A local campaigner born at Sean Ross Abbey in Roscrea says the details of the recent clerical abuse scandal are shocking but no surprise.
Teresa Collins from Portroe says everyone knows that the allegations revealed this week about the abuse at private schools run by the Spiritan Order, including Rockwell College near Cashel, are true.
She feels that religious orders have been allowed to ruin the lives of people across the country for decades with little justice for survivors.
Teresa told Tipp Today that much of what she heard in the documentary mirrors the words of survivors from other abuse scandals.
“They are still children at heart that are afraid because it’s just the fear of God I think those words ‘ Our Little Secrets’ comes back to them each time. The minute I heard the interview.. I said my God it’s the exact same as the lads told me and this is why I say didn’t we put some institutions there for us as people to blackguard children it was so unfair.”
She is encouraging people to continue to speak out and tell the truth about what happened in these places so that they are no longer secrets.
Teresa said they have ruined people’s lives.
“The religious orders had the full ways of ruining people’s lives from the day you were born to the institutions to the day you left school and yet in Ireland there has been no adequate way in getting them brought to justice for it, there has been cover up after cover up.
I’ll go outside Ireland, you had the same anywhere the Religious Orders went it was the same throughout the world.”
