THE SCOPING INQUIRY into historical sexual abuse in day and boarding schools run by religious orders found that a higher number of allegations were received in respect of special schools than mainstream schools.
The second volume of the report said this “likely reflects the fact that disabled children are more vulnerable to and are more likely to be sexually abused than able-bodied children”.
Of the 2,375 allegations involving 864 abusers, 528 allegations and 190 alleged abusers relate to the 17 special schools run by religious orders.
The Scoping Inquiry gave “separate consideration” to the position of special schools in order to “highlight the particularly high figures of recorded allegations in relation to these schools”.
It also noted that the “high prevalence of child sexual abuse in schools for children with disabilities is unfortunately reflective of the general trend of persons with disabilities being more likely to suffer sexual abuse in childhood”.
It pointed to the Sexual Violence Survey 2022 from the Central Statistics Office which indicated that “people with a disability experienced sexual violence as a child at a higher rate (35%) than those without a disability (26%)”.
The report also noted that the “tendency in previous inquiries has been to uncover individuals with multiple allegations made against them” and as a result, “far more than 528 allegations of historical child sexual abuse may emerge in the event of a full inquiry”.
“It seems reasonable to suggest that where the ratio of allegations compared to the numbers of alleged abusers is relatively low, there is a greater likelihood that more allegations will emerge in time,” the report stated.
The report also said that special schools had a “different profile of alleged abuser compared to mainstream schools”.
Across all schools, pupils made up 9% of alleged abusers and 17% of alleged abusers are lay staff, while 69% are members of religious orders and 5% are clergy who are not members of the religious order which ran the school.
When only special schools are considered, the percentage of alleged abusers who are pupils or lay staff outweigh the percentage of alleged abusers who are members of religious orders or a member of the clergy.
While the largest category of alleged abusers in special schools are members of a religious order (39%), there is also a large percentage of allegations involving pupils (28%) and abuse by lay staff (26%).
Abuse by another cleric, who is not a member of the order, is alleged in 7% of allegations.
This means that of the 190 alleged abusers in special schools ran by religious orders, 74 were members of the religious order concerned, 49 were lay staff, 54 were peers, and 13 were clerics who were not members of the religious order.
The highest number of allegations, 166, were made at the Brothers of Charity’s Lota in Glanmire, Co Cork.
Margaret Best’s son Kenneth was a student in Lota during the 1970s-1980s and he was abused while at the school.
She remarked that the “paedophiles who robbed the childhood of able-bodied children did not stop there”.
“They also abused, far more easily, those children with intellectual impairments,” said Best.
She added: “Those children, now adults, have had no voice. Who is now going to investigate whether the abuse was perpetrated, not just on those with voices, but with those without voices. Are we to continually ignore their plight.”
Meanwhile, 66 allegations of abuse were made relating to 44 alleged abusers in St. Mary’s School for Deaf Girls in Dublin, while two allegations against two alleged abusers were made at Mary Immaculate School for Deaf Children in Dublin, which closed in 1998.
And while most of the alleged abusers in mainstream schools are deceased, the majority of alleged abused identified in special schools are either living or their status is unknown.
Of all 864 alleged abusers referred to in the religious orders’ records, 54% are deceased while 46% are either living or their status is unknown.
In special schools, only 27% of the 190 alleged abusers are deceased while 73% are living or their status is unknown.
A number of special schools have already been the subject of review by the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse (CICA).
That inquiry was chaired by Mr Justice Seán Ryan began in 1999 and took ten years to complete before a report, commonly known as the Ryan Report, was published in May 2009.
It documented the physical, sexual and emotional abuse of thousands of children admitted to reformatory and industrial schools run by religious orders.
The Scoping Inquiry said “one might reasonably contend that to investigate the same institutions would not be a good use of public resources”, as some special schools were the subject of the CICA report.
However, the Scoping Inquiry report noted that the same can be said of mainstream schools.
The report also noted that there were a number of special schools which “came within the CICA’s remit, but were not investigated because there were insufficient complaints”.
The CICA could only investigate and report findings for schools where it had received more than one complaint.
In addition to this, while there were special schools with high numbers of complaints, ongoing Garda investigations and difficulties with legal representation and the taking of statements from witnesses prevented full hearings of those institutions in the CICA.
For example, the CICA Investigation Committee report remarked that “one category of institution that was not included in full Investigation Committee hearings comprised three schools for deaf children”.
The CICA report said that while “it was clear that members of the deaf community wanted to participate… it proved impossible to arrange full hearings for these institutions”.
“The principal difficulty was in getting statements from a sufficient number of former residents of these institutions,” said the CICA report, which added that “little had been achieved by late 2005″.
“It was impracticable to prepare all the necessary materials and to arrange hearings in these cases,” said the CICA report.
As a result, the CICA noted that “limited investigation of these institutions was also carried out by way of analysis of documentary material”.
In light of the limited consideration of special schools by the CICA, and the “sheer volume of allegations” recorded in special schools, the Scoping Inquiry recommended that special schools should be within the scope of a future inquiry.
It added that given the “high concentration of allegations in a limited number of schools”, consideration should be given to “a module of a future inquiry considering allegations of historical child sexual abuse in special schools”.
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