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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Why Ireland needs a judicial public inquiry into historical child sexual predatory abuse within Boarding Schools, Day Schools.

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.

Clerical child abuse - an Irish timeline : Irish Times brief

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

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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Suppression vs Mitigation, Acceptable Horror, Externalised Costs - problem solving for whom?

"We need to address the societal well-being of our nation, not just the economic well-being: our people are telling us that politics are not delivering and meeting their expectations. This is not woolly, it’s critical.”  Jacinda Ardern

Amrit Lohia tweeted the following:

Giving everyone "access to water and food" requires socialism. Eradicating SARS-CoV-2 also requires a shift to a socialist model where we recognise our responsibility to protect each other. Tagging in @coreluminous who can probably explain this better than I can.

I replied:  I think you have distilled it into its purest form.

"where we recognise our responsibility to protect each other." 

That is the essence of the situation with regards to COVID, Climate Change, pollution, poverty, environmental degradation, Racism, Misogyny etc.

Then I wrote some more.

I would call it a pro-social model rather than ideological Socialism.

https://dwylcorneilius.blogspot.com/2017/05/a-metric-for-governance-uk-election-2017.html

Management of the shared commons implies duty of care to all who share the commons. This demands that decisions on policy and practical implementation are grounded in equity and mutual aid and are based on evidence rather than upon ideological belief or the opinion of any one group.

Externalised Costs

.

https://dwylcorneilius.blogspot.com/2021/08/externalised-costs-much-more-than.html

Costs incurred by producers or consumers any other actors acting within the shared commons, that are not resolved, that are passed on to others who bear the burden are anti-social, profoundly so.

This is where I part with existing ideological Socialism which seeks equitable pay and conditions for all, whilst still allowing externalised costs to be accrued. Externalised costs is  the root of all the problems we face, globally. 

Resolution will be of that issue will be complex, that's well understood. 

That said it is attachments to power and status which make it more complicated than it needs to be.

Thus a reckoning with power and status lies ahead, it cannot be avoided.

Does this reckoning have to descend into a power struggle?

Only if those who hold asymmetric power choose to make it so.

Those who hold positions of power and status could choose to share that power, and they could manage it slowly enough to empower the corrective changes required that would protect us all as we move through this phase.

That choice is real.

To recap:

Elimination of community transmission is possible.

It's really simple. Virus needs to date a new human host, or it dies out. It is a complex operation to support a population to do EoCT.  Professor Gabriel Scally is a highly respected, deeply experienced public health professional and scholar. He is in no doubt whatsoever that elimination of community transmission is the best possible strategy under the current circumstances, where in the UK we are still at less than 20% population infected, and globally much less than that. There is an immense amount of harm to prevent, to avoid and it makes no sense to push the global population into harms way.

What complicates it are matters of power, wealth and status. That much is clear.

1. there's a world of difference between eradication and elimination of community transmission.

https://scoop.co.nz/stories/HL2108/S00021/the-meaning-of-elimination-of-covid-19.htm

2. New Zealand is not in complete isolation from the rest of the world. Tourism is not an essential human activity. Quarantine can manage necessary travel.

3. Proof of concept is 1.8 billion people who were not faced with multiple national level lockdowns, health care and economic harms over extended periods. 

4. Proof of concept is variants from areas that rejected elimination strategy arriving and breaking through quarantine systems.

5. Australia’s official COVID-19 strategy, suppression, doesn’t have an epidemiological definition. 

“Suppression isn’t a known technical term,” says epidemiologist Raina MacIntyre, head of the Biosecurity Program at the Kirby Institute and Professor of Global Biosecurity.

6. “It’s either elimination or disease control.”

‘Disease control’ means reducing the number of cases to a locally acceptable level, but community transmission may still occur. 

7. In England that successful disease control is defined by Johnson as being 1000 deaths by Covid19 per week. No mention of the acceptable number of cases of chronic disease, Long Covid.

https://inews.co.uk/news/boris-johnson-privately-accepts-up-to-50000-annual-covid-deaths-as-an-acceptable-level-1170069

8. So, if I was one of those 'acceptable deaths' would I agree with Johnson?

If you or your beloved, or your son or daughter was one of those 'acceptable deaths' would you agree with Johnson?

9.  And the other more harsh reality of each death by covid is this:

These are truly awful, horrific deaths. Really, really grim.

https://vox.com/2021/2/20/22280817/covid-19-deaths-us-nursing-home-icu-ventilator

Oxygen depletion, organ failure, death. Terror, despair and horror over the course of ten days or so. One thousand times every week. Thousands of families. Hundreds of ICU teams

Who decides these deaths are acceptable? On what metric?

