This is a heartbreaking story.
Even worse than the physical abuse, even worse than the misplaced trust in those who were supposed to be most caring, even worse than the official indifference and efforts to avoid accountability, was the effort to break a person’s soul and spirit through humiliation.
It is difficult to say that some things could be worse than sexual abuse or rape, which is a terrible crime. But, in this case, there are examples to sustain such an argument.
The crushing of the personalities, of the identities, of these children was systematic and thorough.
They were put into Purgatory, if not Hell, on earth. From news reports published in recent years, as the inquiry dragged on, it seems that it was even worse for the girls than for the boys — though the girls endured less sexual abuse, it was their spirits and personalities, and their gender identity, which were relentlessly attacked — and they were all tortured.
The stories, recounted sporadically in the press, cut off one’s breath. Over 1,090 victims gave testimony.
It took nine years, but finally, a long-avoided and long-awaited report was released today in Ireland: “unveiled by High Court Justice Sean Ryan, [it] found that molestation and rape were ‘endemic’ in boys’ facilities, chiefly run by the Christian Brothers, and supervisors pursued policies that increased the danger. Girls supervised by orders of nuns, chiefly the Sisters of Mercy, suffered much less sexual abuse but frequent assaults and humiliation designed to make them feel worthless”
According to a report by the Associated Press, “Wednesday’s 2,600-page report sides almost completely with the horrific reports of abuse from former students sent to more than 250 church-run, mostly residential institutions“.
John Kelly, a former inmate of a Dublin industrial school who fled to London and today leads a pressure group called Irish Survivors of Child Abuse, said that “Victims will feel a small degree of comfort that they’ve been vindicated. But the findings do not go far enough”.
The AP reported that “Irish church leaders and religious orders all declined to comment Wednesday, citing the need to read the massive document first. The Vatican also declined to comment. The Irish government already has funded a parallel compensation system that has paid 12,000 abuse victims an average of 65,000 euros ($90,000). About 2,000 claims remain outstanding. Victims receive the payouts only if they waive their rights to sue the state and the church. Hundreds have rejected that condition and taken their abusers and those church employers to court. Wednesday’s report said children had no safe way to tell authorities about the assaults they were suffering, particularly the sexual aggression from church officials and older inmates in boys’ institutions. ‘The management did not listen to or believe children when they complained of the activities of some of the men who had responsibility for their care’, the commission found. ‘At best, the abusers were moved, but nothing was done about the harm done to the child. At worst, the child was blamed and seen as corrupted by the sexual activity, and was punished severely’ … [T]he commission said its fact-finding — which included unearthing decades-old church files, chiefly stored in the Vatican, on scores of unreported abuse cases from Ireland’s industrial schools — demonstrated that officials understood exactly what was at stake: their own reputations”.
More information is available on the internet here.
This AP report can be read in full here.
The BBC reported that “The commission said overwhelming, consistent testimony from still-traumatized men and women, now in their 50s to 80s, had demonstrated beyond a doubt that the entire system treated children more like prison inmates and slaves than people with legal rights and human potential”. According to the BBC, the Irish report said that “The reformatory and industrial schools depended on rigid control by means of severe corporal punishment and the fear of such punishment … It was systemic and not the result of individual breaches by persons who operated outside lawful and acceptable boundaries”. The BBC story can be viewed in full here.
The religious correspondent of The Times of London (many in Britain are prejudiced against the Irish, particularly because they are mainly Catholic) wrote, quoting from the report “ ‘A climate of fear, created by pervasive, excessive and arbitrary punishment, permeated most of the institutions and all those run for boys’, says the report. ‘Children lived with the daily terror of not knowing where the next beating was coming from’. The authorities failed repeatedly to do anything effective about the systemic abuse of children. Many of these poor children were in the care of the Catholic Church in the first place – mostly the Christian Brothers for boys and Sisters of Mercy for girls – only because of truancy or petty crime, or because they were unmarried mothers or their infants”. This article can be read in full here.
What happened to these children in Irish custodial care is one of the major historical crimes and tragedies on this earth. It ranks right up there with a number of better-known horrors. And it deserves full and sober attention, so that it will never happen again.
