BishopAccountability.org
	‘They Tore US to Shreds’ Sunday Business Post May 31, 2009 http://www.sbpost.ie/post/pages/p/story.aspx-qqqt=NEWS+FEATURES-qqqm=nav-qqqid=42110-qqqx=1.asp My mother died in 1942. I was eight years old at the time. There were 13 children in the family. Eight of us were dragged away by the ‘cruelty men’ of the ISPCC and brought to the court in Clonmel. Four of us boys were taken together to Ferryhouse. One boy was sent to Cappoquin [industrial school] and, when he was five or six, he was sent from there to Ferryhouse. He was there for two and a half years before we found out that he was our brother. My three sisters were sent to industrial schools as well. What they did to me and my family - they tore us to shreds and cast us to the four corners of the earth and forgot about us. Before you went into an institution, you were really brothers or sisters, but then different brothers went into other groups. That’s what the institution did to you -they tore the brotherly love away from you, the affection that a man would have for his brother. When I see two brothers or two sisters working together as a team, or meeting each other for a drink, while I don’t resent it, I envy them. There was nothing our father could do. We were taken from him. He had done his best for us. He came down to Ferryhouse and tried to take us out, but they told him to go away. First memories My first memory of Ferryhouse was coming out a door, which had a clock over it, and I saw up to 200 boys running around with ragged clothes on them. They were puny looking. I didn’t think I’d end up like them, but I did. It was scary. The first meal we got that evening was when I realised how bad things were. Dinner was a slice of bread, dipped in dripping and stuck to the table. You lifted if off with a knife and scraped your nail along the tin top of the table. We ate it, because we were so hungry. Bread was all we got for dinner, with a cup of tea or cocoa. Shortly after I went there, a few days later, I was brought into the Brother’s room one night. I was told that I was a nice boy, that they would look after me, that I would be able to see my Dad, that I would be able to see my sisters, and all that. We’ll look after you, he said. The next thing, he put my hand on his private parts. They don’t realise how hurtful sexual abuse is, the hurt that you carry all your life. That you were humiliated and denigrated and you feel like a bloody animal. That’s what they did. That’s what sexual abuse does to you. Sexual abuse is an awful thing. Grown-ups get raped and look how they suffer. Picture that on a little child. The physical abuse was unbelievable. The hidings some people got was unbelievable. It was constant. It was the same for the little girls. People living around me would not have known - you can’t blame the people. People didn’t go down there and, if they did, all they would have seen was children running around. Eight years later, I got out. I was uneducated. I came out knowing nothing. I had lost the little bit of education that I had had in our own school at home. There were classes in Ferryhouse, but most of the teachers didn’t give a hang. They would come into the classroom and point out - you, you and you. We were sent out to a farm, picking stones, picking spuds in your short pants and bare feet. You don’t pick spuds until around September, so you can picture the weather. We were doing it with bare hands, thistles and everything sticking to you. The same boys could be chosen every day. A farmer could want you for the week. We got nothing for it, we didn’t even get grub out of some of the farmers. The farmers paid the Brothers; it wouldn’t have been a whole lot, but they did pay them. And we got none of it, no extra food, no toys at Christmas. Breaking free I was 16 less a day when I came out. They must have contacted my sister, because my brother-in-law was waiting up the road. He put me on the barrel of the bike, brought me up to their flat in the middle of Clonmel and looked after me. My sister and he. They were poor too, but we were happy. While I was hurting from what was done to me, I was happy to be out of there. I got a job as a messenger boy, then I got a job in a shop called Currys. That was taken over by a man called Mr Howley. One day I was talking to him, a nice man, and he told me I should join the army. I was in the army the following day. I was there for 22 years and never looked back from the day I joined. I was a Fianna Fail supporter all my life. When I came out of the army, I joined Fianna Fail and started licking envelopes and putting up posters and doing church gate collections. I became a councillor in the late 1970s and was one for 13 years. I was mayor of Clonmel from 1993-94. I met my wife, Mary, when I was 18 or 19, and it was the best thing that ever happened to me. I didn’t tell her about the abuse until 1999.We have four children - two boys and two girls, 11 grandchildren and six great-grandchildren. She’s my rock. Many [former residents of industrial schools] said they could not develop relationships - but that’s natural. If you were never abused, that would have happened from being locked up and never seeing a girl until you were 16. It’s natural. The aftermath I am angry all the time. I can’t talk about it at all without raising my voice. I am angry at the perpetrators only - and the state. The state was as much a perpetrator as anyone. They put us in there and gave these people money to look after us -which they didn’t do. Why didn’t they give the money to the families? If they had, they would have avoided all this. If [the institutions] were short of a boy or two, they would ring the ISPCC and say we need them in Ferryhouse or Letterfrack or wherever. We were taken by the cruelty men, agents of the ISPCC who have not apologised to me or my family. I need that apology. I did contact them, but they said they couldn’t do anything, that they didn’t have the files - they were trying to make out that I walked into the place myself. It’s time for them to come clean. Let them come out and apologise to me. I attempted to commit suicide after spending five days at the Commission. I jump out of bed at night with the sweat pumping out of me because I see these fellas at the end of the bed with their fingers, pulling me into the room to rape me, to bugger me, to beat me. The government and the religious orders must not do anything now without consulting us. I do not want the religious orders to have anything to do with the money - a proper board should be set up to deal with it. We have people who are separated, who have children they don’t see, people who are drug addicts or alcoholics because of what happened to them in institutions. They need to be helped, and that is where the money needs to be spent. These people need to be looked after. I also want them to find out where former residents of institutions are living rough - in Dublin and England - and put them in flats or houses. Make sure they are fed and are clean and well looked after. The biggest hurt I’m a Roman Catholic. I don’t go to Mass any more, but I pray. I do my own thing as a Catholic. I was a great churchgoer. I used to do the readings, do the collection and receive every Sunday. But now, I do nothing for them. I went to priests, I went to bishops and they did not believe me. I said that, if ye don’t believe me, then why should I believe ye? They did not believe us and that was the biggest hurt we had. We weren’t believed all the way up until last Wednesday. Then the truth was told. They had their gospel, now our gospel is out. There hasn’t been a priest to my house in ten years - before, they were always up here. Your own belief is the best belief. No matter what happens, and I am looking forward to the day, I will meet my mother again. The boss man of everything will be there and I will be there with my mother, standing alongside her. That day will come and that is the day that I will have peace - and not till then. I will say: ‘How’ ya mam, don’t blame yourself, you didn’t do anything to us. If you were there, nothing would have happened to us’. Simple as that. A mother is the best of all people. They are the key of the door and,when she went, the key was turned on my house, never to be opened again. In conversation with Martha Kearns
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