Survivors unmet needs and Irish Society's Health and Welfare of all Our Children.

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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Colm O Gorman speaks to the gathering at Mark Ryans Memorial in Dublin November 2022
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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.

Kindest regards

Corneilius

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Why Ireland must meet the unmet needs of Survivors of predatory abuse within Ireland's schools.

Why Ireland must meet the unmet needs of Survivors of predatory abuse within Ireland's schools.

source : wikipedia~

A short report from EURONEWS, on the matter of historical predatory abuse within educational settings operated by Church and State.


Mark Vincent Healy is a long time Survivor's Advocate, based in Ireland.

I note that whilst Mark's concerns prefaced the piece, the primary concern of the remainder of the report was the 'crisis' for The Catholic Church, not the day-to-day crisis of Survivors lived experience. The Church's needs, once again, cast their shadow over the unmet needs of Survivors. I do understand that such reporting concerns is a matter for EuroNews editorial. I assume they did not mean to be participants in casting that shadow. 
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Leo Varadkar is reported by The Irish Times making the following statements. 

There is “no perfect option” for the type of inquiry to be set up to examine allegations of abuse at schools run by the Spiritans religious order, Tánaiste Leo Varadkar has said.

The Government has stressed that the process of establishing an inquiry will be victim-led, Mr Varadkar reiterated, adding that he would like to avoid a “a highly legalistic in private, statutory investigation that is so wide-ranging and involves so many lawyers that it doesn’t report for five or six years, and that is a risk”.

But Mr Varadkar also added: “What matters is what the survivors think.”

He said: “There’s no perfect option, and I think it’s important we engage with the survivors and go through with them what the pros and cons of the different models are.”

In this piece I will lay out why I think Ireland needs to host a Public Inquiry into the History of Sexual and Predatory abuse and Violence within State and Church funded and operated schools, on the basis of meeting the unmet needs of the children who were harmed, the unmet needs of the adults they grew up as, the unmet needs of their families and communities and in a sense, the unmet need of Ireland as a population, an ethnic group, a healthy democratic State and a just Society regarding this matter.

Mark Vincent Healy speaks on this, in 2019.

Please bear his words and insight in mind as you read on.
1. At the time of each and every assault, during every attempt to bully, groom or sway the targeted child, that child's needs for safety and nurture were unmet. Those needs remained unmet for as long as the Institutions and others covered up and masked what had really happened, in order to protect their image, status and wealth. 
2. When a few Survivors and others expressed concern or brought cases forward, and presented testimony, starting more than four decades ago, public awareness of the criminality began to grow. Slowly. But still, most Survivors needs remained unmet. The Institutions adopted a defensive stance. Survivors continued to suffer, as did their families, friendships and colleagues, from the fall out of those unmet needs, year after year. This burdened yet another generation of Irish people growing up into adulthood with unmet needs. Intergenerational trauma. Layers of distress.
3. There have been 5 public inquiries since the 1990s, with some progress in the understanding of what was done, and in attaining a degree of accountability, albeit inadequate to the needs of Survivors. There is better understanding of the harm caused, and even still, Survivors needs remain unmet. Unfinished business.

This harm was caused to tens of thousands of children (a chart of estimates of numbers of Survivors across the EU, with numbers given for Ireland) who lived with the trauma and the distress into adulthood, where it impacted every part of their lives...

Reflect for a moment on the cascade of trauma and distress that percolated out from the initial harms. for over 70 years, and try to grasp the scale of the adverse impact on families and communities during that time. This vast well of distress and trauma is what we are draining, and drain it we must, for clear water to emerge.
4. The obvious empathy, compassion and respect show to the Ryan brothers, Mark and David, who spoke as Survivors of predatory sexual abuse by two Spiritan clerics (one of whom used rape as a punishment upon David) on RTE's flagship show, The Late Late, in November last year reflects the majority view among Irish Citizens. There was sorrow and anger there too, an outrage deeply felt, a visceral shock when David spoke of the leniency in Criminal Court case shown to that vicious offender, in spite of his horrific attack, due to 'old age'!  

