Amnesty chief Colm O'Gorman calls for full independent…

Amnesty chief Colm O'Gorman calls for full independent inquiry into Spiritan sex abuse scandal in powerful radio speech

Amnesty chief Colm O’Gorman has called for a full independent inquiry with powers of discovery into the Spiritan sex abuse scandal.

The call came after the former Archbishop of Dublin Diarmuid Martin called for a similar investigation who described the abuse at Blackrock College as “frightening”.

Mr O’Gorman said that he was barely able to sit through the recent RTE documentary which exposed the scandal at the fee-paying colleges run by the Spiritans.

The executive director of Amnesty International Ireland, who is also a clerical abuse survivor, told RTE’s Brendan O’Connor that the State must also shoulder the responsibility for the damage done to children.

He said: "When I listened to that documentary, and it took me some time to do it because quite frankly I couldn’t quite steel myself to listen to it after all of these years, my primary response was a combination of rage and devastation.

“How are we here 20 years on? We are here 20 years on because people who knew and had a responsibility to something about what they knew failed to do so and that obviously is the Spiritans.

“But it’s also the State. This State has an obligation to guarantee, truth, justice and reparations to victims of human rights violations that occurred within his State.

“This State has been on notice of these horrific violations for many, many years and yet we have this piecemeal approach that seems to be about, well, frankly they don’t want to open a can of worms that might cause more to come out.

“It’s the opposite of proactively reaching out to identify the harm done and to respond to it and to live up to its clear obligations under human rights law and quite simply, to do the damned right thing.”

Praising the late Vicky Phelan who exposed the CervicalCheck scandal, the founder and former director of the One in Four organisation said that the nation must become more courageous about facing the terrible wrongs that have been done to children.

He added: “We must become a much more courageous society and a much more courageous state. For heaven's sake over the next two weeks please do not accept any nonsense that comes from commentators and politicians about concerns about the scale of this.

“The concerns about the scale of this should not be about the cost or complexity, it should be purely about the level of harm and trauma that is being done and continues to resonate in peoples’ lives and families, including across generations.

“We must not minimise the harm for fear of the consequences of naming that harm. Be that what we have to confront as a society. The cost of these violations and meeting these violations and meeting these violations in compensation terms… people say the state’s right to be concerned about that, they are a fraction of the kind of money that the state turns around to address other concerns.