More institutional decay
It is not just cruel monks, nuns and priests that are blamed for the .
The accusatory finger is also pointed at the large-scale institutions they ran, the dread-inspiring Industrial Schools which warehoused vulnerable children in Ireland for a century and more. Institutional life in these huge, regimented establishments led to "institutional abuse," the report concludes.
Despite calls in the mid-1930s for boys and girls to be integrated into mainstream education and the wider community, little heed was taken. A "deferential attitude" to the church meant that children were sent to industrial schools in order to help the priests pay their bills.
The system was designed around the needs of the institution rather than the needs of the child.
Today's report points out that while in England vulnerable children were increasingly moved to smaller more family-like settings from the 1920s, in Ireland the Industrial Schools thrived.
However, as we know, British care homes were to prove far from immune to institutional maltreatment themselves. After a series of horrific abuse scandals, exposed from the 1970s onwards, children's homes fell out of favour in Britain - although, as you may have read, a recent Parliamentary report recommends more vulnerable youngsters be looked after in such settings (Time to bring back children's homes?).
It is not the institution that is to blame, the argument goes. It is the lack of scrutiny. In Ireland, today's report tells us that "the system of inspection by the Department of Education was fundamentally flawed and incapable of being effective."
As we have seen in the City of London and in Westminster, when any institution is allowed to operate without adequate oversight, moral decay can spread.
Priest or financier, politician or nun - the saddest conclusion from the stories of the past few days and months is that when people have power and are confident they are not being watched, no-one can be trusted.
I'm 
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