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. 
~

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.

~
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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The unmet needs of Survivors - a Public Inquiry in Ireland in 2023. What is the task here?

Requiem for a Nation's children.

*this image is of a care setting, in North America, where State and Church operated residential institutional systems. The problem is a global problem, a cultural problem.

*Blackrock College, served by Willow Park Preparatory School, operated by the order formerly known as The Holy Ghost Fathers, now The Spiritans. The Spiritans are one of many orders that have operated residential and day school facilities on behalf of the State since the 1930s.

Another Public Inquiry?

As the Irish Government proceeds with the matter of establishing a Trauma Informed Public Inquiry into Clerical Sexual, Physical, Emotional and Psychological Abuse of Children within Irish State and Church operated Schools, Boarding Schools, Day Schools and Summer Schools to establish with reliable evidence what really happened, Such an inquiry must also find ways to accept direction from Survivors and their expert advocates - it is Survivors needs that are the task context here - in essence the principals are tasked with meeting Survivors needs.
Therefore a panel of Survivors, a formal transparent mechanism for information flow between Survivors as a demographic, and as individuals, feeding into decision making processes where decision are being considered that will have impact on their lives must be created.
Democracy.
An old Pope (retired) has passed. RIP. There is still a Pope.
The Faith so many decent, deferent people practice and the Institutional Power Establishment of The Vatican and the National Churches as a global local syndicate operate on entirely different priorities. 
Faith is for people to follow, power is for the hierarchy to exercise or delegate.
Matters of power are not for the congregation to be concerned about.  They are urged to pray, pay, procreate and vote.

It's a business model. This is not of the Faith. It is political. Power.
Obituaries for Benedict the Retired that I have read, across the news networks, tended to overlook the reality. 

Reality check.
We are looking at such a vast dank bottomless well of criminal harm of children, each and every one of those children, a human being, intensely alive and sensitive, vulnerable and overpowered, terrorised, traumatised, disfigured, dehumanised, each assault on it's own a horrific, unspeakable lived experience. 
I ask the reader to add up the hundreds of thousands of children harmed in this context, the hundreds of thousands of adult lives lived in distress. 
The politics of perpetuating the clerical 'privatised and sanctified' institutional care in every every parish, every county of Ireland since their formation in the 1930s in spite of the harms caused. They knew. That too is a vast crime scene. 
When pundits and reporters in news media describe the emergence of reliable survivor testimony as causing a 'scandal' for The Church, The Vatican, The Pope it's a deliberately meek and venal euphemism.
Harm on that scale is not a scandal. 
Neither is the Institutions protection racket a scandal. Both are crime scenes. It's a multigenerational international global crime scene. These unspeakable acts are not, as the Church would claim, sins that can be absolved in a confessional. These are not matters to be set aside due to 'different standards of those times'.
Sexual assault and battery has been, is always and always will be a criminal act. 
Grooming children into submitting to sexual assault is a criminal act. It has always been a criminal act. The power of the adult used to exploit the vulnerable child. Criminal.
How dare they call that a 'scandal'? 
That sounds to me like it's coming from a culture that, even still, refuses to listen, that evades hearing the evidence, the lived experience of Survivors in their journey for justice, an immense task in and of itself, and ask 'what needs remain unmet?' which will lead the culture to acknowledge the needs of Survivors and the corrective action to be taken.
If only the retired Popes obituary could have included the following : 
"This Pope (retired) directed the entire Church and State collaborative institutional care system and all and sundry others associated to admit to public inquiry all known cases of abuse of children, all settlements, all agreements, all movements, known outcomes, internal discussion documents, the historical record so to speak, to allow a fullest possible understanding of what harm was caused, all along the way. Without fear or favour. 
He left a legacy of open, transparent accountability driven by a genuine understanding of the harm caused, designed to meet the needs left unmet and set a path towards having those needs met in full, with life long support, to bring closure to this era of systemic abuse. He is remembered as a wise, empathic Pope, who learned on the job and accelerated the path towards accountability, justice and peace."
It doesn't. If the current Pope passed away next week, his obituary would not contain that short paragraph. 
Which is precisely why we are where we are.
There's a pattern observed globally through public inquiries of this nature. Often it is the case that more has been left out than was included, leaving a less than accurate historical recording of what happened and a dissatisfied Survivor demographic, still in distress.

