CPI Statement on Child Abuse Report

The exposure of class prejudice

The publication of the long awaited “The Commission to Inquire into
Child Abuse Report” into abuse suffered by children and young people at
the hands of religious orders while detained in residential institutions
has exposed as never before the deep class hatred of working people and
the rural poor that permeated the state, government and its agencies as
well as the Catholic Church itself. This whole horrible feature of Irish
society cannot be understood if its class nature is not recoginsed.

The report lays bear the horrendous sexual and physical abuse, slave
labour and starvation conditions that ten of thousands of children and
youth suffered. Whose only crime was that they came from working class
families, from the families of rural workers or small farmers, what they
all had in common was that they were poor.

The contempt that the so called caring professions of doctors, teachers,
solicitors and judges as well as the total disregard that the
institution of the state had for these young people exposed that this
state was and is deeply imbued with class prejudice in spite the best
efforts to cover it up it is at its very core; its very essence.

There is no evidence to show that those who committed these crimes will
be made to account for, nor is their any evidence to show that this
report like many other before it or the current tribunals will produce
any results. The same class prejudice and cosy class relationships are
still well entrenched; - they still show the same contempt for working
people, their families and their communities.

The Catholic church became the bedrock of the new state using it
political and cultural control to intimidate the populace. The carnival
of reaction was not just confined to the North of Ireland, catholicism
was used in the South to ensure that the new emerging Irish elites
consolidated and maintained their power.

Communist Party of Ireland