Scores of Irish abuse victims seek counselling

Scores of victims of sexual abuse in Roman Catholic parishes in Dublin contacted counselling services after the publication of a report showed archbishops obsessively covered up decades of widespread abuse.

Counsellors said the report, which detailed numerous examples of violence and said one priest had abused more than 100 children, triggered victims' memories and prompted large numbers to speak out for the first time.

Faoiseamh, a counselling service set up by the Catholic Church, said calls had trebled this week while the Dublin Rape Crisis Centre saw the number of calls from victims jump to more than 140 on Wednesday alone from a daily average of 25.

"There was an avalanche of calls," said Ellen O'Malley-Dunlop, the Centre's chief executive officer.

"Most of them were first-time callers in a lot of distress whose memories were triggered. They felt terribly bad that they hadn't spoken out themselves before, but the nature of this crime is that it silences people," she added.

The inquiry came six months after a similarly damning and even more graphic report about floggings, slave labour and gang rape that were common in Church-run industrial and reform schools earlier in the 20th century.

Dublin's Rape Crisis Centre said the number of callers rose 300 percent in the period after the release in May of the so-called Ryan report, but rose even more sharply on Wednesday.

"Last night it was much higher and while we had older people calling during the Ryan report, last night there were a lot of younger men in their 30s who were utterly distraught," Ms O'Malley-Dunlop said.

Factbox - Roman Catholic Church sex scandals

US

2002 - Boston's Cardinal Bernard Law resigned over charges he transferred clerical abusers to other parishes to cover up the scandal.

1. June 2002: The US Conference of Catholic Bishops directed dioceses to investigate all charges of sexual abuse.

2. February 2004: Independent researchers commissioned by the US Conference of Catholic Bishops said a total of 10,667 people accused US priests of child sexual abuse from 1950 through 2002. More than 17 per cent of accusers had siblings who were also allegedly abused. Among accusers, 47 per cent said they had been abused numerous times.

3. July 2007: The Archdiocese of Los Angeles agreed to pay $660 million to 500 victims of sexual abuse dating as far back as the 1940s in the largest compensation deal of its kind.

4. April 2008: Pope Benedict met victims of sexual abuse by priests during his visit to the United States in an effort to heal the scars. The US Church has paid some $2 billion in settlement to victims since the scandal first broke in 1992.

5. October 2009: The diocese of Wilmington, Delaware filed for bankruptcy protection. It later agreed to provide documents to alleged sex abuse victims to postpone the start of about 80 civil cases. Since 2002, the Wilmington diocese has settled eight cases for an average of about $780,000 each.

Ireland

1. April 2002: Bishop Brendan Comiskey of Ferns, one of Ireland's best-known clerics, resigned over his handling of charges against a priest of his diocese who committed suicide in 1999 while facing 66 charges of sexual abuse.

2. March 2009: Bishop John Magee of Cloyne, under fire for his handling of reports of sexual abuse, quit his daily duties to deal with the inquiry.

3. May 2009: The Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse issued a harrowing five-volume report that took nine years to compile. It said priests beat and raped children during decades of abuse in Catholic-run institutions.

4. November 2009: A government-commissioned inquiry into abuse in Dublin from 1975 to 2004 released on Thursday said church authorities covered up widespread cases of child sexual abuse until the mid-1990s in a misuse of the Church's central role in Irish society.

Australia: July 2008: On a visit to Australia, Pope Benedict apologised for sexual abuse by clergy, condemning it as "evil" and saying abusers should be brought to justice. At that time there had been 107 convictions for sexual abuse in the Catholic Church there.

Austria: July 2004: Austrian News magazine Profil ran pictures of priests kissing and groping seminarians at a Roman Catholic seminary in the St Poelten diocese.

Britain: July 2000: London Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor acknowledged making a mistake in a previous post in the 1980s by allowing a paedophile priest to continue working. The priest was jailed in 1997 for abusing nine boys over a 20-year period.

Canada: October 2009: Bishop Raymond Lahey of Antigonish in Nova Scotia was charged with possession and importation of child pornography. Earlier this year, he had overseen a C$13 million ($12 million) settlement with clerical abuse victims in the Antigonish diocese in a case dating back to 1950.

Mexico: March 2009: Pope Benedict ordered a probe of the Legion of Christ priestly order whose founder was discovered to be a sexual molester with at least one child with a mistress. In 2006, Pope Benedict told the founder, Fr Marcial Maciel, to retire to a life of "prayer and penitence." Fr Maciel died in 2008.