Abuse group hands over petition

Two of the women who handed over a petition at Stormont

Campaigners demanding an inquiry into child abuse in Catholic and state institutions in NI have delivered a petition to the Assembly.

Thousands of people are understood to have signed the petition which was handed to SDLP MLA Carmel Hanna.

The group, Justice for the Victims of Institutional Abuse in NI, wants an inquiry similar to that which produced the Ryan Report in the Irish Republic.

It said that abuse in Catholic-run institutions there was "endemic".

At a debate in the assembly on Monday, Mrs Hanna said the Ryan Report was "a terrifying account of the shattered lives of generations of Irish children, a catalogue of inhumanity perpetrated against the most vulnerable children".

"The Ryan Report is a watershed, a seminal moment in Irish history. Ryan is the gravest indictment of the powerful and the privileged in Church and State in Ireland, the religious orders, the hierarchy, successive governments and the Department of Education," she said.

"The relevant religious congregations operated on an all-island basis.

"That is why Ryan needs to be complemented and finalised by a post-script for Northern Ireland and why the Executive needs to act now."

"Discrimination"

A lawyer for the victims has said they suffered sexual and physical abuse in cases dating back to the 1940s, but believed they have been discriminated against since inquires in the south of Ireland did not extend to Northern Ireland.

Solicitor Joe Rice said he had written to First Minister Peter Robinson and deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness, as well as Secretary of State Shaun Woodward, detailing the demand for an inquiry.

He said he believed the inquiry should be run along the lines of the State-sponsored investigation conducted in the 1980s into a child sex abuse scandal at Kincora Boys' Home in east Belfast.

Earlier this year, the Ryan Report into child abuse at institutions run by Catholic religious orders in the Republic found that sexual, physical and emotional abuse was endemic.

A major report into abuse in the Dublin archdiocese of the Catholic Church is also due to be published.