Victims of child abuse at Catholic institutions in the Irish Republic have expressed anger that a damning report will not bring about prosecutions.

The report, nine years in the making and covering a period of six decades, found thousands of boys and girls were terrorised by priests and nuns.

Government inspectors failed to stop beatings, rapes and humiliation.

John Walsh, of Irish Survivors of Child Abuse, said he felt "cheated and deceived" by the lack of prosecutions.

The findings will not be used for criminal prosecutions - in part because the Christian Brothers successfully sued the commission in 2004 to keep the identities of all of its members, dead or alive, unnamed in the report.

No real names, whether of victims or perpetrators, appear in the final document.

Mr Walsh said: "I would have never opened my wounds if I'd known this was going to be the end result.

"It has devastated me and will devastate most victims because there are no criminal proceedings and no accountability whatsoever."

Police were called to the Commission to Inquire Into Child Abuse's news conference in Dublin amid angry scenes as victims were prevented from attending.

The victims were among 35,000 children who were placed in a network of reformatories, industrial schools and workhouses until the early 1990s.

More than 1,000 people had told the commission they suffered physical and sexual abuse.

The Catholic Church has in everyway failed when it comes to the sex abuse scandals.  Both here and abroad.  Countless and nameless victims going back to God knows when and the Church heirarchy knew it was happening.  These "pious" folks who committed these attrocities deserve much worse than what they are getting here.  I mean what apparently was taking place in Ireland was institutioanlized from top to bottom within these church programs.  Now there will be no prosecutions, how does that work?  Unbelievable....