NORTHERN IRELAND
Irish Times
Gerry Moriarty
The Sisters of Nazareth and the De La Salle Brothers again issued apologies to those who suffered abuse in their care homes after the latest safeguarding report was published on Wednesday, but the expressions of contrition didn’t wash with some of the people who spent time in these institutions.
Margaret McGuckin says she suffered physical abuse over an eight-year period from 1958 while at a home run by the Sisters of Nazareth on the Ormeau Road in south Belfast. She and her sister and two brothers were taken into care after her mother, as she says, “went walkabout” and a parish priest and welfare officials decided her father could not cope.
One of her brothers, who she says suffered sexual abuse at the De La Salle Rubane House in Kircubbin in Co Down, is still in state care.
As chief spokeswoman for Savia – Survivors and Victims of Institutional Abuse – and after being heavily involved in the recently concluded Northern Ireland Historical Institutional Abuse Inquiry, she has been very busy for several years. But now she has more time to think.
Before the report was published on Wednesday morning, Ms McGuckin spent time with her therapist, where she learned why all her life she has had an anxious tendency to hold her breath.
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