Most of the children were heartbroken and terrified
An excerpt from the Goldenbridge chapter of the Ryan report.
“All of the complainants came to Goldenbridge in harrowing circumstances. Some had lost a parent, and the surviving parent was either not able to cope or was deemed by the State to be unsuitable. Others were abandoned. Some came from desperately poor families, and others were born out of wedlock to mothers who felt that society left them with no option but to place their child in care. Some of those committed were babies; others had spent a substantial part of their childhood with their families. Most of the children were heartbroken and terrified on entering Goldenbridge. They all shared a vulnerability that made them emotionally needy.
Complainants lived in an atmosphere of constant fear of arbitrary punishment for misdemeanours and of being humiliated. Despite always being surrounded by people, many expressed an overwhelming sense of isolation and loneliness. Many of the complainants stated that they are left with deep psychological scars as a result of their time in Goldenbridge…
One witness spoke of arriving at Goldenbridge as a six-year-old child in the late 1940s after her mother had died of TB. She described the experience as ‘very very harrowing’: she said she was stripped of her clothes and that all her hair was cropped.
When asked whether she had understood at the time why her clothes were being taken from her, she replied:
No. You weren’t told. You were just used and abused … you were disposable … They didn’t give a stuff about what you were, whether you were a child, whether you were breathing, whether you were living, what you were feeling. Nobody bothered about a child. You were just a disposable item. That’s the way it seemed to me. That’s the way I have carried all through my life. I don’t like what I have carried all through my life. It has left me vulnerable, raw and it has affected the whole of my life.
I used to scurry around. I used to try to dodge and weave to get away from the beatings, the abuse. You didn’t. You were helpless. Wherever you were you were a helpless victim. You couldn’t get away from them. They used to clatter you, they used to batter you. The names you were called. The stuff you had to go through. The thing was you were always so alone. There was never anybody there for you. Nobody was there this is what I find so hard to tell you. You were lumped together and you were one of a many, many …
Multiply by thousands.
Remind you of anything? (Hint: Treblinka, Sobibor, etc.) What a heart-breaking story. Just think of yourself as a six year old child, your mother having just died, treated like a thing! Not only disposable. An object of abuse. And the religious congregations say that, while unwilling to pay a larger share of the costs of their abuse, they’re willing to work with the victims of abuse!! Warms your heart, doesn’t it?!
So tea chez the cardinal makes up for this. . .
“.. she said she was stripped of her clothes and that all her hair was cropped.”
His Grace the Protestant Lord Archbishop of Dublin in 1859 is writing on the Protestant Asylum for Females discharged from the convict prisons.
He says:
The success which has attended the system of remedial training in converting criminals into useful members of society, is as well known as it is gratifying to every lover of social progress.
Three institutions are necessary in the system:
the Reformatory Schools which are at least preventive,
the Convict Prisons which is corrective,
and the Reformatory Asylum, which as confirmative is essential to its complete development.
It is desirable that Protestants, as well as Roman Catholics should have the benefit of each of these departments in the system.
The Roman Catholics, have established a flourishing Reformatory Asylum at Goldenbridge. for members of their communion who have been discharged from prisons:
it is surely incumbent upon Protestants to establish a similar institution.
Social progress meant taking children’s clothing off them when they arrived In the institution. If the clothes were pretty, which they usually were, (excepting those, of course, who came from families who neglected them totally) they were given to the pets. Heads were shaved when children arrived and also if children absconded from the institution. I always sported a hairstyle that consisted of the whole back of the neck, as well as underneath the thin outer layer of hair at the back of the head, which was shaved with an electric razor by Sr F. She was so utterly obsessed with using this barbers’ drill on my head and it used to disturb me greatly. Children, who had no visitors, were singled out for this treatment. It invariably occurred during the time when she was not sleeping in the classroom, or wheeling the pram that was beside her in the classroom.
I do wonder how the Asylum that his Lordship had big dreams for fared out indeed? Were all those, who had the privilege of sampling his wonderful ideals and philosophy also enjoy being called by numbers. 139
Eric. Goldenridge ect were an apalling abuse of human rights but please dont raise the spectre of the holocaust,six million jews,two million gypsies and countless others were slaughtered by the nazi,s during that period.
Yeah, there was appalling abuse of babies who were left on potties all day and who were beaten ferociously by untrained minders who knew no better, because they too, would have been abused by the same system, when they were young.
The abuse that occurred to babies/children reared in institutions was not understood by them at all, as they would have associated their awfulness with normality. Affection-less thieves syndrome! I surmise! Survivors who went into institutions at older ages were far more able to comprehend their devastated and traumatised positions as they could make comparisons about their lives they had in the outside world and that of the ones in institutions. Babies and older children automatically clung to these street-wise children as they oozed of various types of emotions which they never knew nothing about at all. Children who grew up in the system from very young ages and who went on to look after babies and children fulfilled all the commands of the religious as their minds were totally trained to the mindset of the institution. Damaged minds do not know that they are doing harm so therefore they are not responsible. The religious, who were adults, who ran the institutions, well… that is a different story.
BTW, the government has still not expunged the criminal records of these babies and toddlers who would have gone through the courts in order for the religious to have received Capitation grants.
The constant slow-drip mental emotional, psychological, physical abuse which occurred to children, who were incarcerated in Goldenbridge, over long periods has been proven by Professor Carr, who done a study to be worse than sexual abuse. I would totally agree with him as would people like Christine Buckley of Goldenbridge.
Some Goldenbridge babies and toddlers and young children I know would have welcomed the gas chambers as they would have been taken out of their daily painful lives. They would not have resorted to have gotten rid of themselves because of the unbearabe-ness of their lives. Peter Tyrrell, was one such notorious inmate who set himself alight on Hampstead Heath.
Richard, a ‘holocaust’ of abuse occurred to babies., toddlers, and young children in institutions. I would like to reiterate that the abuse did not occur to ‘adults’ it occurred to defenceless babies, toddlers and young children. The operative words being BABIES, TODDLERS AND YOUNG CHILDREN.
