A chara,
A suggestion for an article from a Survivor. Sent out to various Irish News Papers today.
Mark and David Ryan, and Maura Harmon on the Late Late Show RTE December 2022 source : RTE
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Three years ago, on November 6th 2022, RTE Radio aired the international award winning documentary ‘Blackrock Boys’.
It featured Mark and David Ryan, and others, speaking up about their lived experience as Survivors of Child Sexual Abuse within Irish Boarding Schools run by The Holy Ghost Fathers during the 1960s, 70s, 80s… What they recounted shocked the nation to its core.
The Blackrock Boys documentary opened a floodgate long held back by institutional inertia.
Part of this floodgate opening emerged from a small group of past pupils of Blackrock College and Willow Park who had been sharing their lived experience in private. For the first time in their lives they began to understand that there were many, many more Survivors than anyone had imagined.
Representatives of that group had been approaching The Spiritans (formerly known as The Holy Ghost Fathers) seeking an apology for failures to handle the issue appropriately.
They (now known as Restore Together) and The Spiritans held a press conference on the 16th November 2022 in which The Spiritans issued a formal public apology, indicating that a Restorative Justice pathway was being developed between them.
The Blackrock Boys documentary was followed up by Joe Duffy’s Liveline hosting a 10 day series, where multiple Survivors courageously spoke out in public. 10 days, the most difficult to hear testimony. It became clear that the issue was much larger than previously indicated, that it was about all Irish Schools and that Survivors would have a central role in how Ireland rose to meet this challenge.
Mark Vincent Healy and other Survivor advocates, including Colm O Gorman, William Gorry and many others had long called for a full public inquiry into all Irish Schools, as far back as 2000.
Survivor advocacy has been a deep, intense and active movement since the Ryan Report and Bertie Ahern’s apology and flawed indemnity offer to the Church.
Then, in the first week of December, 2022, the RTE Late Late Show aired an appearance of Mark and David Ryan with their friend Maura Harmon. The trauma, pain and courage of the Ryan brothers was evident to everyone who watched their testimony.
It was a harrowing, moving experience for everyone who viewed it, and the RTE live audience in the studio stood to give them a standing ovation lasting 5 minutes. The shared respect and grief at what was told was ultimately a humane response to the story of their lives, their lived experience.
The combination of these media events and Survivor advocacy led the then Minister for Education, Norma Foley, to initiate a Scoping Enquiry, to survey Survivors of Blackrock, Willow Park and other schools who had also come forwards.
What did they want to see done for their cause?
The Scoping Inquiry was published a year ago this week, and shocked the nation to its core. I participated as one of many survivors in this process. I felt heard and understood for the first time in my life. Others felt the same. We all knew we were the tip of the iceberg. We expressed determination rather than hope. We were and remain determined. Our cause is just. Our needs remain largely unmet.
The Scoping Inquiry recommended that the Government established a Commission of Investigation into the Handling of Child Sexual Allegations in all Irish Schools over the past 70 years. It also urged the State to make redress to all Survivors. There were many other recommendations.
Then on October 30th 2024, RTE screened the documentary ‘Leathered’ which looked at Corporeal Punishment in Irish Schools. The levels of cruelty and violence recounted by Survivors was off the scale. Everyone over the age of 40 knew this was the way it was, back then. We have all been silent on this for decades.
Joe Duffy’s Liveline followed up with two weeks of elderly people, men and women, recounting the violence and abuse they had endured, the impacts of that, the impact of the silence being broken.
Clearly the culture of physical, psychological and sexual violence perpetrated with impunity was extensive, a behavioural characteristic of Irish Schooling, irrespective of who ran those schools.
This year, the Government agreed to the Scoping Inquiry recommendation and launched the Commission of Investigation into the Handling of Historic Child Sexual Allegations in Irish Schools, and it has appointed a judge, Micheal McGrath, to lead it. It is budgeted to run for 5 years, with a review after the first two years, to assess progress and adjust accordingly.
His term in office starts in October this year.
The matter is out of the hands of the politicians, and is now in the hands of the people, via the Civil Service, Legal Advocates, Clinical Advocates and Survivors and the Schools - and the most important people in all of this are the survivors themselves, and their families and communities.
CSA when unaccounted for reverberates well beyond the individuals harmed, and when we are talking of tens of thousands of children harmed, over decades, then the matter is a societal dynamic that has to be confronted and resolved fully by the whole society.
One in Four’s Report on Attitudes towards Child Sexual Abuse in Ireland this June re-iterated this understanding that to address the issue of child sexual abuse by adults is a whole society matter. They pointed out that whilst schools today are notably safer, that cannot be said of other places where adults and children abide. The abuse of children in Ireland remains an endemic cause of harm. It should be exceedingly rare in a healthy society.
Research on previous Inquiries in Ireland, Northern Ireland, the UK, USA, Canada, Australia and South Africa has shown that repeated failures to include Survivors as ‘lived experience expertise panels’ in the deliberations at the core of those Inquiries has prevented optimal outcomes for Survivors and Society at large. Ask any of the Survivors groups of the past 30 years and they will confirm this.
The Tuam burial site and the story around it was not exceptional.
I urge everyone associated with this Commission to consider urgently now the need for a panel of ‘Lived Experience Expertise’ to be placed within the Inquiry, to inform its understanding of Survivors unmet needs, so that as the Commission of Inquiry proceeds those needs are met in full, as this will help ensure optimal outcomes for Survivors and Society at large.
As a survivor, as an innocent child my needs were not met, not once was I failed, but multiple times. As an adult my needs remained unmet because like so many others, I suffered whilst blaming myself, I suffered in silence and confusion, shame and self hatred. Even so I could imagine much, much worse. And so I coped. It was never about self pity. It is not about revenge.
To think of tens and quite possibly hundreds of thousands of others having lived through such childhood adversity at the hands of adults, as men and women coping with the impact of things that should never have been done to us, coping with the impact of things that should have been done for us but were not done, breaks my heart. Every day.
Accountability is not a blame game, it is the most effective prevention strategy of all.
We need to face this, together, with solidarity and compassion, to ensure accountability is achieved because in doing so we will make Ireland a healthier society for all alive today, and for all who will follow in our footsteps, long into the future.
There is no higher calling, in my view.
Corneilius
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