There are 111 children in care in Mayo through no fault of their own. These are the most vulnerable people in our society and they have been failed. There are myriad reasons why children find themselves in care, but when they are let down by their carers, it’s like they have been neglected all over again.
In the past it was often the clergy who took responsibility for these children, but in many cases the experiences of children in such institutions were harrowing and mentally damaging.
On Midwest Radio yesterday morning (Thursday ) presenter Tommy Marren read out a long and emotionally charged letter from a listener who had witnessed his younger brother being abused by a nun in a religious institution.
The year was 1937. The abused boy then aged six. His brother 12. They were in the care of the nuns because their parents’ marriage had broken down. They had enjoyed happy days playing in the fields around their house. Now their mother was thousands of miles away. Their father had abandoned them.
Green fields and sunny, summer, days were a distant memory.
A couple of weeks after being left with the nuns, the older boy saw his younger brother being brutally beaten by a nun. The implement a leather belt, three feet long, half an inch wide. She continued to batter and belt the little boy as he lay in a pool of blood, his innocent hands covering his ashen face. The abuse continued for over two hours.
The other boys watched in horror. His older brother tried to stop the torturous beating but couldn’t. He fled the building but had no choice but to return later that night. Through a window he saw his brother being paraded around the hall with a sign around his neck, ‘Bitch — a female dog’. He slept in a different dormitory to his younger sibling. That night he watched every second pass on the illuminated clock. He didn’t know if he would see his brother alive again. During the night the hall light went on and a nun and a man walked by. The doctor had been called to tend to his brother. When the doctor left, the boy crawled out of his bed and worked his way, on his belly, down the corridor to see if his brother was alive. He made his way to his brother’s bed to find welts, three inches high, protruding from his brother’s arms. His wrist was in plaster of Paris. Another boy in the dorm told the author of this devastating letter that the doctor put a needle in the little boy’s arm. Before that he had been struggling with his breath. The boy’s wrist had been broken when he was dragged down the stairs by the nun.
It was two weeks before the boy saw his brother again, but the younger child didn’t recognise his older sibling. He was never the same again apart from his mop of red hair. He died a young man of a broken heart and mental illness.
That is just one harrowing story told by a brave man who has had a lifetime of torture trying to come to terms with how he and his brother’s lives were so badly affected and damaged through no fault of their own. How many more similar stories have gone untold? When will some real action be taken against the perpetrators of this abuse and those who helped cover it up? Whether the abusers were priests, nuns, or lay people, they should not go unpunished. So much has been written about the abuses of the past that there is a danger as a media savvy public we could become numb to pain and suffering inflicted on innocent people and the irreparable damage this has caused.
But we can’t become numb. While those who are guilty must be brought to justice, controls must be put in place to ensure that children in care, be it residential care, foster care, or any type of care, are protected and nurtured. Their wellbeing and safety is vital.
That is why the Health Information and Quality Authority are drafting standards for residential and foster care services for children and young people by giving these young people a voice about their own care and wellbeing.
It’s a start. So much more needs to be done.
Toni Bourke Editor [email protected]
