Justice Can Rise up

By Kristine Ward
National Survivor Advocates Coalition
June 4, 2012

http://nationalsurvivoradvocatescoalition.wordpress.com/nsacireland/

Life is hard here. Here in Northern Ireland. This is the land of Derry and Belfast. These are the cities of the datelines of the decades of the most recent "troubles."

The peace is still nascent here.

As the Olympic Torch moves through a five (5) day relay across this part of the United Kingdom there is determination that the days will not be marred by violence or incident.

This is country that still lives intimately with heaviness and hardship. It cannot be hidden. It embosses the faces of the local residents even as they play hide and seek with it in the lifting of a Saturday night pint of Guinness to the rhythms of the fiddle.

We take pause in asking more of these people.

But ask we must for the government of Northern Ireland is on the verge of announcing an inquiry into sexual abuse in Northern Ireland.

Inquiry yes.

But not a vapid whitewash.

The National Survivor Advocates Coalition (NSAC) stands up and shouts for an inquiry with teeth and spine.

This means an inquiry constituted and vested with the power to call hierarchs, the authorities at the De La Salle boys home in County Down, and any and all in positions of knowledge and authority to testify.

This means an inquiry with subpoena power for documents.

Short of that, the government of Northern Ireland should save the paper to make the announcement, the electricity to turn on the computer to compose the document, and the ink to sign it.

God knows the people of Northern Ireland have been through hell in the troubles.

To wound them again cannot be done without recognizing the highest gravity of this matter.

Recognize it we do.

Only the will and drive to get to the truth and stop not one millimeter short of it will be acceptable.

God knows what the children in Northern Ireland have suffered by being raped and sodomized and having their innocence stripped from them in the ugliest and most soul searing of ways.

It is beyond time that the rest of the world knew the facts of it.

Inquiry yes.

But not for accommodation, for show, for placating.

Inquiry for truth alone.

Contact: KristineWard@hotmail.com