Thursday, September 19, 2024

Names of the hundreds of schools across Ireland published by Scoping Inquiry into historical sexual abuse

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Its report published today features a list of primary and schools, as well as special schools.

It also notes the religious orders that ran these schools alongside the number of allegations of abuse and the total number of alleged abusers at each school.

The figures presented in the table were supplied to the Scoping Inquiry by the religious orders themselves, in response to requests for a breakdown of numbers.

But not all orders supplied a school-by-school breakdown, and in some cases they did not name the affected schools.

Elsewhere the report outlines that there were 820 allegations at 132 schools run by the Christian Brothers; 329 allegations at six schools run by the Spiritans and 294 allegations at three schools run by the Brother of Charity.

Dozens more religious orders are also named in relation to allegations of abuse.

The report says: “The number of alleged abusers on a school by school breakdown may be larger than the overall number of alleged abusers for any given religious order as individual alleged abusers may have been associated with more than one school, or due to possible duplication.

“It has not been possible to cross-check or verify all figures and it should be noted that the Scoping Inquiry is not making findings of fact but setting out the information provided.”

Over 800 people have been accused of more than 2,300 instances of historical sexual abuse at 308 religious schools in Ireland, according to the records.

The Government-appointed scoping inquiry said it had contacted 73 religious orders that ran or are still running schools in Ireland, with 42 having records of historical sexual abuse allegations.

The report said 17 were special schools, which recorded 590 allegations involving 190 alleged abusers.

The report says that sexual abuse happened between the 1960s and the early 1990s, with the highest number of reported incidents occurring in the early to mid-1970s.

The report heard from many survivors who said that “their childhood stopped the day the abuse started.”

The report notes that it is possible that some schools appear more than once under different names, as schools sometimes were known by both an Irish and English name, or were known under different names locally.

There may also be some instances where a primary and a secondary school have the same name, and so it may appear that the same school is listed twice.

In some cases, the number of allegations listed for a particular order may be higher than the number given for that order’s overall total in the main body of the report.

This is because the number presented in the main body of the report is the overall total supplied by the order in its verification form to the Scoping Inquiry.

The report added: “The figures presented giving a school by school breakdown are as we have received them. Any differences in the figures for allegations may be due to duplication where orders have gathered information from both their own records and those of individual schools.”

Helplines: If you have been affected by the contents of this article, the organisation One in Four provides services to adult survivors of childhood sexual abuse. One in Four can be contacted by calling 01 662 4070 or by completing the form at www.oneinfour.ie/contact.

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