Richard, of course I am not equating one enormity with the other. That would be absurd. But the similarity is very striking – stripped and shorn.
Think of yourself as that lonely, grieving, confused little girl, and then ask yourself how her experience differed from a little girl arriving at a death camp. Well, she got to live in her hell. But don’t kid yourself. This wasn’t simply an ‘appalling abuse of human rights.’ It was the deliberate dehumanisation of sensitive human beings, who probably, like other children, as Marie-Theres records, banged her head against the wall to numb her feelings.
Let’s not minimise the full horror of what happened to these children. From the descriptions from the Ryan report that I have read, the warders of these prisons acted not very differently to Nazis, and buried what they did behind walls and clouds of religious rhetoric and incense. I am not disposed to cut them any slack.
Your post crossed mine, Marie-Therese. Thanks for putting this into perspective, as only someone who was there can do.
Eric, thanks for your comments, they are very much appreciated by me indeed. I have not as yet not gotten around to reading the Ryan, formerly, Laffoy Report due to a mixture of shock and a bad bout of the flu. Undoubtedly, there will be not too much that I was not cognisant of, prior to its publication. It has taken one long decade for it to come to fruition. It has only basically touched on a very small element of abuse that occurred in industrial schools in the past in Ireland.
The religious tried relentlessly to disturb the smooth running of the commissions work.
It was so difficult having to make an appearance at CICA. But I would have regretted it enormously afterwards, had I not gone there (some few years ago) to give evidence to Judge Ryan. He was very harsh with me to begin with and I was left stunned. Nonetheless, in hindsight now, I realise that it was all part of the work he was doing to extract proper and professional evidence. Besides he never got away with it as my solicitor wrote a strong letter to CICA, rebuking him thoroughly for his unacceptable behavior towards not only me but also the the solicitor working on my behalf. The solicitor was as red as a berry.
Survivors in general were very wary of him at the outset as he took over from Mary Laffoy, whom we were all very proud of and trusted to the last. The department of education refused to cooperate with her and she stepped down as she felt that she was being hindered from doing the job that the government entrusted to her.
I went in style to the commissions’ headquarters. It was by taxi, having stayed in an expensive hotel the night before. I made sure to avail of the trimmings that were made available to me. i carried in my hand a replica of a pliers that we would have used to make rosary beads in the secret rosary beads factory. The taxi-man was very curious about why I was holding tightly on to this implement. He said, with a nervousness in his voice “I hope you don’t mind me asking you, but why you are clasping that object in your hand?” He was relieved when I told him it was a weapon of mass destruction and it was being brought to the CICA and hopefully the stories behind implements like this will make Irish history. He was flabbergasted and said with a big gasp ‘fair dues to you” as I stepped out of the taxi. My solicitor/counsel were also gobsmacked when they saw me with the pliers, I think they thought I was going to put it to use as a weapon. They had not told me beforehand that the religious of Goldenbridge were going to be present at the hearing. so they were privy to that inside information and I guess, based their own fear on that knowledge. I plainly told them that I wanted to show the CICA hearing members the heaviness of this pliers which Sister Helena O’ Donoghue, provincial leader of the Sisters of Mercy had tried to play regarding the whole issue of the rosary bead making in Goldenbridge. I was to find out later from another person who was with me in Goldenbridge that she had brought her pliers, wire and beads and throughout her whole hearing of a couple of hours she made rosary beads in the dock.
I can’t imagine the courage it took for you to go to the inquiry, and, whatever the reason for the judge’s harshness, some respect, surely, was due to those who had already suffered so much. Certainly, professionalism is necessary in a situation like this, but it doesn’t have to be cruel. Still it takes a lot of guts to stand up to a religious institution. Look at the self-censorship of the weedy publishers. Religion is off limits. Kudos to you for helping to bring light to a very dark time. Now, if only the religious congregations would show similar courage, and not only acknowledge their criminal past, but be prepared to pay the piper too, and commit perpetrators to trial.
They’ve sheltered their assets in trusts, I understand. Of course, they would. I wonder how safe those trusts are, given the fact that the trusts were likely formed for the express purpose of sequestering assets.
Typical of religion. Of course, religions hide all the time. They have to. After all, they manage to believe the impossible and pretend that it is the simple truth!
It is perhaps worth remarking here that, of SS men who manned the Nazi death camps, a large proportion were catholic, and many of those were communicating catholics. I stand to be corrected, of course, but I believe this to be true.
Oh, Richard, do stop monitoring all mention of the Nazis. Nobody is saying they are exactly equivalent, but some of us are noticing some similarities. That’s legitimate and it’s also highly relevant. We don’t need you pouncing on every use of the word ‘Nazi.’
Interesting about the pliers M-T! You said a replica – did you find a pair that were like the ones you had used as a child, or had you kept a pair?
Fascinating about the witness who made rosaries throughout her testimony.
That’s one of the more stunning parts of chapter 7 – the fact that the Sisters of Mercy ha ha said the idea was to give the children something to do and to keep them out of trouble, combined with the fact that they were required to do 60 decades a day and 90 on Saturdays and that only the most skilled older girls could do 60 in two hours, and that girls who failed to make the required number were beaten. A pleasant hobby, forsooth!!
I was to receive another shock immediately after the hearing, which had to be halted for a time during the course of it, due to all the stress that had unknowingly built up inside me. I was taken into an ante-room and Sister Helena O’ Donoghue, who was at the hearing came in and asked to shake my hand, I was so spaced out and mesmerised as I just did not see this coming at all. It was also further amazed when SHO’D, put it to me very nicely if I would like to see Sr X. I declined the offer immediately. I began to think about the strategy that was employed by the religious to try to ease their own guilt. I was certainly not going to let them get off the hook that lightly. It was my day in court. I was holding the weapon of mass destruction and I was not going to hand it over to them that easy. Laying down my weapon of mass destruction was not going to happen on their terms. My fight with them was not over by a long chalk. This was just another stage of the war on the religious. I know there were others from Goldenbridge who fell hook line and sinker for their pusillanimous behaviour. We gave them a dreadful time when we heard how they had hugged Sr. X after the CICA hearing.
