IRELAND
Irish Times
March 7, 2020
By Diarmaid Ferriter
Too many who needed to be helped were instead subjected to new trauma
In 1972, A J Wallace, a 24-year-old former inmate of Artane Industrial School, who moved to London after his release, wrote to Taoiseach Jack Lynch: “It is now eight years since I left the Republic a free individual. Unfortunately for me, I can never forget one day of my 16 years in your country… I was admitted to an orphanage at the age of two years; at the age of 10 I was transferred to Artane where I was to stay another six years. I do not intend to put in writing at this very moment the treatment to which helpless children are subject to while in the care of the Irish Catholic authorities. I do not know if it could be possible, but I sure wish I had the opportunity to speak with you personally… I do believe that if I had a chance to tell my story a great deal of good could be done.”
Like many others, in reacting to the Ryan report in 2009, I highlighted its importance as a monument to the victims because it laid bare what went on in devastating but necessary detail and was a reminder it took decades for people like Wallace to tell their stories and get acknowledgement of the pain they suffered.
But there was to be no neat resolution, and what is appalling is that more than 10 years later, as heard in RTÉ’s powerful two-part series Redress, aired this week, some victims are still having to cope not just with the original abuse, but its compounding by church and state. Too many who needed to be helped by those with expertise in trauma were instead subjected to new trauma arising out of a badly mismanaged redress scheme.
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.