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Compelling contribution on Q&A on child abuse
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We had a pretty compelling and some might say damning contribution from abuse victim and former FF councillor Michael O’Brien on Questions and Answers last night.
Q&A May 25th
Update: I had wanted to write something more to go with this last night but the hour was late and the spirit weak. This clip was television at its worst and best.
Worst in the sense that it made you feel deeply uncomfortable, even prurient, to be sitting in the comfort of your own home watching someone who was so raw from the pain they had suffered as they and yet this too was its best aspect because it made solid and concrete the real lifelong impact on just one of the many thousands who otherwise might otherwise be merely statistics on a page.
As for the response from the religious that it was left to them to provide these services that was in large part because any attempt to provide a secular option was fought by the church who viewed health and education as their domain. And we must again look to cast aside this mentality in public discourse that if someone or some organisation had done some good that this somehow acts as a counterweight to some appalling activities they may have been involved in.
The party political or that merely more personally political aspect to this is how the process has been managed since the problem came into the public light and the deal done by the then minister Michael Woods is entirely political and so it should be. He was a minister elected to represent us in those negotiations and instead it would appear from the deal that was done and the manner of it being done that he had the interests of the religious closer to his heart than that of the citizenry, and in particular those who had been abused, who he was meant to represent.
The fuller piece from the show is also worth watching on the RTe iplayer.
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My gratitude to people like Christing Buckley, Michael O Brien and others for saying How Dare They, both Church and Politicians. Michale O Brien has earned the right to talk like that and we should all support him. If it had been me they would have found it hard to restrain me physically. People who run this country both church and state, simply have to get real but more than that the people of Ireland have to stop being so coplacent, selfish and lacking in courage to stand up for what is right on all issues that affect us as a society.
thanks for putting it on youtube, I missed it as i was on a train yesterday. It is incredibly powerful, as one person said to me a kind of tipping point – the pain and horror made real before our eyes.
Michael O’Brien’s contribution was powerful but in what practical way can we support him and the victims–we can sign the books ,maybe if there is a march we could go on it but what else–the 2002 deal was the final insult to the victims ,apart from the financial deal it gave absolute immunity in any future court action to the 18 religious orders involved, agrred that hearings of the redress board would be in secret–were people other than religiuos being protected by this omerta—I strongly suspect that there is horse trading going on right now to get a token responce fron the religious and protect lay people who are also responsible for allowing the abuse to continue.The redress board is now part of the abuse.I don’t wonder Michael O’Brien is angry.It is remarkable that “THE LAW” always protects the powerful.
Betty,
“The redress board is now part of the abuse” – I’m dismayed by this statement, which I think is somewhat misinformed.
The Redress Board is far from perfect but by the time it has finished processing the 14,500 claims it has received from victims of abuse in industrial schools and other institutions over 1bn euro will have been paid out by the taxpayer in basic compensation awards. As I understand it, the small group of public servants who service the Redress Board are dedicated, committed individuals who, among other things, are seeking to fasttrack the applications of many elderly abuse victims, some of whom are otherwise at risk of actually dying from old age or illness before their claims are processed, while at the same time struggling on a daily basis with several snake oil solicitors who have neglected the clients they took on en masse and whose legal fees for the whole business are likely to amount to about 140m euro, which is about three times the amount to which the Religious Orders were committed to pay under the Michael Woods/Bertie Ahern cop-out settlement!
The important point is that if the Redress Board was not structured to make awards to claimants in the way that it is – despite the tendency of some of the Religious Orders to reject every allegation made as ‘unfounded’ – the victims would not likely receive any compensation at all from the State or could pursue their claims only with great difficulty and misery to add to that which they have suffered already. The standard of proof of abuse that they have to provide to qualify for an award is far lower than what would be acceptable in a court of law or indeed, even below what was required in the blood tribunals of the 1980s. We have to bear in mind also that many of those making claims do not want to be publicly identified. They are entitled to have their privacy protected and the mechanism for redressing the injury that was inflicted upon them has to safeguard that right. (Many of the claimants before the Hepatitis C compensation tribunal also were adamant that their privacy should be protected. One of the most shocking episodes of that particular State debacle was the threat made by the State that no anonymity could be conferred on any Anti-D or other victim of contaminated blood products who sought to take an action through the courts. Public opinion forced the government of the day to abandon that policy, and those who had initially gone along with it paid a heavy political price.)