I know that Sr X was a very cruel nun in GB. She was the product of her own family background, etc, etc because of all the responsibility she carried with respect of her own younger siblings after her parent or parents died. But this still did not give her a licence to terrorise children every day of their lives in GB. She mellowed when she went to Rathdrum, though all because she had no other choice, she was in a more open environment. Goldenbridge was a convict refuge and was prison- like structure and very hidden from society.
The nuns in the convent were not allowed to have any contact, or very little, with children from the institution. Sr X controlled everything, and everyone that came in her direction. This included the children, parents food, maintenance, other nuns, untrained staff, department of education, inspectors, doctor, you name it, she ran the whole shebang with an iron fist.
She will not accept that she was very cruel to children, but she was and there is no getting away from that truth. She should not have been given the responsibility by her order in Carysfort of looking after 150/190 children at any given time as well as trying to teach a class. It was so utterly crazy. Her order is as much to blame for allowing her to run the whole show.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_Ykcjb8SS0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_Ykcjb8SS0
Just like the idea of the signing of the solidarity book in the Mansion House, Dublin, which the lord mayor will have on display all week in honour of survivors of Irish institutional abuse. And the idea of a memorial being erected is great as well. I wonder, will people sign their names here, to show solidarity in the same way as they have done at the Mansion House.
I will start with my own name and see if the world at large will follow suit. Here goes: Please ask your friends also to join in the campaign.
Marie-Therese O’ Loughlin, Goldenbridge Industrial School, Inchicore, Dublin 8 Ireland.
If you are interested in signing your name will you do so in the articles section of B&W. Thanking you so very kindly indeed!
Eric a large number of the S.S were masculine homosexuals but I dont think you can draw any conclusions from that either,the nazi,s hated Jews and other for various reasons, for instance Hitler hated Jews for mainly ethnic reasons whereas Eichmann hated them mainly for religious reasons.
Sorry O.B I dont mean to monitor,its just that I think Hitller/nazi comparisons are used far to much by to many people.
Richard, this thread is not about the Nazis, nor about their inhumanity. However, it is simply ridiculous to compare homosexuality in the SS and the catholic background of many SS members and thereby minimise the effect of religious anti-semitism on the success of the Nazi extermination of the Jews. The fact that the bishops of the German church, as well as the Pius XII, did not object strongly to Nazi racist anti-semitism, as they had, for example, to the so-called euthanasia (T4) programme, is widely recognised as a moral failure, and should be so recognised.
The fact that concentration camp guards were disproportionately Austrian catholics, that is, from a country where anti-semitic governments were given the full support of the Vatican, is not irrelevant to the anti-semitism of the Third Reich, especially since Hitler was grew up in this over-heated anti-semitic environment. At Vatican II the German bishops as a group acknowledged the moral failures of the church, which not only did not protest the Nuremburg race laws, but even helped Nazis to identify Jewish coverts to Christianity. And, as Gita Sereny points out in her book about the Commandant of Treblinka, Franz Stangl, it was the silence of the church, plus its virulent anti-semitism, that helped to quiet Stangl’s conscience about his duties of industrially killing hundreds of thousands of people.
The fact that the Vatican Statement on the Shoah, We Remember: A Reflection on the Shoah, tries to exculpate the church itself, if not some of her children, from all blame for the Holocaust, is another sign of its unwillingness to accept its moral responsibilities.
The use of the same kind of unaccountable power, the same unwillingness to look clearly and steadily at their moral responsibilities, is clearly in evidence in the Irish schools scandal. They hampered the work of the Ryan Commission every step of the way, and now have bluntly said that, despite the fact that the horror was in fact greater than was previously thought, they are not prepared to revisit the settlement already made. They are quite prepared, as Marie-Therese says, to turn victims into supplicants, in a classic inversion strategy assumed by casual unaccountable power to those deemed to have and deserve none.
Perhaps the comparison with Nazis is made too often, but where the church is concerned, the comparison is often just, and perhaps not stressed as much as it should be. Since Hildebrand, Gregory VII, popes have been dictators, and arrogated not only spiritual but also secular power. It was this use of unaccountable power that permitted the church to behave in Ireland in such inhuman ways towards children, women, and others weaker than themselves. It was a failure to use its power that permitted the Nazis, whom the church supported as a bulwark against communism, to act as the scourge of Europe. The pope excommunicated communists en bloc, but never Hitler.
Richard…I understand that you think Nazi comparions are overused in other places – but that is not a good reason for you to pounce on every mention of the Nazis here. In fact that’s a very bad reason. The fact that the comparisons are overused in other places does not mean that they are overused here – and your pounces have all been simplistic knee-jerk misreadings of what was said. That’s the natural result of deciding that because other people overuse Nazi comparisons therefore you should pounce on all mention of the Nazis no matter what the substance or context or logic. You apparently don’t take the trouble to read carefully, you just see ‘Nazi’ and fire off a dissent. That’s not interesting or productive or helpful.
This seems to be the pattern – one that G has pointed out a few times too. You object to some bit of conventional wisdom out in the world, so you pounce on keywords from that conventional wisdom that turn up here, without noticing that what is being said is not identical to the conventional wisdom.
I keep begging you to slow down and read more carefully before commenting. Again: please slow down and read more carefully before commenting.