Sometimes — and what happened to these children is one of these times — it is a horror to be alive. But, for whatever reason, the Creator wills an imperative to live. For these children, living was immensely cruel.
The writer in The Times of London used the “H” word — though with a lower-case letter [a word which we in Israel of course know we cannot use except in reference to one particular historical genocide, or Shoah, during the Second World War], saying: “It would be no exaggeration to call this a holocaust of abuse. Time after time, victims complained, even though in most cases merely speaking out constituted an immense act of courage. And time after time, Catholic priests, monks and nuns claimed the accusations were lies”. Again, this article is available online here.
The Irish Times wrote that “Physical, emotional and sexual abuse was ‘endemic’ in institutions run by the religious congregations throughout the 20th century, blighting the lives of thousands of victims, the Report of the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse has found. The Department of Education failed to carry out proper inspections and disregarded the violence within the industrial school system for which it was responsible, according to the five-volume report published yesterday. The department’s deferential and submissive attitude toward the religious congregations impeded change and compromised its ability to carry out its duty to monitor the schools where abuse was rife, the report says. It accuses religious authorities of a ‘culture of silence’ for seldom bringing sexual abuse by members of orders to the department’s attention. Religious congregations were not prepared to accept responsibility for the sexual abuse carried out by their members, and did not listen to or believe people who complained of sexual abuse.
The report makes 21 recommendations, starting with a proposal to erect a memorial to victims of abuse in institutions. It says the State should admit that abuse of children occurred because of policy, systems and management failures, and should take steps to learn lessons from the past.
Religious orders need to examine how their ideals became debased by systemic abuse, and how they tolerated breaches of their own rules. The report also calls for the provision of counselling and family tracing services, and stresses the need for a childcare policy that is child-centred. ‘In addition to being hit and beaten, witnesses described other forms of abuse such as being flogged, kicked and otherwise physically assaulted, scalded, burned and held under water’. Witnesses told of being beaten in front of other staff and pupils and in private. The abuse was carried out by religious and lay staff, older residents and others associated with the schools and institutions, and the many reports of injuries include broken bones, lacerations and bruising. More than 500 witnesses said they had been sexually abused. ‘Acute and chronic contact and non-contact sexual abuse was reported, including vaginal and anal rape, molestation and voyeurism in both isolated assaults and on a regular basis over long periods of time’. Witnesses also reported widespread neglect and emotional abuse. Some were incorrectly told their parents were dead and were given false information about their siblings and family members. These people told the commission this had a devastating emotional impact on them. Witnesses believed awareness of the abuse taking place existed within society, both officially and unofficially. At times, protective action was taken following complaints being made but, in other instances, complaints were ignored, witnesses were punished or pressure was brought to bear on a child or family to remain silent. The report sets out the devastating impact of the abuse on many victims, with lives marked by poverty, social isolation, alcoholism, mental illness, sleep disturbance, aggressive behaviour and self-harm. One-third of witnesses reported a variety of mental problems [this is a tribute to human resiliancy — the World Health Organization estimates that 25% of the general population has mental health problems] … Children were committed to institutions by the courts using procedures with the trappings of the criminal law, and the authorities were unwilling to address the failings in the system”. This account can be read in full here.
Another story in the Irish Times reported that “in all schools up until the 1960s clothes stigmatized the children as industrial school residents. Accommodation in the institutions was ‘cold, spartan and bleak’ with sanitary provision ‘primitive’ in most boys’ schools particularly”. This account can be read in full here.
A transcript of one of the public hearings of the inquiry revealed that most institutions to which these children were sent had no hot water until 1973. Another transcript revealed how the children were flogged repeatedly, and mercilessly, mostly at night, and on their “bare bottoms”. There is much, much more. And, what happened to the boys was a horror, but what happened to the girls was, if possible, worse.
