If you carry your childhood with you, they say that you never become older. It is that time of life is when the world looks beautiful, when matters should revolve around the simplistic; where wants and needs are then just divided into a few basics. Childhood is measured out by sights and sounds and smells before the dark hour of reason appears.
Or so it should.
However, the revelations of the past 24 hours in Ireland have uncovered a dark side of the lived experience of the Irish child. And this is just the beginning.
I met a man late last year who sent me on a screenshot of a child abuse court case that touched the hearts of all who read it. In it the victim spoke of having his school days ruined; his confidence ripped and his faith in authority shattered by a litany of abuse in his school in the 1970s. The testimony was horrifying and sad.
The man who sent this link to me did so because he wanted me to ask him the one question. One that he had never been asked. One that he had never thought he was going to answer. I have known this man for many decades, right from our childhood. So I asked him, and in monosyllabic tones, he revealed that he too had been the victim of an abuser who wore the cloak of a religious order.
He was not talkative during our conversation, as if he felt shame at what had happened to him; to what had been done to him by an educator; someone to whom he had been entrusted during those, admittedly, differing times when physical abuse was tolerated in schools.
The perpetrator of the offences on him is now dead. He was never suspected or charged with anything. He came to this man's town and school, welcomed into the community...and then after a few years, was moved on to somewhere else.
I asked the man if he had ever shared this information with anyone. His wife, his family, his now adult children, and he told me he hadn't. That he had taken on life with this burden and that there was little for him to gain from it now. He had been a success in business with the persona he had and he feared that if be raised this matter now, that people would view him differently. That he did not live his life in the public eye and that for the remainder of his days, he would keep it to himself.
I wonder how many people like this man are out there today, keeping in the secrets. The report that came out last evening showed that sexual abuse in schools was nationwide. That there was a culture of abuse encouraged because the likelihood was that those who offended held places in society that were then more valued than the roles of their victims.
308 schools are named in the report on allegations of abuse at schools run by religious orders, which was published on Tuesday. The 700-page report includes a breakdown of 2,395 allegations of historical sexual abuse broken down by school.
The report details allegations of abuse at primary and post-primary schools as well as special and community schools. Some 528 allegations of abuse at special schools across the State were disclosed against 194 separate alleged abusers.
In the report which details all of the thousands of these cases, nowhere are the activities of the offender who abused this man listed. He made his way through his life preying on young victims...and he made it out the other side unpunished or unshamed.
This report is merely the tip of the iceberg. For all of those whose childhoods were stolen, whose lives were shaped negatively because of what happened, I think of them this day and urge them to seek whatever solace they need to help them cope and understand.