Not as funny as Nick’s link, in fact, not funny in the slightest, sorry if someone has already put it up here, but it’s tragic must-see: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EBi4sYK5rjI
More O’Brien (a little calmer, but still horrific):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SoARiGumm4E
Sorry to do three in a row, but Dawkins has seen and responded to the first of the two clips to which I just posted the link above and his response is succint enough to quote in full:
“I hope this man’s moving testimony is very widely distributed, in Ireland and elsewhere. If anybody feels like writing to the Irish authorities about this, it might be a good idea to link it to the church-backed attempts now under way to introduce a ludicrous blasphemy law in that beautiful but priest-infested country. The RC church in Ireland is under vigorous attack, ordination rates are at a record low, and the church could be said to be on the ropes. I’m not usually in favour of kicking people when they are down, but there’s always an exception, and I can’t think of a worthier exception than the Roman Catholic Church. Is it too much to hope that the reaction to the Ryan Report will signal the beginning of the end for that odious institution in Ireland?”
Well the Roman Catholic church isn’t ‘people,’ Richard! So kicking it when it’s down is not like kicking a priest when he’s down. Kicking an institution when it’s down is really quite another thing – and when the institution is That Church – well really…
Thanks to Stewart for the second link to Mr. O’Brien’s experiences. The man is a poet. (Loved his remark about ‘a land of priests and scholars’.) But the suffering that he describes is beyond belief, beyond belief that anyone should be treated so, but that it should have happened over and over and over again. And that he should still be labelled criminals because his mother died! The church may not be ‘people’ – can’t be, can it? – but I’d dearly like to see the wretches specimens of humanity that Mr. O’Brien is talking about named and shamed, and, if still alive, charged for their crimes. Time for Ireland to set this right.
I just read the article about the total ban on abortion in Nicaragua, and the words about the archbishop’s response – “For its part, the archbishop’s office in Managua told IPS that the Catholic Church’s stance on abortion is immovable” – are chilling. This orgainisation still represents one of the most life-denying ideologies in the world today, and they call themselves ‘pro-life’! And Nichols thinks that atheism is the world’s greatest evil. The mind reels!
Let’s kick the buggers again and again!
I look at the reactions from both sides and I get this mental flash of Ceaucescu getting a rude awakening on his balcony shortly before they shot him. I would like to live to see the day when the critical mass of people suddenly twig that this monster can be killed by just walking away from it.
So many people have defended religion from the attacks of atheists by saying that even if the truth-claims aren’t so, religion fills such vital social functions that – well, pardon me while I go and vomit.
How many such revelations are required for the penny to drop: no we don’t need something like that in our lives, we’d be far better off if it were consigned to history’s dustbin.
I didnt complain about people kicking the R.C church O.B I have no problem with kicking it, as Eric details with great eloquence it has a shamefull history in many regards. Eric of course you cant discount catholic anti semetism in regards to the holocaust all I am saying is that it was only one factor,there were also many other libels that were used against the Jews that had nothing to do with religion.
Another reason to read carefully, Richard. Ophelia was, I believe, speaking to Richard Dawkins this time, not to you (that is, regarding kicking someone when he’s down).
And, of course, there were other factors in Nazi anti-semitism. No question. But when little children are taken into an institution, stripped of their clothes, and shorn of their hair, it is hard not to think of other times and other places where similar things were done by similarly placed bullies.
As for Nazi anti-semitism. Well, no doubt racial anti-semitism was a step up from mere anti-semitism, as the chief US prosecutor at Nuremburg said, but without religious anti-semitism the Nazi extermination programme would have had no engine. Unlike Edmund Standing, I believe the New Testament to be deeply and indelibly anti-semitic. Even passages (like Romans 9-11) that Christians have tried to read in a positive way are, I believe, inherently dangerous.
But of course this is all by the way. I was merely using the welcome to Goldenbridge as redolent of other welcomes by other unacccountable powers. Marie-Therese has made the comparison, and she was there. I believe he comparison is just.
Der. Of course I was speaking to Richard Dawkins.
For some weird reason – for self-protection! Because it’s not okay to deprive children (or anyone) of water.
OB: I guess you remember me telling you about the cans that we dipped into the toilets. I can still see the yellow inlay of the them, glistening with the reflection and thus creating a glorious thirsty yellowy feeling that was pure heaven. We drank away to our heart’s content. Drinking out of toilets was altogether a heavenly activity. We also scooped water from the cisterns with our hands and what a relief it was indeed! I also remember a child flushing a rabbit down the toilet to wash him – she knew no better, she was really trying to wash him – gosh, it makes me shudder now to think that this water was the coming from the same source that we drank.
Every afternoon scraps of toast, biscuits and other leftovers from St Ita’s staff dining room were thrown out from the corridor window into the enclosed prison yard. Children fought like cats and dogs to gather them from the ground. Children got locked into each other and reefed each others heads. This could last for over a half hour at a time. The staff who initially threw the bread out of the window roared with laughter as they got such great satisfaction seeing children turn on each other.
Marie-Therese, I read your accounts of what it was like to be a prisoner in the Irish children’s gulags, and I wonder how any survived with a shred of dignity left – which you so clearly have. I went to a boarding school, and it was cruel enough, in all conscience, but I could never have imagined such cruelties as you describe. But then I read that the Vatican – it must have been with the Benedict’s knowledge and approval, surely – has now called abortion a greater crime against humanity than anything done in the Irish schools, and it becomes clear that they simply do not understand what they have done. And then, of course, we have the assinine Mark Vernon reflecting that it must be very hard to be good in a world without god when it is so evident that gods have nothing whatever to do with goodness.
But I wonder why you need to be so careful not to name names, and cannot point the finger at the moral bankrupts who allowed these things to go on for generations in the name of a god, and who continue to cover up the perpetrators of these crimes, and thus become sharers in their perfidy. This becomes especially poignant when the Vatican is clearly trying to shift the burden of guilt to those who choose not to have children rather than to bring them unwanted into the world. Isn’t it about time that names were named, and accusations made, and justice demanded before the justified outrage of thousands, perhaps millions, sinks into the quicksand of moral inanity into which the Vatican threatens to sink it once again?
