Please sign this petition if you think that clerical child abusers should be brought to justice just as any lay person would if they had committed any of the horrific crimes that these criminals perpetrated in the industrial schools and other institutions in the twentieth century.

“History simply will not forgive us for pleading difficulties here. From now on our school history textbooks will have to include an account of the concerted persecution of almost 150,000 children, the beatings and rapes and unexplained deaths, the cruelty perpetrated by Catholic religious orders in the mid-20th century. German schoolbooks are legally obliged to educate their children about the horrors of the Holocaust, and we have no less a duty to ensure that the period of institutional abuse, shameful as it was, is fully recorded.

Future generations of schoolchildren will want to know what happened next - precisely how our society, when finally confronted with the truth, registered it's disgust and outrage at the treatment of those defenceless children.

If we were really serious about holding the guilty to account, we would set up a criminal tribunal to put the ringleaders on trial. It would almost certainly involve a constitutional referendum, but it wouldn't be impossible. The facts have been established by the Ryan Commission Report. We now know that thousands of children were physically and sexually assaulted, starved and enslaved over a sustained period of time.

The identities of the congregation leaders, and of the heads of institutions such as Daingean, Artane and Goldenbridge during the relevant periods, are a matter of public record. We know what they did, and who they were. Children were raped and brutalised while these identifiable people were legally and morally responsible for their care and protection. So they are guilty, either by omission or commission. There are no presumptions of innocence here - all a tribunal would need to establish, through witness testimony, is whether the relevant authority figures actively participated in the atrocities, or simply turned a blind eye to them.

The people in charge of the institutions must be put on trial as soon as possible. Otherwise history will hold us all to account.” Extracts from an article by Brenda Power, published in The Sunday Times 31-5-2009.

Since the publication of the Ryan report, the government has done as little as possible under pressure from the victims and the public as they wait for this issue to blow over. The government, the religious and the media are talking about compensation but few are talking about bringing prosecutions. If as many people as possible sign this petition it will be evidence of the anger of the Irish and international public and our insistence that these criminals be brought to justice.

Thank you for your support.
E. Daly and L. Cassidy
clergytojustice@gmail.com