10. In another context, how many terrorist bombings would be considered an acceptable level?

Is it the case that the 241,000 Afghani deaths of the past 20 years are acceptable to UK citizens, but the 404 combat deaths of troops are not? 

11. Who makes these calls about policy and public health strategy, which have such immense impact the shared commons, and on what basis? 

12. Is there a need now for urgent collective decision making and collective action to prevent further avoidable harm, when we are in a situation that affects us all?

Kindest regards

Corneilius

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

The best leverage we have is collective solidarity.

The best leverage we have is collective solidarity. 

Acting together, we have each others back.

Because the Government do not have our backs.
They are exposing us, and our children, to avoidable harm.

stopping the spread is spreading the love

For media enquiries please contact SafeEdForAll_UK@outlook.com #SafeEdForAll benefits everyone, teachers, school staff, pupils, their families and the wider communities they live in.

We need a long-term safe, sustainable and fair to all strategy for education provision NOW pic.twitter.com/Djh1aI1joG

— SafeEdForAll #Swarm🐝 #hivetosurvive (@SafeEdForAll_UK) January 16, 2021

https://twitter.com/SafeEdForAll_UK

The best tool for change we have is, and has always been, social solidarity, collective conjoined action, similar to a general strike. 

Possibilities include some kind of mass grass roots action such as a rent/mortgage/school strike or boycott, or early morning demonstration gatherings of parents, students and teachers outside Government buildings, or outside Churches, Broadcasters, News Paper offices or even local schools which we refuse to enter into under such unsafe conditions.

These could be justified by citing two legal frameworks for our action - the UN Convention on the Rights of The Child, and The Right to Health, to protect our children and citing Duty of Care, Malfeasance and Misconduct in Public Office to bring this English Government, that is causing so much avoidable harm, to heel. We could also cite safe workplace legislation.

To prevent a greater harm, a small harmless action is justified under duty of care legal principles.

To assert our civic responsibility as mature citizens, to uphold our shared duty of care to our children, and to confront this Governments failures to meet their duty of care to all of us.

No more appeals. We must direct Government. The issue must be forced through.

This is unbridled, optimistic wishful thinking on my part, because to be honest, I really do not know how we resolve this. 

I understand that this Government, this English Government has an 80 seat majority. I understand that  this English Government has no moral standing, that it is utterly unwilling to acknowledge any of it's errors, mistakes or its deliberately bad policy decisions and is behaving as if it is above the Law, beyond reproach, immune to any accountability. This English Government is the perfect expression of an elective dictatorship.

If there are any decent Conservative MPs, they remain silent and cowed. Starmer supports this Government, no ifs or buts.  His focus is not on the welfare of our children but on a purge of the Labour Party,

I am at a loss on how to prevent the next wave of death and disease that this English Government is about to inflict upon the English population via our children.

A new National Union?

I would urge the formation of a new national Union of Students, Parents and Teachers, as learners, as evidence gatherers, as people concerned with an accurate, clear and workable pathway towards an education that prepares for the work to confront Climate Change, Air Pollution, Plastic Pollution, Chronic Stress caused disease, Poverty, Environmental Damage and of course, right now, immediately best public health policy on COVID. Sick people do not make an economy stronger.

Elimination of Community Transmission is cited by the worlds foremost epidemiologists, virologists, public health professionals, economists and social scientists as the most effective set of strategies in dealing with this pandemic. 

Let's start in all our schools, let's harness the love, passion, care and concern of 11 million British Children, their parents, their teachers and push hard for what must be done.

Some concepts for parents, students and teachers to look at.

Here are some elements of Laws about protecting our children's rights, their health and safety, asserting the duty of care that all schools (and Governments) must uphold,  that I think every parent ought to become more familiar with

1. https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/United_Nations_Convention_on_the_Rights_of_the_Child : Defining the Rights of the Child

2. https://www.bmj.com/content/374/bmj.n1794/rr-1 : defining what elimination of community transmission means

3. https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(21)00978-8/fulltext : evidence that elimination of community transmission strategy prevents the harms associated with 'slow spread' mitigation policy aka 'living with the virus' ideology.

4. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duty_of_care_in_English_law : Duty of Care English Tort Law.

5. https://www.cps.gov.uk/legal-guidance/defences-duress-and-necessity : What rights, duties or protections do we have, under law, to prevent a greater harm or a greater crime?

6. https://www.lawtonslaw.co.uk/resources/misfeasance-in-public-office : Malfeasance in Public Office

7. https://www.cps.gov.uk/legal-guidance/misconduct-public-office : Misconduct in Public Office

We must build a solidarity like none ever seen in English history. 

A general strike : it is not wishful thinking that we English citizens would really do what it takes to protect our children from harm.

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.

https://patreon.com/corneilius

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https://www.corneilius.net

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