When popes were adulterers and murderers, simoniacs and warmongers, they made up a story about a whole realm of suffering called purgatory, and profitted by the scheme. Now they want to shift our attention from real harms to the wholly fictional world of a holocaust of the unborn.
Never mind real kids and the horors of what the church did to them with impunity, about which they now make faint and prevaricating shows of repentance. Let’s trip off, they tell us, to an imaginary world where they alone can wield the staff of righteousness once again, and forget the real horrors of the past and present. Let’s forget that, where the church still has power, it rules with immoveable confidence in its righteousness (see Nicaragua), regardless of the damage done to real people dealing with the trauma of real life.
The church cares not a whit for the living. It’s always either the dead, or the unborn. It even makes a fetish of suffering. But in the imaginary realms where there is no suffering the church pretends to the right to rule with a rod of iron, and forces real people to suffer real pangs of pain, despair and abandonment for the sake of this last refuge of absolutes, the realm of the unborn and the already dead.
Why not name the buggers, and redirect our moral gaze where it should be directed, towards those who can suffer the slings and arrows of ordinary fortune and misfortune. There have been too many empty words about the imagined sufferings of the dead or about crimes that have no victims. Show up the men in frocks as morally bankrupt, as they are. Surely, the real offenders in this moral quagmire can’t simply walk away? Justice, as the saying goes, must be seen to be done. The Michael O’Brien’s and the Marie-Therese’s of Ireland need to see it done. Words and money are not enough. But the immoral attempt to shift our gaze is beneath contempt. The pope should be told this, to his cost. Time to strip off his mask.
Eric, I read somewhere that the orders have explicitly said that they would sue if any of them were named. I don’t know if that applies to major media only – but I assume that’s why the names aren’t flying around all over the place. (But of course thousands of people know the names – so it probably won’t be secret forever.)
What I don’t understand is why, if thousands already know the names, the threat of a suit is credible? They must know that if they sue, it will all come out, every last stinking detail. I don’t think they will sue, and I think they are simply trying to revictimise the victims. People like the cardinal and the archbishop, who have already said the religious congregations should impoverish themselves in repaying for the harm they have done, could thunder warnings loudly enough that the religious congregations would have to hesitate. This is an unreal situation. At least hundreds of known perpetrators, and scarcely anyone being named! It’s bizarre. The law’s an ass, to be sure, but this much of one?
Yeah I don’t understand it either and haven’t had time to explore it yet – it’s been a hectic week. Paddy Doyle probably discusses this…Well lots of people probably do. It does indeed make absolutely no sense – these people weren’t CIA agents – their names are a matter of public record, surely. (One hopes the church wasn’t allowed to keep all its records secret…but who the hell knows, really, maybe it was…)
To be continued.
Mary McAleese, President of Ireland, who was last week on a three-day visit to Boston, said she believed the debate that was needed on the indemnity deal, which was struck between the religious orders and the government on the last day of office (or rather, the dirty deal, that victims were forever and a day highlighting) should focus not on money but on what was done to the victims.
“Should not focus on money,” right, I get that
Mary McAleese, who is a devout Catholic, said with the next breadth
“she knows that some people in Ireland worry that the renewed focus on abuse of children by clergy will damage the good works of the Catholic Church, which remains one of Ireland’s major societal institutions.
She does not say here abuse of children by “religious” – which the Ryan Report is
all about, remember, she is in Boston where a lot of abuse occurred with ‘clergy’
She reminds the reader also of the good works of the religious.
She continues
“This is not the time for saying that. It is time to focus on the true victims here, she said. I feel very sorry for members of religious orders who have dedicated their lives to helping others. But this is not the time to focus on that. This was an atrocious betrayal of love.”
The president tells us that it is time to focus on the victims yet she follows that sentence with her sorriness for the religious orders
It was not the time to focus on money, but it was alright to focus on the good works the religious did in the past.
“I feel very sorry for members of religious orders who have dedicated their lives to helping others. But this is not the time to focus on that.”
She reiterates her sorrow for the religious orders.
“Some people were under the mistaken impression that this report was meant to bring closure,”
Some people, being, the religious and the state, who got the shock of their lives to find out that the people of Ireland rose up on the day of reckoning. The religious/state are devastated that the country had a different perspective on abuse that occurred in industrial schools.
McAleese said in an interview at her hotel in Boston.
“It was the closing of doors to these matters that was so harmful. It was the closing of doors that prevented victims from telling their stories. Those doors have been opened up to vindication, the stories, and it will prompt a massive, public debate. I think we need to have a huge debate, about how this was allowed to happen, on why these stories weren’t heard before.”
Mary McAleese was told these stories umpteen times before by victims of institutional abuse.
The media in Ireland put a lid on voices of victims of institutional and only ever entertained the self appointed leaders who were paid handsomely by the government to keep us down.
We were silenced and annihilated by the very people with whom we grew up in the institutions. Their hands were tied and sadly that is recognised by us. The government will now use the abuse group leaders to claw back money from the religious.
About a decade ago a lot of us from Goldenbridge and other industrial schools had plans to take our cases to the high courts. We had everything arranged by our respective solicitors to go in that direction. This was before the outset of the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse and the Redress Board.
Alas, when the latter was set up we grudgingly made a detour, as undoubtedly, we were told by our legal teams that that was the best option. I was not of that opinion at all up to the very end.
“But I wonder why you need to be so careful not to name names,”
Eric: thanks for your interest! Child Abuse in Industrial Schools is an emotive issue and even some highly trained people here in Ireland cannot go there as it is too distressing for them indeed. Survivors have not got that privileged choice of ignoring it, they have to be deal with it to the last. It is part of Ireland’s sordid history and it must be faced up to at all costs. I sincerely hope lessons concerning the care of children are learned from all our regurgitation over the last decade.
Check this out when you have time. Ireland learned a lot from the Canadian model.
http://www.rirb.ie/
Eric, see Ireland: Abusers Should Turn Themselves In. At B&W News.