5. There was a sense of  determination that the needs of Survivors be fully met, that the matter be fully and correctly resolved, in the heartfelt standing ovation given to the Ryan brothers at the end of the show. 
6. The Irish Government has undertaken public commitments to holding an Inquiry into Predatory Abuse within Spiritan Boarding Schools.  Good. Survivors are calling for an Inquiry into the entire school system - all boarding schools and all day schools. Because they know that their needs are still unmet.  
7. Survivors, clinical experts and advocates are calling for a place at the table, via a Survivors Panel, when the terms of reference are being set out. Survivors deserve a place there as equals, to set out the task of the Inquiry with their experience, their pain, their  insight and their wisdom informing the process at every stage. That panel must function as a feed in from the wider Survivor demographic to the process.
8. The task of the inquiry will take whatever steps required to establish the depth and scale of abuse, the extent of cover-up and management of image by Institutions and to establish what harms both of these dynamics have caused, down through the generations, and then to design policy and protocol that meets the unmet needs of all Survivors, those who live, and those who have passed away, needs unmet until the very end, because these are also among the unmet needs of Irish Civil and Spiritual Society as a whole entity.
9. That cannot be done without the direct involvement of Survivors clinicians and advocates as equals with Irish Government officials, in setting out the terms of the Inquiry.

10. Meet the unmet needs of Survivors, allow a healthy and just accounting to emerge, and thus resolve the historical abuse, by learning from our shared history, resolving to never allow such behaviour to emerge ever again. A cognitively and materially changed culture.  A healthier culture.

11. The State is not some separate entity from the people, it is of the people, by the people and for the people.

The core social contract of regulating life, of crafting legislation so that the population are safe from avoidable harms, is inherent to the Irish State, and the Irish people.

Likewise the Church. Both Institutions are funded by the population, and both have been entrusted with care of vulnerable adults and children, and both have abused that trust - The Church operated the residential 'care' systems, day schools and boarding schools, under licence from The State.

12. Both institutions failed to protect the vulnerable from avoidable harms, both institutions understood that the Church had a strategy of aggressive action to suppress knowledge of the harms, and that this caused more harm to survivors. They justified it as 'protecting the Institution'. The Church moved predatory clerics from place to place, following allegations or discovery, repeatedly and this enabled yet more predation by these men.

13. Thus the resolution of the matter requires an accurate, honest historical account of what happened, as laid out above.

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It requires that the Irish, as a State, a people and a Faith (Christianity) work together to resolve this matter and meet the needs of Survivors, including end of life support, support for families affected and other supports, such as education, physical and psychological therapy, health care and most of all the validation of Survivors as reliable witnesses too long silenced because Institutions of Power deem their image and status and wealth more important than the harms caused to so many people, adults and children alike.

In terms of the economics of this, consider the cost of tens of thousands of lives afflicted, how those adverse effect reverberated in the lives of their families, colleagues and communities. The cost of prevention, had it been in place, would be nothing by comparison.

Those historical human and material 'costs' and the current unmet needs of living Survivors, their families and of deceased Survivors families ought not be limited or decreased via protocol to 'protect tax payers assets' for the States part in this matter. This ought to apply to the Church equally. Indeed that was the original assessment.
I suggest that the task is to meet those needs, and to free the Survivors of the burden of their unmet needs, needs that ought to have been met at the first contact with predatory, abusive adults. Survivors have already borne immeasurable, irredeemable harm and costs, and the cost to the Irish State and the Irish people (as tax payers and citizens) of a just settlement of this matter must be borne for Irish culture and society to thrive as a just culture, a just society.

The Survivors are all innocents.

Here is a previous longer blog I wrote about the needs of Survivors.... above all the need for safety to bear witness, to receive validation and to be afforded the empathic care due Survivors, all of whom were vulnerable children exposed to gross predation, whose lives were destroyed through no fault of their own.

Innocents, one and all.
Kindest regards

Corneilius

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