Report Reveals Decades of Child Abuse in Irish Institutions

"Thousands of children suffered sexual abuse, beatings, malnutrition and emotional abuse for decades in the Irish institutions where they were raised, an Irish government commission said Wednesday. Catholic clergy ran the vast majority of the reformatories and orphanages where the abuse allegedly took place, it said. There were institutions where sexual abuse was a 'chronic problem' and where 'floggings' that 'should not have been tolerated in any institution' were 'inflicted for even minor transgressions,' the commission's wide-ranging report says."