‘If they have any conscience they should come forward now’, Justice Minister Dermot Aherne said.
What a whole load of Boloney. Did you ever hear the likes of it in Ireland in all your life? Well, I for one, have certainly not, in all my humble existence. So the state is asking, in all consciousness, that the religious come out of their creepy crawly convents, palaces and stately homes, with their hands held up high, Alleluia and Whaaaaat (screaming at the same time). It is rather unfathomable to me to contemplate that the selfsame state (who has been so scared stiff of the Almighty power of the church) since the time of Methuselah is taking the upper hand and calling the shots. I will be damned! Something is not right here at all. What is the country coming to at all! I never thought I would live to see the day when the state would attempt to even try one teeny weeny bit to tie the hands of the religious behind their backs. I am gob-smacked. There has to be some dynamics of a peculiar suspicious nature going on behind the government scenes. There is obviously some worldly sociological game going on that includes the urgent artificial appeasement of Irish society – who the government had heretofore believed were too docile to question the authority of the Catholic Church. Did the Ryan Report peak its ugly duckling head far too soon – at a time when the government had hoped it would be done and dusted in time for it to concentrate its energies on the European elections?
The RIRB Act of 2002 was flawed. Period! The Irish government cherry-picked institutions which went on it and refused downright to listen to individuals who desperately tried to point out to it – this fact. I wrote to irish Times on innumerable occasions over the years and was completely ignored. I tried to post this little snippet of information on the comment line and it was, I think, rejected.
There is a fear of the government taking on the religious. it has got its hands burned by Sr Helena O’ Donoghue and another nun with respect of the dirty deal. i pointed out on this very site so many times the behaviour of Sr Helena O’ Donogue and said something to the effect that the last laugh would be on her face.
A few years ago, when we were giving our evidence to CICA the holy nun had the audacity to display a photo of her grinning like a Siamese cat on the religious Sisters of Mercy website. She was, in my estimation, anyway, putting up the two fingers to us. I was so outraged by the behavior of this otherwise opaque evasive sister who was appearing before Judge Ryan. it just did not sit properly with me and the insensitivity of it sent me into a spin.
Asking abusers to turn themselves in and confess their crimes is about as much use as asking the pope to admit that, after all, he isn’t infallible. It was all just a joke.
Laws should protect people, but it seems that nothing can protect people from the abuses of religion. Religions prosper when people accept without thinking, and follow without question, and, as such, religions are inherently devious and dangerous.
Notice what Archbishop Martin said:
Not a word about the perpetrators or the criminals. Nothing to say that the orders should give them up, make their names public, shame them. No, he speaks instead of the honour of the religious congregations, and pretends he is speaking of the abused. They should pay, and that would render honour to their charismatic founders. How about honouring those who were abused by giving up the criminals in their midst, by naming their names, by making their deeds a byword for moral infamy?
The archbishop says nothing about this, and thus shames himself. Money is not enough, and, given the level of suspiciousness that exists in such cases – “Oh, they’re only in it for the money,” and that sort of compassionate remark – one of the comments on the news story in the American Magazine about Martin’s speech, says:
And now I’ll have to go back to the start of that sentence: Money is not enough; the victims of this abuse need to see that those who perpetrated these crimes are, at the very least, shamed in public for their deeds.
No doubt they have confessed and received absolution long ago, but no one has the right to take their responsibility away. That’s what is so horrendous about Christian ideas of redemption. It can all be done in secret. Now the archbishop and the cardinal want them to buy back their dignity. But you can’t buy dignity. It can only be done by bringing the perpetrators of this abuse out of hiding. The church’s continuing in this audacious course is a sign that they have really learned nothing. Their holiness, they seem to think, emerges unscathed. They obviously know nothing of irony.
“That’s what is so horrendous about Christian ideas of redemption. It can all be done in secret.”
Yes. All reconciliation and no truth.
The Amish have the same deal, and it too works badly when there is systematic abuse.
Yeah, it is all just spin-doctoring with their extremely careful weighing of words. Pouring out subliminal sound bites on the scales to favour the religious to try desperately to separate them from their heinous crimes. Is the Archbishop of Dublin not one of them and has he not been sent over to Ireland from Rome by the pope to sort out the child abuse debacle.
[Y]ou cannot just leave things as they are. There are many ways in which substantial financial investment in supporting survivors and their families can be brought about, perhaps in creative ways which would once again redeem your own charism as educators of the poor. In many ways it is your last chance to render honour to charismatic founders and to so many good members of your congregations who feel tarnished.
Up you and ‘yours’! ADM. See how he mentions ‘your’ four times in the one small para. All directed towards them and peppered with ‘support’ and ‘creative’ ‘honour’ and ‘good’. He is merely doing a ‘Nichols’.
The government is the only one who is going to benefit from this speech of ADM. As the government is now trying to seek 50/50 of the bill.
The government already gives everybody in adverse circumstances, or on low incomes the opportunity to receive education and counselling, so there is nothing more creative that the religious can give. That speech of DM in actuality, is to try to wield monies for the government alone and the victims will get the crumbs that fall on the ground.
I do not think that the religious will redeem the charisma of the founders of their orders that quickly as the damage they have done in the past to children, whom they were supposed to have educated, has shone an eternal light on them and it has also left an everlasting message on the psyche of Irish society. They had to be metaphorically dragged out of their houses, screaming the mantra ‘we are not guilty’. Irish society has experienced a shift in their thinking. We put areligious bomb underneath them and shocked them into changing their mindsets.
Sr Elizabeth Maxwell, (who was the other Sister of Mercy who went with Sr Helena O’ Donoghue to the Dail with their briefcases to create the dirty deal) was on RTE 1 radio the other morning talking about how the deal was struck between the government and the eighteen religious orders. During the interview there were some words of hers that came across so coldly to me as a survivor of one of their institutions. She kept referring to us as ‘those people’.
