We can't let next generation forget cruelty and neglect children suffered

By Maeve Lewis
Irish Independent
March 23, 2015

http://www.independent.ie/opinion/comment/we-cant-let-next-generation-forget-cruelty-and-neglect-children-suffered-31086755.html

Maeve Lewis

When the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse began its work, hundreds of adults who had grown up in the care of the State gave evidence about their experiences in the residential institutions.

A horrifying story began to emerge, as witness after witness gave consistent, compelling accounts of emotional and physical abuse, sexual abuse, cruelty and neglect.

The witnesses spoke on the understanding that the records of their testimony would be destroyed when the final report was published. Many of them had never spoken before about their experiences and some had never told anybody, even wives and husbands, about what they had endured.

Some still carried immense shame and were afraid that their histories could be accessed inappropriately.

Following the publication of the Ryan Report in 2009, Irish people were shocked, saddened and outraged by what the children had endured.

Yet many people were not altogether surprised: this had happened in plain sight.

Irish society had been passively complicit with the horrors that were taking place.

A terrible culture of deference to the Catholic Church and State authorities had ensured their silence. The brave few who had tried to speak out were annihilated. This is why we believe at One in Four that it is imperative that the personal narratives of the survivors should not be destroyed.

While the Ryan Report will stand as an authoritative description of what happened, and contemporaneous media reports and documentaries will still exist, they cannot replace the intensity of the direct, explicit accounts of the survivors.

The documents will be placed in the National Archive and will be closed for 75 years. This seems to me to be a good compromise.

It ensures that when everybody involved is long dead, a new generation of researchers will have access to the truth of one of the darkest episodes of 20th Century Ireland.

It will help generations to come to understand the real nature of Irish society then, and will ensure that the appalling history of our cruelty and indifference to the most vulnerable children can never be forgotten.