In Ireland, Catholic orders plead poverty, hide wealth
Government says groups must pay more abuse claims
DUBLIN - The Catholic orders responsible for abusing Ireland's poorest children say they're struggling to come up with money to help their victims. Yet investigations into their net worth paint a very different picture - that of nuns and brothers with billions' worth of carefully sheltered assets worldwide.
Irish government leaders said yesterday they expect the 18 religious orders involved in abusing children in workhouse-style schools to pay a much greater share of compensation to 14,000 state-recognized victims. They also demanded that the secretive orders reveal the true scope of their wealth for the first time in face-to-face negotiations with the government.
"We have to ascertain how much they actually have. The government is adamant and determined that they will make an appropriate contribution," Defense Minister Willie O'Dea said.
The push follows last week's publication of a nine-year investigation into the widespread sexual, physical, and psychological abuse of children in church care from the 1930s to 1990s, when the last of the special schools, reformatories, and orphanages closed.
Yesterday, about half of the 18 orders announced they would meet with the government. All reiterated apologies for their role in harming children, but none said they would contribute more than promised in a 2002 deal with the government that left taxpayers paying almost all of the $1.5 billion bill to settle the abuse claims.
Under that agreement, the orders received a state indemnity from civil lawsuits from the victims in exchange for a $175 million contribution, barely a tenth of the eventual costs. Church leaders also say they haven't even given the Irish government all that money yet, because their earmarked donations are largely in properties, some of which still remain in church hands, and most suffering heavy falls in valuation amid Ireland's recession.
The orders this week have ruled out paying more compensation, even though the report found them principally to blame and guilty of far greater abuses than they admitted to in 2002. Instead the orders have proposed unspecified contributions to a new victims' welfare fund.
The Conference of Religious in Ireland, an umbrella body, said the 18 orders are planning a private strategy session tomorrow in Dublin to decide on a common approach to the government.
Experts on the global fight against abuse claims say the orders won't shed light on their finances voluntarily.
"First off, don't trust anything they say," said the Rev. Thomas Doyle, an American Catholic priest who specializes in canon law and champions abuse victims' rights. "And be prepared to follow up the urging for voluntary donation or contribution with some form of force."
Doyle said the Irish orders "must be forced by a power greater than themselves, and that's the courts and the Irish government, to make sure the compensation comes, even to the point of forcibly divesting them of properties."
The order most deeply implicated in the abuse report, the Christian Brothers, was founded two centuries ago in Ireland but has spread across the globe. It has the biggest property empire and faces exposure to abuse claims ranging from the United States to Canada, Australia, and Ireland.
The order still owns hundreds of boys' schools in 20 countries. But US and Canadian lawyers who have won multimillion-dollar sex-abuse cases against the Christian Brothers accuse the order of making itself appear as poor as possible by shifting school ownership to individual members, trusts, corporations, or offshore bodies.
"Their assets and how they hold assets is of Byzantine complexity," said David Wingfield, a lawyer in Toronto who has won abuse settlements from Christian Brothers schools in Canada, from Newfoundland to British Columbia. "They have unlimited financial resources to mount litigation, and they have absolutely no shame in doing so."
A 2001 investigation by Irish broadcasters RTE into Christian Brothers' mounting legal fights worldwide estimated the order's global property assets, including its Rome headquarters, in excess of $1.4 billion.
Yesterday, The Irish Times, Ireland's newspaper of record, urged the government to go harder after the orders.
Some victims want the government to hold a national referendum to amend Ireland's constitution so it would permit seizures of church money and property.
Michael O'Brien, 72, was separated from his seven brothers, sisters and cousins when they were placed in separate church-run residences in the 1940s. He suffered repeated rapes and beatings from age 8 onward in an industrial school run by the Rosminian order in the town of Clonmel.