Those people happened to mostly spend their whole childhoods under their care. They were supposed to take over the parents we never had at all. Those words went through me like a dagger.
Yes, Marie-Therese, I’m so glad you saw it that way. At first I thought: Hey, these guys seem to care! But then it was obviously a bit of window dressing, or spin-doctoring, as you call it. They had to have the nice ‘sound bite’ for public consumption. That’s what religious charisma looks like. It’s all words, but the heart of it is cold.
So, of course, you, and the others who shared your suffering, would be ‘those people’, the ones who threaten to expose the lie that people who call themselves ‘sister’ and ‘father’ and ‘your grace’, and all the other church honorifics, represent. Poor old Nichols let his guard down, and we saw into his cold heart. That wasn’t helpful, said the archbishop, because the archbishop and the cardinal wanted to fob people off with nice ‘Christian’ words, but hide the truth, and conceal the criminals, and so, of course, they become criminals themselves. If they won’t name the criminals, they’re hiding them. So, it’s a criminal organisation. Bring it down.
Thanks again Eric, for taking an interest in this topic. We have been drowned out so much by trivial kit going on in the world. I note that academic people in particular would rather talk about mundane boring things than engage with people on the subject of institutional child abuse. Lack of education deprives one of articulating themselves properly and in times like this it would be helpful if they were there to help out. I am rather taken aback by their behaviour. Perhaps they find it beneath them to engage with the uneducated. Shallowness Rules!
There are two more important clerical abuse reports coming out in Ireland in the not too distant future. They are the Dublin Diocesan and the Cloyne reports which will further condemn the secular RC church. The Ryan Report will then be history.
The religious have all their own highly paid media experts backing them, to see them safely though the whole debacle – while we are left with – accidentally, a humble ex lord mayor to get our point across. It would have been nice to have been supported by the educated people of this world who could have even in the least have signed our petition, if they did not want to get into discussion.
I know there are other important similar issues going on in the world and I support them fully and during this time one cannot make comparisons. The publication of the Ryan Report was supposed to have been our day out in the media sun. We have been failed miserably by the intellectual world as far as I am concerned. i can cite one example – but it disgusts me so much i will not even bother at all.
“Interesting about the pliers M-T! You said a replica – did you find a pair that were like the ones you had used as a child, or had you kept a pair?”
OB:
Yes, indeed. I got a similar pair of pliers from Mitchell’s factory some years ago – and I kept them for the CICA occasion. I also used them for making fancy crystal sterling-silver ear-rings, which complimented the evening glittery crochets shawls, scarves bags, and crochet neck -bands and hats that I created from my head.
Charles Mitchell’s (who was a very public RTE News reader figure of the past) brother supplied the beads, along with Walsh’s of Rathfarnam to Goldenbridge. Irish society is as much to blame as the religious for all that went on behind closed prison walls.
Survivors of institutional abuse are going on a silent march from the GPO to the Dail in a fortnight. They should have taken that route years ago – instead of pointing the finger at some of their own who did take that road. indeed!
which went down a treat with the crochet
Two corrections.
It should have been “complemented” in last post.
Also, Sr Maxwell was a Presentation Order Sister and not a Sister of Mercy.
Marie-Threse, I hope your protest march to the Dail will be successful in reigniting some of the sense of outrage people felt when the Ryan Report was first issued. And the reports on Dublin and Cloyne should just be more fuel to the same fire. They need not distract attention from the sufferings of the children in the industrial schools.
The problem is, of course, that media have a way of moving on very quickly to new things. It was Andy Warhol who spoke, I think, of the 15 minutes of fame. And the church is so adept at pushing things along, and putting itself at the centre of things, always. How quickly the archbishop and the cardinal refocused attention, just be appearing to be sympathetic and caring. Suddenly people saw the church as it wants to be seen, and all its sins seems like exceptions to the rule.
The religious are past-masters at the art of laying down spiritual smokescreens. That’s what religion is, after all, so they have to be good at it. The only way to deal with it is to have patience. But, it seems, we do have the churches on the run. Let’s keep them running. They’ll never tire, but the public, largely the young public, is more and more aware of the trickery of the religions. They are the ones who will bring the church to its knees in the end. Religions expect people to tire, after they have grabbed the limelight back again, and so they grow confident again. Don’t give them the chance. Faith is spread by talking about it in season and out of season. That’s the only way it will be defeated.
Don’t forget that the church outlived and lived down the Inquisition. It takes a lot to bring it down, but I believe it can be done with patience and outspokenness. That’s why people like Dawkins are so important. They know that religions are still around because the religious are tireless. And they won’t go away just because they are ignored. They need to be opposed and opposed and opposed.
I hope your protest march to the Dail will be successful in reigniting some of the sense of outrage people felt when the Ryan Report was first issued.
Eric:
IMHO, they should have marched and taken to the Dail years ago in a very strident manner to express themselves, instead of pointing the finger at their own who did take that route. It should not have needed the publication of the Ryan, formerly Laffoy report to have fired them on – there was enough ammunition out there for them to throw forcefully at the government if only they had the realisation to know that indeed.. Alas, they were also discouraged to do so because the government set nearly all the abuse groups up in centres and they were afraid to voice their opinions for fear of the government closing down these centres. Some survivors fared financially well in running these outlets and it would not have suited them to rock the institutional boat. Some survivors reckoned that they sold themselves to the very source who had failed them in the past, namely the education dept. The redress board is run by an arm off the education department – which I think is absolutely ridiculous. I have vociferously pointed out this point to the government. The government and most abuse groups together have kept individual lone institutional figures at bay when they have voiced their opinions as they know that the deal that was struck by the government was a shaky one and they do not want to draw attention to it because of the floodgates. They are still going to make sure that nobody outside of the remit of the institutional abuse schedule list will not get a look in indeed.
The government and religious are now sending out messages that there will be accountability and openness and transparency, with respect of the new deal – but who is to believe them when there have been obfuscations and obstacles all along the way. The religious have another thing coming if they think Irish society will forget this issue.
