problem in some residential institutions.

The report, which strongly criticised the Department of education for its handling of complaints states that the sexual abuse of boys at the Artane Industrial School in Dublin and Letterfrack, Co Galway was a persistent problem.

The long awaited report has found that the State’s inspection of residential institutes and schools was at it’s core flawed and that reports made about abuse often were not investigated in a comprehensive enough manner.

The report also recommended that a memorial to the victims of this abuse should be erected, on which should appear the following words.

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.

This originally appeared as part of a special statement made by the Taoiseach in May 1999. The commission has spent the past decade examining child abuses in religious institutions dating back to the 1940’s.