A writer at the Irish Independent noted that the mechanism by which society contrived this utter and unconscionable betrayal of innocent children remained obscured: “Setting aside everything done to the children during their incarceration, nothing was as terrible or alarming as the events which led so many of them to lose their liberty by being placed in the hands of the gardai and taken away to what were child prisons, there to serve terms of up to 14 years. The children were not represented in the courts. Their circumstances were not properly investigated. They were, as the founder of the Legion of Mary, Frank Duff, asserted in a letter to Archbishop John Charles McQuaid, ‘shovelled into the industrial schools’.’ This analysis can be read in full here.
i am from germany. i was 18 jears in 5 homes.
glad to hear the report has at last been published,but the guilty ones are still free,i suffered for twelve years in these schools,first rathdrum and then artane,and the compensation giving to us is not enough for the abuse we suffered,i still have nightmares due to the fear we lived under,i left in 1958 and it still feels like yesterday
Yes, the guilty ones are still free, but it is probably not over yet. I hope that the public knowledge about what happened, now validated and confirmed, will help bring release from the recurring nightmares — from the suffering of this Post-Traumatic stress. It is terrible to be the victim of such things, but I hope you can believe that nothing about it, nothing that happened, was your fault.
14 yrs i spent in 5 different homes .st josephs killkenny , st micheals dublin , st laurences dublin , warrenstown house dublin , st josephs ferryhouse clonmel . thank you marian as while at the redress board i was told my mother was to blame for the horendous years spent shipped drugged beaten neglected humiliated and jumped on by 18 stone men while being a meek lad of 4 stone … my first drug at 3 yrs of age with no defined mental illness (medical admission report stated eveything was normal )daily given . tranquilizers for utter control of me . i looked like at junkie at 8 yrs of age . staff report stated he looks half alive half dead . i went into st josephs killkenny a healthy 2 stone 9 lb baby 3ft 5 and half inchs in 1974 aged two . i was 4 stone 1 lb in april 1980 4 ft 3 inchs height 6 yrs later . i left the instittutions at 16 yrs old and took my first overdose ! they robbed me and others of a normal life . compensation was as joseph rightly stated not enough !!!!
Thank you, Daniel — and may I add that nothing about it, nothing that happened, was your mothers’ fault, either. This is among the absolute worst forms of torture and cruelty …
thank you marian.i know my mother was not to blame but this is what the redress board have said to me and others im sure ! they dont care about cruel ! they are goverment and religious frontmen to silence us and belittle us ! irelands shame brushed under the carpet ! each and every citizen knew what was going on really .they just of the opinion we deserved it ! what crime did i commit at 2 yrs of age !
they were group settings when i was being held by the rosminians ! i absconded from violence several times and each time returned by the irish guards ! when the guards were there it was .oh the poor boy why did you run away ? you should have come speak to us if you have a problem ! guards depart and im dragged screaming into my group setting ! all the boys are ordered into the room to witness what happens to a boy who runs away ! beaten 50 to 60 times with a leather strap . ( christian) brother jumping 4 foot in the air to bring his 18 stone frame of power down on my weak little body . i rarely cried i was so used to it ! which angered that brother as to where he kicked me so hard i could not walk for a week without severe pain !!! we were theres and they cared nothing for us ! 100 pounds per week they were paid to break my soul while the average dole money for a family at that time was 40 pound per week !
Daniel, there are no words adequate to respond to the terror and the even-greater — enormous — sense of injustice I can only imagine you must have felt when returned by the Irish Guards, then to be punished in that brutal way.
It is amazing that you survived such cruelty.
Testifying, and speaking out, will hopefully help ensure it will never happen again,
me too marian thanks
thank you marian,i too hope that the guilty ones are prosecuted as i would like to see them in court;i still feel like shit after all these years and nothing helps to get rid of the nightmares,what we suffered was beyond reality a life of total nightmares thaat never go away.
I am searching for someone from the Irish reform schools to do a radio show with Kevin Annett from hiddenfromhistory.org. He is telling the Untold Story of the Genocide of Aboriginal Peoples in Canada. He host a radio show in Canada. We would like to talk about how the church did the same thing in Canada that they did to the Irish children.
I would love to get in contact with John Kelly from the Irish Survivors of child abuse.