I think more people would join in the march if it was held on Sunday as opposed to mid-week, when workers are busy.. They could then attract, would be mass-goers.
The Christian Brothers deliberately tried to deny, as lately as May 15th last, less than a week, prior to publication of the Ryan report, that there was any abuse in institutions run by them. They had the temerity to send letters, repeatedly, to the Residential Institutions Redress Board, stipulating in no uncertain terms that no abuse occurred in their institutions.
Sr Helena O’ Donoghue tried the same caper, some years ago, with respect of Goldenbridge and I was so insensed that I came roaring on to B&W.
Ironically, all the CB’s letters were signed by the Christian Brothers’ province leader Br Kevin Mullan, who was also a member of the Cori team which negotiated the 2002 redress agreement with the State. The cheek of them to hoodwink not only the survivors but also the whole of Irish society.
“moderate slapping on the palms of the hands with the approved leather strap . . .” is all that apparently happened to the boys. Sr X also ascertained that she inherited a slapper, which undoubtedly she did – but that she only ever used it sparingly, or something to that effect. When in actuality she daily perpetually flogged children in Goldenbridge.
Systemic abuse was rampant in industrial schools.
Well, here I am, Marie-Therese, back at my own computer. My old one simply died. I hope you will keep us up to date on the protest march. Will the report on Dublin be out by then, or not?
It is simply mind-numbing to hear how people like the Christian Brothers, at this late date, can actually make claims that abuse did not happen. Here in Canada the Christian Brothers were involved, some of them convicted, for crimes against the children entrusted to their care, the school itself razed to the ground.
Trouble is, of course, that the church is always there, lurking in the background, just waiting for everyone to forget what happened, confident that only a few will remember and believe that harm was done. It’s been doing this for thousands of years. And there will always be someone there, too, to say it was just a deformation of Christian belief. The true heart of Christianity, they will say, is love and compassion. Of course, no doubt that is why Jesus (if we can believe the rumours) spoke of the fire that never goes out, where the worm never dies.
The real problem is that the faith is still there, shared amongst thousands, if not millions of minds and lives, and people of faith simply go on believing. The church can speak to them every Sunday, and often on ‘holy days’ as well. All their opponents have is occasional news reports, sometimes a flurry of news reports on a particular scandal or outrage. The only way to deal with religions is on the front page, and how to do this consistently is perhaps the most serious problem facing those who think that religion can only be, in the end, a social and moral disaster.
One happy thing might be that the religious orders are finding it hard to get recruits. There aren’t that many people any more who see the celibate life as a path to follow anywhere. That the unnaturalness of denying one’s sexuality, and trying, in vain, very often, to suppress it, led ultimately to widespread abuse, seems more obvious to us now. The idea that there is someting heroic about such ‘sacrifice’ is surely as close to nonsense as is possible to get.
I wish you luck in your protest march, and with your hope to keep these outrages by the ‘religious’ in the public eye.
Eric, have a look in the B&W article comment section. I placed little snippets of information there regarding impending march through Dublin city centre on to Dail Eireann, on Wednesday 10th March.
“It is simply mind-numbing to hear how people like the Christian Brothers, at this late date, can actually make claims that abuse did not happen.”
They were convinced silly that they were going to be exonerated – even up to the last few days. They caused mayhem throughout the commission hearings and the former was at a complete stand-still while court proceedings went ahead on the part of the latter to prevent religious names being mentioned in the Ryan Report. They won out with respect of the perpetrators not being mentioned. The obfuscation and shenanigans caused by this so called Christian organisation leaves so much to be desired. The CB’s in the finality truly got the most sliddery land of their lives. They will continue to behave in a despicable manner and try to get away with whatever it takes – even if it means holding the government to ransom. They are not finished with survivors, not by a long chalk.
The Ryan Report has affected the electorate so badly with respect of recent local, by, and European elections, that it will be partly responsible if the government, per chance, happens to collapse in the foreseeable future. That shook the government, it knew all about the atrocities that occurred to children in institutions long ago, but it wanted to keep a lid on it and hope we would go away. but you see, we never did at all. I would surmise that there are lot of other lay people out there who thought we were only trying to get on the gravy train.
“Here in Canada the Christian Brothers were involved, some of them convicted, for crimes against the children entrusted to their care, the school itself razed to the ground”
I sincerely hope that the same thing happens here –
A part of me feels sorry for Sr. X, because I think that she actually knew no better. She was kind to ‘some’ children and I believe that she rather mellowed when she went to Rathdrum, Co Wicklow, which was a more open environment and she would have been under much more scrutiny. She was also very much liked by social workers and some children and workers.
But that was not the situation that I remember in Goldenbridge. I remember seeing a photograph of her in the paper (some years ago) in her religious garb – just like she was in GB and she literally sent shivers down my spine. I had nightmares after seeing same. When I talked to Christine Buckley about it – she said exactly the same thing -our whole bodies perpetually shook at the mere sight of the fearful photo. She inculcated so much fear into our beings as children and she had the capacity to do the same to us as adults -even with a mere photo. It is stupid really and it sounds silly that some person in a photo could have the capacity to do this- hence the reason why none of us who appeared at the commission were told beforehand by our solicitors that she would be appearing. Apparently we all felt the same, so I am told. I remember the barrister who gave evidence (on behalf of GB inmates) to the commission, stating emphatically to me that of all the female institutional survivors that he encountered from all of the industrial schools, the angriest ones were those from Goldenbridge. i wonder would Sr. X be able to figure that one out at all.
Have you got a full-blown computer or a laptop? I have a 13 inch laptop which is kind of small – but it is very handy for carrying on the back into town. I also have a pay-as- you-go modem which is the size of a cigarette lighter and it is not too bad – can be very slow – but I momentarily get by with it and there are no big bills to pay each month.
Thanks once again for your concern regarding the Ryan Report.