The superior general of the Religious Sisters of Charity in Ireland, Sister Una O'Neill, told the committee yesterday that a 1994 RTÉ programme on their Madonna House home for children in Blackrock, Co Dublin, was "a very significant moment of understanding for the congregation."
The Madonna House programme was "a brutal initiation into the reality of sex abuse of the most depraved kind" for the Sisters of Charity, she said.
The congregation made three apologies following the criminal conviction of former lay staff, one at Madonna House and two at St Joseph's in Kilkenny.
They were notified of the Madonna House allegations in 1993, and in 1995 it was made known to them that gardaí were investigating a staff member at St Joseph's. The man at St Joseph's had been hired as the first male childcare worker in Ireland in charge of teenage boys, "as a father figure."
At the time "it was considered the best thing we could have done. It was a tremendous betrayal of trust," she said.
Files reviewed from 1990 contained allegations of severe corporal punishment of three children by one sister, she said.
Sister Lucy Bruton of the Sisters of Our Lady of Charity of Refuge said they had homes at Drumcondra, Whitehall, Kilmacud, and Kill o' the Grange in Dublin. They now accepted that rearing children in institutions brought pain and suffering to them, she said.
There had been four complaints from former residents before 1998, three of which were found not appropriate to the congregation at all, she said.
In 1989 there was a specific allegation of sex abuse in one institution, and the authorities were informed. The man concerned "disappeared" and the home was closed.
A later allegation concerning the same institution did not result in charges. They had no records of any abuse at all on their files, she said.
Sister Catherine Mulligan, provincial of the Daughters of Charity of St Vincent de Paul until April this year, told the hearing that, following the RTÉ Dear Daughter programme in 1996, they had received a complaint of physical abuse from a former resident.
The sister concerned agreed it had happened.
Court proceedings were initiated in three other cases in 1998, two went no further and one was discontinued, she said.
