ABSTRACT
Courage to face the facts seems to have been particularly lacking in the institutions in which abuse remained unchecked and in the deals made throughout the institutional network to protect clergy guilty of abuse. The Ryan commission has uncovered a history of widespread child abuse within the industrial schools, orphanages, reformatories, and hostels caring for children in Ireland from the 1930s until their closure in the 1990s. Institutions become corrupt and perverse from the top down. They need a good leader to serve as a father who protects boundaries, sets limits, and acknowledges the power adults have over children and how this power can be abused. The tragic history of so many of the institutions under scrutiny in Ireland reflects more than anything else the degree to which the priests and nuns running them had been irreparably damaged from their own emotional abuse.
