Open letter to Irish Government, Churches and Media
~Why Ireland needs a judicial public inquiry into historical child sexual predatory abuse within Boarding Schools, Day Schools.
As a child of Ireland, a ward of guardians, I was placed in five Irish Catholic boarding schools over a 11 year period, from 1966 through to 1977.
A convent boarding school, an elite preparatory school, an Irish speaking school, a reformatory boarding school, another Irish speaking school.
I was subjected to predatory abuse within all these schools. I was utterly alone. I had no advocates, no protectors, I told no one. It was quite awful, all the time. I became habituated to that state. That was my normal. A child of Ireland. I fled Ireland aged 19.
I have endured the adverse effects of cPTSD for all my adult life. I had always thought I was the problem. Shame, self loathing, narcissism, a tendency to be a bully, paranoia, sleep problems, always over compensating, never good enough. In my heart and mind, a darkness lurked.
This has impacted all my adult relationships, adversely. I accept my part in all of that. I also understand the symptoms of years of chronic exposure to abuse as they present as behaviour.
I am in counselling.
I know for sure that I am not an outlier, a unique and rare case.
I was a child alone, as were so many others, who will remain countless until we find out how many were predated upon by men and women who got away with it, more or less, courtesy of the power of the Institutions.
Survivors deserve honesty, justice and reparation, support and recognition, kindness and respect.
This Inquiry could have been suggested in 1992. There were already enough proven cases and allegations known to the Government of Ireland and to the Churches to justify same.
What harms have fallen upon survivors in the past 30 years, as a result?
Ireland, as a State and a people, must avoid repeating that failure to act in a timely manner.
We need a full Public Inquiry covering all State and Religious run schools across Ireland, where any allegations of predatory abuse have ever emerged since commencement of the State.
We must start with judicial oversight, with open verified access to all religious order data and papers related to predatory abuse mandated, as a means to meet the needs of Survivors.
The State and Institutions know what they knew. Survivors do not. That is an inequitable disparity.
And that is the problem that only a Judicial Public Inquiry can resolve. Timely in this instance means complete the task, look at and appraise the full extent of the child predation, bullying, the violence and psychological abuse, hold accountable those who are accountable, make reparations and design a schooling system, a cultural environment that prevents all of that from ever happening again.
Every child of Ireland deserves nothing less than that, past and present.
Corneilius Crowley
Kindest regards
Corneilius
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