That pattern must be broken. 
Survivors have a real need here, in terms of defining the task of a Public Inquiry, at the outset. That nee is to be  working part of the task definition process related to the inquiry, and on an equal footing.
What is the task before us?
Meeting Survivors needs, and meeting the needs of a just society. Meeting children's needs.
Historically, the Institutions have adopted a case by case approach adopting a defensive, protective and adversarial flavour. Management at the individual level and at the situational level. 
Five inquiries into five institutional settings, each one dragged out of the institutions, with much misgivings on all sides, and still much remains to be done to bring about a just resolution and peace among Survivors and their families and communities related to all those previous Inquiries and Reports. There is a pattern here. We can all see it.
Institutions make offers, none of which is based on listening to and integrating Survivors presentation of their needs. The offers serve the institutions desire to evade full disclosure and accountability.
What is so distressing to whoever it is, about asking Survivors and their advocates what those needs are in order to know what to do to meet them?
What must we do?
As the Irish Government proceeds with the setting of a Public Inquiry they must allow themselves to be directed by Survivors - it is Survivors needs that are the task master here. 
There are needs too, for the institutions. These ought not be seen as competing needs, or reasons for defensiveness. This must not be allowed to enable more power struggles. The Institutions need justice and accountability as much as the Survivors and the wider population. No justice, no peace is a statement of fact, not a threat.

Survivors unmet needs.
Survivors needs start with the need for safety, to speak about the harm. 
The Survivor needs that the harm is stopped from happening ever again and needs proof - because they see that the community is protecting the children. 
Survivors needed nothing swept under the carpet.

Survivors need open accountability, due sanction in timely fashion. For so many, these are unmet needs. So many children, so many adults, so many children, for generations. it is so painful and so sad. This is no small thing we are faced with.
Historically when the Survivors spoke out, those who were forced to listen heard only what they could use as leverage, seeking ways to craft made-to-measure confidential 'agreements' and arrangements and using political influence to quieten the situation, to manage the situation without ceding power.
Protect the institution. 
Survivors do not need to protect the Institutions from themselves. Survivors are not served when manipulated into a buffer to protect and maintain image, status and power of the Institutions.
I would say the wider society does not need  the Institutions to protect themselves from full disclosure. It is that simple. 
Let it all out in an organised, verifiable process. Is it not the case here that the Society, as a whole, has a duty of care. 
This is a shared social, physical and psychological environmental crime against humanity - we must act. We must act wisely.
I think a Public Inquiry tasked to get best accurate understanding, of these terrible decades, to have as much data as possible, not least from living survivors, access to all institutional records, analysed and drilled into, so as to really understand the full human impact. I think that culturally, and at governance levels, and anywhere else it must be treated seriously as a grave matter of social policy, health policy and care settings safety as a societal issue. All vulnerable people, at any age, must be free from all forms of systemic predatory abuse and harm.
This is a grave matter because all the untold and unaccounted for harm impacts the lived experience of survivors and their families, their relationships within their communities, and the wider culture until it is healthfully resolved.
Harm cannot be undone. Justice can be done. 
Cultural change can be done.
What must we do?
What are the needs of Survivors, today?
This article - "I Just Want Justice": The Impact of HistoricalInstitutional Child-Abuse Inquiries from the Survivor's Perspective by Patricia LundyÉire-Ireland, Volume 55, Numbers 1 & 2, Spring/Summer 2020, pp. 252-278
Thanks to Mark Vincent Healy for the provision of this document, and many others related to this matter, via his website, his work, his media presence, his daily effort on behalf of Survivors. https://twitter.com/markvhealy?lang=en 
https://www.mvh.ie/research/Lundy-Eire-Ireland-article.pdf is a research document that through survivor interviews during an inquiry process identifies eleven primary justice needs articulated by survivors.- 1. Voice, 2. Acknowledgment, 3. Vindication (including validation), 4. Apology,5. Redress (monetary and symbolic),6. Rehabilitation measures,7. Intergenerational needs,8. Access to records, authoritative historical records, 9. Offender accountability 10. Taking responsibility, 11. Prosecution.
These form the basis of the study’s analytical framework or measurement tool. 
-I would add that a materially reliable sense or lived experience  of agency throughout this process is also a need for Survivors.

