"At the end of the day, some of us won't sleep tonight. We're still nowhere near the truth," said Barrett, 55, who was sexually abused in the 1960s while at a school for boys with learning disabilities run by the Brothers of Charity in County Cork.
Cardinal Sean Brady, the leader of Ireland's 4 million Catholics, offered an apology Wednesday for the abuses found by the commission.
"I am profoundly sorry and deeply ashamed that children suffered in such awful ways in these institutions," Brady said in a statement released by the Irish Catholic Bishops' Conference. "Children deserved better, and especially from those caring for them in the name of Jesus Christ."
Edmund Garvey, a spokesman for the Christian Brothers, whose 2004 lawsuit against the commission resulted in the shielding of names in the final report, told RTE Radio that the order was "deeply sorry, deeply regretful."
The Catholic Church sponsored scores of reformatories, orphanages and industrial schools where more than 30,000 boys and girls deemed to be delinquent or incorrigible were sent from the 1930s until the end of the 20th century. In some instances, the children's only "fault" was to be born out of wedlock.
The commission found that corporal punishment and other forms of physical abuse were standard practice at many institutions for dealing with any perceived misbehavior.
"Extreme punishment was a feature of the boys' schools. Prolonged, excessive beatings with implements intended to cause maximum pain occurred with the knowledge of staff management," the report says.
Girls also were subject to "ritualized beatings," often administered by the nuns in a way calculated to "increase anguish and humiliation," the report found.
"One way of doing this was for children to be left waiting for long periods to be beaten. Another was when it was accompanied by denigrating or humiliating language."
Some victims told the commission that seeing or hearing other children being beaten was a terrifying experience that has haunted them ever since.
"It's something you never forget," Tom Sweeney told Irish television, referring to the five years he spent in industrial schools, including two years at Artane, a facility run by the Christian Brothers in Dublin.
"Things didn't happen in your life after that," said Sweeney, 63. "Your life fell apart. Your marriage fell apart. Your communication with your children fell apart, and it all stems [from] being in Artane. We never got closure, and we never will get closure."
