David Quinn, director of the Iona Institute, a Dublin-based religious think tank, told OSV News July 15, "There was a rush to believe the worst about the nuns and about Catholic Ireland."
Derry-born Sister Clare Crockett was a promising actress with little interest in religion when she went on a Holy Week retreat in Spain in 2000 that changed her life. The then 18-year-old self-confessed "wild child" felt a profound call to religious life, and entered the convent of the Servant Sisters of the Home of the Mother.
Government officials in Northern Ireland and representatives of religious orders who managed state institutions apologized to survivors of abuse at those institutes.