We would do well to find out what needs are as yet unmet.

https://www.ncronline.org/news/irish-archbishop-criticizes-pathetic-responses-clergy-abuse

Mark Vincent Healy, who was abused by two priests from 1969 to 1973 during his time at another Spiritan school, St Mary's College in Dublin, has called for an independent inquiry to determine the scale of abuse in schools run by the religious congregation.

Healy, who was the first Irish male survivor of abuse to meet Pope Francis in 2014, recounted how one of his abusers was stationed at Blackrock College for a time as well as at Rockwell College in County Tipperary. The same abuser also is accused of abuse in Sierra Leone, where he was stationed following allegations by five families in 1973.

"I have no doubt there are considerably more cases," Healy said.

Mark Vincent Healy is urging the Irish Government and all interested parties to establish a Survivors Panel to work as equal partners in any Public Inquiry, providing essential information, data and insight to be taken into account at every stage of this process.

Survivors active engagement in driving the process forwards, informing it and tasking it at every level.
And this goes with a wider societal acknowledgement of Survivors prior agency, of that immense effort already made - without their testimony in public, we'd never have known. 
Do we have any idea of how difficult that attempt to hold abusers and institutions to account is, given the mental health, the physical health of survivors of chronic trauma, given a cultural deference to the Institutions, the power of those institutions? 
Must we leave all the heavy lifting to the survivors, or would we be better advised to lend a strong hand to their cause? 
Because it is, by definition, our cause. Meet the needs of the children of Ireland.
The Irish population, comprised of many varied Faiths,  agnosticism or atheism, secularists alike must amplify that effort, and make sure justice is fully served and peace returns to our culture. This is about all our children.
That effort is there to be made, as we move day by day into the future, when must all put our shoulders to the wheel. 

It is the nature of the intersectional real world. Complex matters require honest discourse and access to accurate data and are made more complicated than they need to be because of power struggles or the 'interest of Power' as an influence that distorts the discourse. We cannot allow a pattern to emerge where the process degenerates into a power struggle between Survivors and the Institutions. That cannot happen.

As we face the polluting of our shared environment, we face this sordid history of the pollution of our children as part of that great work to cease the pollution, end the harm. This is what makes us truly human.
What must we do?
The detail of the lived experience of survivors and families and wider community is a historical resevoir. Start by listening to Survivors and to those expert clinical, academic, civil and legal advocates who are trauma informed. 
What are the needs of Survivors, then and now?
Which Pope will finally take the steps to order the Church to meet those needs in full?
How many more years must we wait for justice?

Which Taoiseach will drive forwards a public inquiry that does the same?



Kindest regards

Corneilius

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Open Letter to Media and Politicians in Ireland - Blackrock Boys

 A recent RTE Radio Documentary 'Blackrock Boys' brought up the story of clerical abuse of children in one of Irelands elite Boarding Schools.

https://www.rte.ie/radio/doconone/1333550-blackrock-boys

Alison O'Connor's article in The Examiner, 11th November speaks to this dreadful situation.

"Where to begin with a story that just never ends? It is almost 30 years ago since I, as a young journalist, first spoke to someone who had been sexually abused by a priest as a child.

