This year will see an attempt to conclude the long, sorry, dishonest saga of supposed recompense and healing to the thousands of men and women who suffered lifelong damage and injury in Ireland's industrial schools and reformatory institutions.
The Commission on Child Abuse, though it has reached no acceptable conclusion, will nevertheless conclude. Compensation through the Redress Board will dwindle out. The Church will escape without telling the full truth or satisfying those it has damaged.
Those who attended the schools will live out the remaining years of their lives conscious of having been repeatedly betrayed. They were betrayed as children, given false comfort as adults, and have watched the passage of the last eight years with growing despair and disbelief.
One of the stranger aspects of the unfolding story has been what one might liken to the Holocaust deniers -- those who pretend that the awful experiences within the industrial schools did not actually happen.
A leading figure in this process of denial was Florence Horsman-Hogan, who set up the LOVE (Let Our Voices Emerge) organisation in 2003, supposedly based on testimony from those in industrial schools who spoke positively of them. She claimed they "surged forward" with testimony, though on the occasions when I sought contact through Mrs Horsman-Hogan with these witnesses, the process was frustrated. She challenged the validity of victim stories such as 'Kathy's Story', 'Dear Daughter' and 'Suffer the Little Children'.
Last year, she abandoned her mission in the belief that its task had been accomplished and she closed down LOVE Continuing, she said, would be a pointless waste of energy and resources. Better, she added, "to return to domestic blitz [sic] and marital harmony".
Another effort at bringing so-called "truth" to bear was in the form of a book entitled 'Kathy's Real Story', by Hermann Kelly, which endeavoured to correct 'Kathy's Story', in which Kathy O'Beirne delivered a sensational -- and sensationally successful -- account of abuse.
Kelly's book is a detailed refutation of what Kathy claimed, and within the confines of that theme, provides an alternative version of the story, invoking, among others, Mrs Horsman-Hogan as a campaigner against the original 'Kathy's Story'.
Kelly's purpose is wider than just his desire to deal with one book. He completes this task in the first half of 'Kathy's Real Story' and then goes on to try to expose much more widely what he calls "the culture of false allegations". It is here that I find myself at odds with his so-called research.
There is always a huge danger in working from the particular to the general and Kelly falls into the trap of woefully inadequate research in respect of Fr Moore, the priest whose 'Report on Artane', carried out for Archbishop John Charles McQuaid in 1962, was obtained by me for publication last summer.
He works from only one of my articles published at that time -- on August 11 -- ignoring the other three, and he accuses me of glossing over the fact that Fr Moore, many years later, pleaded guilty to a sexual abuse charge.
The facts are that there were four articles altogether, in the first of which I dealt with Fr Moore's sexual abuse charges, summarising them again in the second. He claims that, at the time of finishing his own book, there was "nothing in the national media" about Fr Moore's conviction when in fact I had twice published the facts.
Worse still, he presents the argument: "one would have expected that any journalist writing about Fr Moore would have searched, uncovered and revealed his past because the qualifications of Fr Moore and the credibility of his report depends on it." This is precisely what Kelly failed to do.
I raised the very issue in order to argue that what Fr Moore faced four decades later had nothing whatever to do with his qualification as the chaplain appointed by Archbishop McQuaid and should not have been admitted as testimony by Judge Ryan. Nor should the judge have allowed the testimony about the department of education officers who refuted the testimony in Fr Moore's report without dealing with their qualifications.
Kelly describes them as "qualified and competent". He does not name the three. They were Dr Anna McCabe, well-known as an inspector, Dr McDaid and Mr Turlough McDevitt. One of them was guilty of a very serious offence with tragic consequences.
This was against the mother of a girl held in St Brigid's, Loughrea. He gave her misleading advice about her rights as a parent in obtaining the child's release, thus blocking it.
The law after the passing of the 1941 Children's Act required both parents to consent. This was overthrown, however, in a famous constitutional case in 1955. Though she did not know it, this cleared the mother to act independently in getting her daughter returned to her. The written advice she got from the department of education official was exactly contrary to this legal position.
Not only that, but the nuns in St Brigid's, quite illegally, informed the father, who contacted the department and successfully blocked the release, again contrary to the law. The motivation on all sides was pernicious and corrupt.
Neither the mother's nor the child's interests were served.
The episode fundamentally undermines Kelly's claim that they were "qualified and competent" and in reality makes the person responsible criminally culpable.
Worse was to come. The girl's mother never recovered her little girl and went on believing that the letter of advice, sent to her on May 11, 1961 and obtained under Freedom of Information Act, was the last word on the matter.
Some years later, in circumstances of great unhappiness and without having reached a long-desired reconciliation with her children, she took her own life. She told them she had tried. They did not believe her.
Much later, when they saw her pleading letters to department officials about obtaining her little girl, they realised, too late, that she had spoken the truth.
Yes, some people were happy in the institutions, but not many.
For most inmates, they were a cancerous growth on Irish society; punitive, cruel, neglectful and ignorant in their management, with the State playing an ignominious and shameful role, which should have been protective but was in fact collusive.
We will hear a good deal more this coming year. Brace yourselves!
Bruce Arnold is to be commended for the stance he has taken in support of those of us who were so badly treated while in the care of Religious Orders and the Irish State. Bruce's writing have given heart to many people who were at times beginning to doutb their own horrendous experiences of life in various industrial schools throughout Ireland. His highlighting of the secrecy of the Redress Board is to be applauded as is his coverage of the onesided
manner in which the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse has conducted it's business. While the Religious Orders were allowed have their say, those of us
incarcerated in Dickension like conditions were prohibited from doing so. Like many others, I refused to attend the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse as it is currently constituted under the Chairmanship of Judge Ryan. I regard it as farcical. Thank you Mr. Arnold for your support and for your fearless approach to those that would brand me and others as "liars". Paddy Doyle.
Posted by Paddy Doyle 05.01.08, 14:45 GMT
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