Irish Americans outraged at Irish child abuse report

'The collar shouldn't save them from prosecution'

APRIL DREW,

IrishCentral.com Staff Writer

Published Wednesday, June 3, 2009, 3:27 PM

Updated Thursday, July 23, 2009, 5:39 PM

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Kerry native Gerry O'Shea says that the report just corroborates the stories of abuse that were already out in the open

Irish Americans have reacted with outrage and disgust to the Ryan Commission report on clerical abuse of children in Ireland.

The 2,600-page report concluded nine years of investigations into the claims by thousands of adults that they were abused for decades at reform schools and that the Irish government failed to do anything to stop it.

Over 30,000 Irish children, now between 50 and 80 years of age, were sent to industrial schools, orphanages and reformatories because they were deemed “dysfunctional.”

Johnny Rush, from County Roscommon native, said the findings were “just disgusting.”

Rush, 72, who attended Mass at St Barnabas church Sunday in the heavily Irish neighborhood of Woodlawn in New York said: “We knew it was going on for years, this sort of thing, but no one said a thing.