You can email me at redtownradio@aol.com
For more information go to hiddenfromhistory.org or you can email Kevin Annett directly at hiddenfromhistory@yahoo.ca You can hear the reboardcast of Kevin Annett’s shows at blogtalkradio.com/redtownradio
Nell
im looking for any wemen that were in st vincents navan road dublin from 1945 to1952,id like to know if any of them remember my sister mary oconnor who was there at this time
i was abused for over seven years by priests in Northern Ireland what can I do now about they destroyed my life but who can help me now
I ran away from Ireland in 1956 when I was not yet 15 years of age. I changed my nationality and my name. I suffered under the cane, the fear and the humiliation of the Nuns of St. Louis School in Rathmines. I remember my first day in school – I was 4 years of age. Sr. Norbert (who didn’t even know my name yet) grabbed me by the hair and upper arm and dragged me to the front of the classroom to be beaten repeatedly with a ruler. That was just the beginning of many many years of physical abuse. These women were crazed with anger and many of us children were the focus of their frustration. I often thought that these same nuns must have been under the power structure of their own superiors – maybe they suffered equally. But the Head Nuns, Priests and Bishops and the Irish State which turned a blind eye and perhaps even sanctioned such treatment need to be named and blamed and condemned to make retribution.
I was punished regularly and lived my early life in absolute fear of the nuns. I left my country, my family and have spent the past 55 years wondering what life would have been like if I could have stayed at home.
I remember my first Confession in Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception Church on Rathmines Road in Dublin. The priest hearing my confession (‘though I had to make up something to confess), wanted to know about my brothers and if they ever did anything ‘dirty’ to me. He developed and pursued his line of questioning. I was SEVEN! I didn’t know what he was talking about, but I knew it was not nice, and it frightened me with a fright no 7 year old girl should ever know. This went on regularly in confessional boxes in that Church. So, the Catholic Church in Ireland and the State which condoned its abuse of its children, not only took from me my sense of self pride and natural worth, but it also took my religion and my family and my country.
I have moved on in my life, and have made a successful life for myself, because I had the courage to do it. But I would like to be listed as a recipient for retribution – specifically, bring me home, give me a home, and let me live again where I was born and the country I had to run away from at such an early age. It is the least I deserve.
I know my brothers were beaten by the Christian Brothers. One of them, who left left that Order, came to the United States and tried to connect with me (about 50 years ago). I wanted no part of him or anything to do with anything Irish or Catholic. If this horrible chapter in Irish history — it was a mass crusade by Irish adults against its own Irish children — goes into history with a simple recognition by the Pope, without retribution, then the crime will be unprocessed. The Church was all about money and power – and the State colluded with them. I remember it well. Now it is time to give it back to those who suffered. No sum of money, no demand for pardon can alleviate their guilt. Shame on them…. forever.
It all started at 3yrs of age for me, that after my father was so harrassed, that he fled our family farm at BALAVASS, Castledermot, Co. Kildare in 1946.
A LOCAL police Sgt cODY CAME TO THE farm, my pregnant mother tried to prevent the Sgt from taking me, and he felled her with a blow to the head. In defense of my mother, I repeatedly kicked the Sgt about the ankles and bit a piece of flesh from his hand. He struck several blows to my face, causing several cuts and a broken nose. Then he dragged me along the ground and threw me in the caged section of his Morris timber slatted estate car, taking me to Carlow police station, where I spent the night in a cell withh a few drunks that were much nicer to me than the police.
I was very happy on the farm, mother fed the cows & I fed the calves, with my dog & friend Barney.
In the cell, one of the Garda threw water on my face, and referred to me as “afeckin little skut” and “your black whoor of a mother”.
The following morning standing on a chair in the witness box, police & clergy present, was then taken to St Patricks Ctr (sisters of charity convent) Kilkenny, under police escort.
It was a terrible place, lots of sick children, maggots bred in pools of urine & excrement under the beds in the “iNFIRMARY”. The Lay staff were also brutal (careworkers) and did as they pleased. A local worker Mr Knox, would regularly sodomise 4 yr old Errol Atlessey (a German/Irish child ) who ran about screaming in agony, with his entrails hanging from his bottom(Prolapsed Recta), no one seemed to care, yes it still haunts me. Some time later, God knows how much later, he died, his older brother & friend Francis with a few very distressed children, attended the funeral, the coffin not much larger than a shoebox.
