IRELAND
RTÉ
March 4, 2020
Twenty-one years ago, the RTÉ television documentary series States Of Fear, profoundly changed the conversation about residential institutions in Ireland and caused a national outcry.
Now, using the personal testimonies of survivors of residential abuse who sought redress, a new two-part RTÉ series examines the Irish State’s response to those survivors.
Below, reporter Mick Peelo introduces Redress: Breaking The Silence – watch it here, via RTÉ Player.
I thought I was sensitive to the sufferings of survivors of childhood abuse. I’ve made television documentaries on the subject for years, so when it came to survivors of abuse in residential institutions, I thought we had addressed the mistakes of the past, made amends and helped them find healing and closure as best they could. I thought redress was done and dusted. I was wrong.
In 1999, in a series called States of Fear, my late colleague, Mary Raftery used powerful, first-person testimonies of survivors of abuse in residential institutions to tell a scarcely believable story from the darker edges of modern Irish history. Before the broadcast of the last programme in that series, the reaction of the Irish public was such that the then taoiseach, Bertie Ahern, apologised on behalf of the State to those children who had been abused while in its care. He promised “to address the injustices of the past”.
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.