The Ryan Report – as several media commentators have pointed out in recent days – does not go far enough in examining the role of the State in establishing and perpetuating the system of child slavery in which the Religious Orders played the role of jailors and camp guards. It was a criminal system, but who provided the ‘fodder’ that kept it going? Who rounded up Michael O’Riordan’s family, including a two month old baby sister, and ‘criminalised’ them consigning them by order of a district court to a life of unending hell? Who profited from a system in which violent abuse was its life blood? And who, for fear of ‘contamination’ with these ragged little slaves or for fear that they too, but for the grace of God, might find themselves in the same place shut a door in their own minds to the reality of the horror in their midst? Among the governing classes – the rich and powerful lawyers and judges, the harvesting organisations who ‘collected’ the children, the clerks and public officials who drew up the forms and administered the system, the politicians of all parties who presided over it – who among them recognised the fundamental breach of human rights in contravention of international law and civilisation that was taking place and demanded that a stop be put to it?
And then, we have to wonder, how on earth was it that the same Irish Orders feature in institutional abuse cases in Canada, New Zealand, Australia, the US, even perhaps in the UK, in fact wherever they were allowed to run institutions?
By the mid 1950s the State spawned by our so-called ‘revolution’ was bankrupt; economically, socially and morally. What happened, and was allowed to continue happening over several decades in those institutions, is symptomatic and emblematic of that failure. That’s the reality that we all have to face up to.
Last night’s Q&A was rivetting and it’s a pity the whole programme was not devoted to the abuse scandal. There were some excellent contributions from the panellists, including the two politicians, and particularly from the audience. It’s important that we look forward to what we do next, both to ensure that the same thing or anything like it can never happen again and how we can make a better State of Ireland for our own children and future generations to take some pride in.
There is an opportunity here for all our governments, present and future, to finally face down the ‘religious right’, to stop worrying about the votes backlash that may arise from pursuing necessary changes to the Constitution in respect of children’s rights, gay marriage, excising the ‘blasphemy’ provision from the Constitution, introducing legislation to provide abortion facilities in Ireland – in fact, in every area of social justice and liberalisation. It is also well past the time that the remaining linkages between Church and State – especially in the education system – must be dismantled.
As to where do we go from here on the institutions and their victims, I think it has to go a lot further than any new deal between the Government and the Religious Orders on a trust fund or other mechanism to provide further assistance to those whose lives were deliberately and criminally destroyed. Their representative groups should be directly involved in any discussions on the next phase of compensation that must be paid by the Religious Orders. It’s up to the Catholic Church itself to decide the fate of some of the Religious Orders involved, but at the very least they should consider disbanding some of those organisations and Irish foreign policy should make it clear to the Vatican that we expect nothing less from them. I do not believe either that the State should get any let off from the 1bn euro bill for the Redress Board compensation. We, the people of Ireland, owe that to the victims and more besides, and it’s our responsibility to pay up. A further COmmission should also be established to examine the procedures used to incarcerate children in these institutions, particularly as it appears there was deliberate rounding up of children to shovel into the system to make money for the perpetrators of abuse and as an ancillary benefit provide education and health services ‘on the cheap’ for the rest of Irish society. Nobody can be let off the hook on this one.
As someone old enough to remember the fifties, sixties and seventies I am flabbergasted at what is going on. All I see in this is the flames of greed and hysterical anti-Catholicism being fanned by those behind all this, the legal profession and RTE.
It would be remiss of me if I did not say “Hold on a minute”. The era I went through is totally different to the era I am now told I lived through. I am truly appalled at how far are we prepared to allow the media especially RTE (who are constantly telling us about the legal consequences of not having a TV license) to go before we say enough is enough. Has anyone thought that RTE, supposedly the last bastion of respectability, may be the most corrupt of all.
Or maybe we’ll all wake up after the election and see that this was all a ruse to get away from the awful state the country is in.
