Monument to Abuse Survivors Set up in Co Limerick

RTE New
April 2, 2015

http://www.rte.ie/news/2015/0402/691653-glin-limerick/

Thomas Wall, survivor and author of a book on St Joseph's School and Tom Hayes (R) survivor and leader of the Glin Project at the memorial

A monument to the residents and survivors of abuse at Ireland’s second largest industrial school has been erected in Glin in Co Limerick.

The move marks the resolution of a long-running dispute between the town's development association and survivors' representatives.

In a statement, leaders of the project which commissioned the sculpture, say they hope to bring past pupils to the town later this year for an unveiling ceremony.

Plans for a reunion there two years ago were abandoned after the dispute began.

The statement, the Glin Project said the monument to St Joseph's Industrial School had been set in place for the town's Heritage Park "with the support and goodwill of the vast majority of local people".

The residential institution was opened by the Christian Brothers in Glin in 1928 and closed in 1966.

In 2009, the Child Abuse Commission, chaired by Judge Sean Ryan, described it as having a "severe, systemic regime of corporal punishment".

The Commission's report stated that the Christian Brothers had been "reckless" when they transferred two of their members to Glin after investigating earlier complaints that they had sexually abused boys in other industrial schools.

The Glin Project says the monument is inscribed with "a clear and unambiguous apology by the Christian Brothers"

At the project's instigation, the monument also bears a quote from Mary Raftery, the late journalist and author whose exposure of institutional child abuse led to the establishment of the Ryan Commission.

The quote - "Thousands of victims of industrial schools bear witness to a society unwilling to question its own comfortable certainties out of a fear that those beliefs might turn out to have been built on sand" - sparked controversy in 2013 when it was rejected by the Development Association because its length added to the size of the sculpture.

The Project says the monument will inform the public that "those of us who spent all of our early lives in the institutions were finally able to play our part in ensuring that both the Christian Brothers and the State would be found guilty of very serious abuses and neglect in Mr Justice Sean Ryan's Child Abuse Inquiry Report".