My mother had to apply to the courts, to obtain permission, for each visit. Then one night taken to a Drogheda convent under police escort. A couple of months later was (moved) escorted to Dublin Castle, again clergy & police, and taken to Artane Industrial (prison) School. I was 9 yrs of age, and was unaware that this was really a hard labour sentence until 16 yrs of age.
I recall Brother in charge (Drudy) reading the riot act,(my mother was not informed of any of the moves) no parental visitation rights, no release fo any holidays.
Spent my first two years slaving on the farm & poultry farm, pulling grass & weeds, digging soil etc in rain snow & frost. Dressed in short sleeved shirt, short corduroy pants and open leather sandals, almost starved, stole raw vegetables, even ate grass shoots, anything just to survive. My body covered in lice and body soars. witnessed terrible acts of cruelty, upon many of the children, twice I was almost beaten to death. Was a constant bed wetter, oh the taunts as each morning would “run the gauntlet” with my soiled sheets. Was released at 16yrs uder the premise of meeting my mother at the front gate Xmas 1959. Few hours later in the cold, went to gate lodge, George Cowen was told to refuse me entry. I was akin to a caged bird, who was just released from captivity. Cold and hungry, walking towards Dunnecarney, a waifiish sort of boy, younger than me seeing my Artane clothing took me to the area about Moore St/ Parnell St, where I stayed in a host of sheds and outbuildings, fed by locals. Each freezing night scouring the Quays aided by my “Artful Dodger” friend seeking a freighter to stow away to England, to find my parents who lived near Birmingham. Some weeks later got passage in the hold of an English freight ship, via many ports to Liverpool. Then this English sailor put me on a freight train to B,ham , may God always bless him & the little Irish homeless waif, who helped me survive & escape to freedom.
Ablack man sawv me get off the train at Snow Hill depot Birmingham. As I was not in very good health, he took me to Steelehouse Police Station, where I lived in an open cell until they located my parents, who lived in Shirley Warwickshire.
Initially my mother would cuddle me constantly, now am sorry to say I felt absolutly nothing, 14 years of hell just drained me. Later I learned that the police & clergy took my little sister at 24 hours old, from my mothers arms, taking her to an American couple at Ormond Street Hospital, Dublin. Isseud documents as though born to them in Ireland, no records were required, so have been unable to trace their whereabouts in America.
Most mornings when I awake from my nightmares,
with tearfilled eyes, I ask myself, what crime did I OR MY FAMILY commit,. What are we really guilty of.
I learned many years ago of my criminal record at (3)three years of age, and I will always wear it , like a badge of honour. On the 17th of March, I read that a Cardinal Brady said that all great nations/societies have “a few moments of shame”
What say you my fellow victims in crime.
Thank you for reading this ,
Twisted Oliver
hi i was with the sisiters of no charity kilkenny for 8 years and i think the nuns should be held accountable for their crimes against innocent children and the lay workers also the ispcc for the part they played in all of this ! you can now apply for a cert of innocence to the minister of justice and law reform 12 in ireland have already got them
… on the outside heavens earth Haven …
… represented by gods holy name
… on the inside Hell for innocent angels … children
… what goes on behind closed doors
in gods name
Indeed Daniel,It seems you did the same rounds almost as I Did.I was at Kilkenny and Ferryhouse,and I will never forget the treatment we received there in every area of the building, and there was nowhere to hide from the depression you felt.Always looking over your shoulder for abuse and mistreatment.But I tell you what Daniel,I went on to show them that I will not be beaten.I have now been working in the mental health system now for 25 years,and I am also a semi pro songwriter,writing for some of the greats in music,while these sad people are hiding and ducking and diving the law where ever they can hide.But you know Daniel, what goes around, comes around,and I’m having the last laugh and am fully enjoying my life,so put that in your pipes and smoke it any of you clergy from the day who happen to be looking in and still may be getting a thrill from what you have achieved all these years ago.