EddieL, are you seriously suggesting that none of this happened simply because you didn’t see it personally at the time? What anti-Catholicism there is being fanned by the misdeeds of the clergy and the consistent and long term effort to protect the abusers while ignoring the abused. Those involved have long since abandoned any right to claim exclusivity to speak for the Christian message. They are now become the modern day Pharisees concerned with canonical law and not love, placing themselves first and not their flock and it is time they were cast out of the temple of our hearts.
Dan. Thanks for not ignoring me.
I was not around for the famine and I was not around for the war of independence and the civil war. Obviously it would be sheer arrogance of me to judge the people of those times. Bur I was around in the 40′s 50′s and 60′s. I was born in the middle of one of the most awful events in history when people did their utmost to kill/murder as many of their fellow human beings as possible and it is reported that about 50 million were killed.
So having been around at the time I see this as an anti-Catholic witchhunt led by RTE and supported by those who today are only too happy to buy goods produced by slave labour in sweatshops in various parts of the world. I myself have bought things, that could only have been produced by slave labour, without a thought for where they came from or who produced them.
The Ireland of my youth was poor, but generally happy because we were all in the same boat with families living in tiny thatched houses not knowng where the next dinner was going to come from. We were brought up to be tough and independent to survive in the world we lived in. I could tell you stories!!
It is obvious to me that this generation looks down on the poor because I see the arrogance of the those who live on wealth produced by creating misery and destruction for others(oil is the best example)
Let him who is without sin cast the first stone.
Eddie,
Never mind the sins and the stones, there’s also the one about the mote in thine own eye!
What you’re saying about relativism of other atrocities in other countries, past or contemporary, is a bit like Michael Woods saying on radio last Saturday that really it was the British who were responsible for all this. It’s an attempt to abdicate responsibility for the criminal mess that we created in our own back yard. If we can’t stop other countries atrocities then at least we can face up to our own.
If you don’t want to acknowledge that, that’s your view and that’s fine. But I for one would not wish to let such a view pass without challenge and I believe the vast majority of people in this country want the perpetrators of the abuse brought to justice and failing that, at the very least some justice in the shape of appropriate reconmpense for the child slave labourers whose lives were destroyed by this criminal system.
Veronica: Whether you like it or not what happened in 40′s to the 70′s belongs to the past, a completely different era, and saying now that you can put it right by causing trouble in the present is a very dangerous and questionable exercise.
Do you put petrol in your car? Do you buy goods produced by slave labour? Do you want a repeat of what you want to happen now to happen to your children in 50 years time?
But you may be perfect and therefore in a position to throw stones.
I know that I am not in such a position.
That “The Ireland of my youth was poor, but generally happy because we were all in the same boat with families living in tiny thatched houses not knowing where the next dinner was going to come from. We were brought up to be tough and independent to survive in the world we lived in.” is bull and you should know it. Many, many people were deeply unhappy but they hid it and hid it well because in those times the disdain for the poor was palpable.
I would agree that the whole world has become more materialistic compared to 50 years but that is not confined to any one generation. Those who are now in their 50/60/70 were the ones who started to built houses like southfork 30 years ago. “We were poor but we were happy” is crap. I’ve no problem with some people who say we had less but we were happier with it, but no one who was genuinely poor was happy.
“Let him who is without sin cast the first stone.” hmm perhaps only those who are without sin should cast stones at all? but then that allows people who cast stones to get away with it. And we’re not casting stones, we’re questioning and demanding answers. They’re just words we’re using not sticks or belts or cold water or anything else.
The Church has left us not we the church, we are the church. It is time the defends of this left it and maybe we can have it back. It left us when it allowed these abuses to go on and on but most of us weren’t aware that it had gone away only to be replaced by a corruption of real faith, of real love of one’s brother and sister in Christ.
We were poor but we were happy….
“Whether you like it or not what happened in 40’s to the 70’s belongs to the past, a completely different era, and saying now that you can put it right by causing trouble in the present is a very dangerous and questionable exercise.”