Three decades on it has been honestly nauseating to listen, first, to the very fine RTÉ Doc on One, Blackrock Boys, and the subsequent horrific outpouring all week of other boys, now men, of their own abuse at the hands of clerics."

https://www.irishexaminer.com/opinion/columnists/arid-41003687.html

Vincent Healy, who took his case against the Spiritans to the courts in 2009, and won, as his case was proven, has been working as a Survivors advocate ever since.

 “I want answers from the State and religious congregations about the suffering of children who attended day schools, and only an inquiry can determine the numbers affected. The State has a responsibility to secure the welfare of students, but day-school students have been criminally neglected.

He added the State had been “belligerent towards people like me” and said “victims of abuse have been subjected to the rigours of the courts, criminal and civil”.

The sexual abuse of boys by Spiritan priests first came to public attention in Ireland in March 2009 when Fr Henry Maloney was convicted of abusing Mark Vincent Healy and Paul Daly, who died in June 2011, when both were pupils at St Mary’s College, Rathmines, between 1969 and 1973. Moloney was given a suspended sentence due to ill health and as he was already under strict supervision at the Spiritans’ Kimmage Manor in Dublin. He had been out of ministry and under supervision since 1996.

A second Spiritan priest accused by Mr Healy, Fr Arthur Carragher, died in Canada in January 2011. He taught at St Mary’s in 1969. In 2001 two brothers made abuse allegations against Fr Carragher but there is no extradition treaty between Ireland and Canada, where he then lived, and he successfully resisted being tried in Ireland. The priest later admitted abusing the brothers.

For decades the reaction of both The Spiritans and The Irish State has been to 'manage a crisis' of confidence, to maintain status quo of power in an adversarial manner that has prevented Survivors from a full accounting of the harms caused by predatory clerics and those who masked the abuse of children in their care.

The matter remains unresolved. A public Inquiry is necessary to resolve this situation.

Here follows an open letter I sent out today to Irish Media and politicians.

To the Editor, To members of the Irish Government, an open letter.

A Chara,

The recently aired RTE Radio documentary 'Blackrock Boys' tells a truly awful, tragic story. Two brothers, a few years apart, groomed, bullied and sexually assaulted by the same cleric, in the same school.  They were unable to tell their parents or each other. 

The institutions adversarial defence. Survivors in deep distress for decades. Family life disrupted for generations. A similar pattern took place in many other residential and day schools across Ireland. We do not yet know the full extent and scope of this pattern. That is why we need a Public Inquiry.

The RTE Documentary also speaks to the courage, the humility, the heart of Survivors and their advocates, who work  to hold accountable those who were and are responsible for the harms caused, be they  individuals, Religious or State institutions and other organisations.

The determination of Survivors and their advocates to proceed. in spite of an overtly adversarial dynamic, where the culpable parties attempt to mitigate their exposure to public accountability through various means, methods we are all too familiar, with is heroic.  

It can be said that genuine humane  courage is exemplified when those who have caused harm acknowledge the harm they have caused, admit the things done that prevented prevention, understand  that defensive behaviour by institutions and individuals has exacerbated adverse life long outcomes for those children so harmed, into adulthood,  and to honestly and transparently give a full accounting of what transpired, with a view to prevention, reparations and justice..

That is what Jesus would probably urge, is it not? Hold a full and honest accounting of the harms caused, and address the needs of Survivors.

Ireland is rated in international comparisons as the most helpful State in terms of global goodness.

Why is it that Ireland cannot reach that happy state for hundreds of thousands of it's own children who have been so deeply harmed?

Kindest regards

Corneilius

Thank you for reading this blog.

"Do what you love, it is your gift to universe."

This blog, like all my other content creation work is not monetised via advertising. If you like what I present, consider sharing my content. If you can afford the price of a cup of coffee or a pint of beer/ale/cider for a few months, please donate via my Patreon account.

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