Victim seeks vow Irish abusers will face justice

John Kelly, a victim of sexual abuse at one of Ireland's most notorious Catholic-run children's homes, yesterday cautiously welcomed Pope Benedict XVI's latest intervention in the scandal.

But now he wants guarantees that abusers will face justice.

"Victims so desperately want closure with dignity, and I see this letter potentially as a step towards that closure," the 59-year-old said at his Dublin home, referring to the Pope's pastoral letter at the weekend.

"But we must seek that clarification," added Mr Kelly, who now heads one of the main victims' groups.

Many such groups believe the papal letter, expressing sorrow and remorse for the abuse inflicted on thousands of children by priests and religious brothers in Ireland, failed to go far enough.

But Mr Kelly, who says his own life was shaped for ever by the extreme sexual and physical abuse he received as a boy in the notorious Daingean Reformatory, refuses to join the voices rejecting the Pope's apology outright.

"We got an apology in our lifetime and it would be churlish to ignore the positive things about it," he said.

"The Pope has said for the first time these were criminal acts. But the Pope also says to those involved 'you must subject yourselves to the demands of justice'.

"They were criminals... I want them to face justice."

Three judicial inquiries in five years into clerical abuse in Ireland have revealed that the Roman Catholic Church hushed up claims from victims or moved priests facing accusations to other areas where they resumed their abuse.

Mr Kelly's group, the Irish Survivors of Child Abuse (SOCA), will now push for a meeting with the head of the Catholic Church in Ireland, Cardinal Sean Brady, to ask him to seek further explanation from the Vatican on the pope's words.

Brady himself has come under fire after admitting that as a young priest he forced the young victims of a paedophile priest to sign gagging orders, an act for which he has expressed "shame".

Some victims' groups are calling for his resignation, but Mr Kelly says the cardinal's departure would solve nothing.

"Resignations are not the answer, what we need is a deeper inquiry into his handling of all abuse cases.

"Then we will see if he has the moral authority to carry on."

The place where Mr Kelly spent two brutalised years from the age of 13, Daingean Reformatory in the Irish Midlands, was described as "anarchic" by an official inquiry into the abuse in Church-run institutions.

Mr Kelly, a strapping man who puffs hard on a cigarette as he drags up the memories, says that apart from the frequent sexual abuse, he most recalls being flogged so hard by one of the staff at the school that he lost consciousness.

"I lost my religion that night, but most of all it reinforced the idea that I had lost my humanity," he said.

Perhaps most twisted of all was that the boys themselves were forced to make the leather straps, inlaid with copper to cause maximum pain, which the religious brothers used to administer the beatings with.

Other abuse included being made to kneel on the floor at the foot of the marble stairs in the institution. A "20-stone" religious brother would then stand on Mr Kelly's hands, "causing pain to shoot through my body".

On other occasions, "they (the brothers) would beat you and tell you you were worthless and say 'Even your mother never visits you'. You started to believe them - and to think that your life wasn't worth living anymore."

Referring to Cardinal Brady, Mr Kelly said the top churchman's stance amounted to saying he was just following orders, like Nazis seeking to shirk responsibility at the Nuremberg trials after World War II.

"It's no good them falling back on the 'Nuremberg' defence. I mean, they should stop saying 'it wasn't me, it was the higher-ups. That's not good enough."