What utter nonsense! Why don’t you try telling that to the victims of this ‘past’ you so conveniently want to excise from memory? The effects of the crimes that were committed are still being experienced by those who were the victims of those crimes, and by those who love them, and their children and grandchildren. The logic of your position is that clerical and state-commissioned criminals can commit any atrocity they like but as soon as a suitable interval of time has passed it should all be conveniently forgotten and instead be substituted by some rose coloured pastiche fantasy of the past. Even if you bothered to read today’s national newspapers you must realise that you are, by now, in a minority of one in your view.
Veronica: “a minority of one”. I always seem to be in the minority. But I seem to be in good company so I don’t mind.
Sorry EddieL, but I well remember the 1970s and was around in the 1960s. I’m not quite as certain as you that the past is the past, unless of course you’re simply trolling here to elicit a reaction. As for saying that ‘trouble in the present’ is what is going on… well that makes little sense either from an ethical point of view or from the point of justice for those who these crimes were committed against.
By way of comparison in a very very minor sense. I was burgled while I was at home living in the Coombe in 1994. I woke up to find people in the house robbing stuff. I later discovered they stole a knife out of the kitchen drawer which they had on them. I’ve never forgotten that, I doubt I ever will. But it didn’t happen to me ‘directly’ in the sense that that abuse did. By way of comparison in a more major sense. I have close relatives who were abused by the clergy during the 1940s. That breach of trust, not least since some of my relatives went on to be priests themselves, never went away. And that part of the family has been trying to come to terms with that for half a century or more. The past isn’t the past. It lives with people long after the events themselves. To me that makes your dismissive attitude glib, at best.
As regards your global child exploitation comparison, anyone with any sense will do their level best to ameliorate that as far as they can, but short of living in those countries its difficult to be one hundred per cent sure one has been using ethically produced goods and services. The difference here is that we live in this country, that those who perpetrated these crimes are easily identifiable and those who had them perpetrated against are for the most part still alive. Here we don’t just have to ‘do our best’, we can do something concrete by facing it down.
It’s not a case of ‘throwing stones’. These were crimes that were committed. Criminal acts. Would you be so blase if someone attacked you and yours yesterday? That too is the past.
You talk about anti-Catholic attacks, but you seem oddly unaware of the responsibilities being a Christian places upon you, and me and anyone else who has even a vestige of belief (not to say others who don’t share them), to face the truth.
Some updates, the clip is now drawing more viewers from the US than anywhere else and is on about 43,000 views. Those watching are predominately between 25 and 55, and male:female is 4:1. There are close to 300 comments and if they’re any indication of the reaction people feel then the church has a lot of contrition to do. I guess I’ll be accused of doing down the image of the country abroad and ruining the economy into the bargain.
A minor point but I’m surprised that there has been no pingbacks from any of those posting to here which is after all where the clip was first posted after it had been uploaded. Well, here and on p.ie. Kudos to Will Knott whose transcript has enabled people from outside Ireland to understand what has been said, and thus allowed the subtitling to be done.
Worldbystorm: While we must learn from the past keeping the past alive is nearly always a dangerous and questionable exercise- e.g. the North of Ireland.
Where is all this going to end? They say the famine was not an inevitable event so will we have the relatives of those who died in coffin ships going to America looking for compensation? I am sorry but I can only see this as a prime example of compo-culture fueled by anti-Catholic hysteria.
Dan,
Thanks for posting this clip from Q&A in the first place. Michael O’Brien told it as it was to the politicians and the country at large and his contribution had more effect than anything else written or said since the Ryan Report was published.
On Q&A, to his credit, Leo Varadkar did not try and play politics with the issue at any stage. But in the preceding days his party leader had most definitely shown he was personally inclined to do so, and he wasn’t the only politician who was out there looking to make political capital out of the Ryan report. In the Department of Education, Noel Dempsey also had an honourable record on dealing with the abuse victims and in getting the Redress Board up and running in late 2002; unlike the tawdry deal on financing the cost of redress with the religious organisation, concluded in January of that year by the previous incumbent in Education, Michael Woods, and the subsequent mealy mouthed statements in defence of that deal that we have since had to put up with from both the former Minister and the former Taosieach Bertie Ahern.
So in a sense I think it was a little unfortunate that Varadkar and Dempsey happened to be the two politicians on the panel last Monday night – there are others far more deserving of Michael O’Brien’s and every other victim’s ire who are slinking away into the political shadows and will never be publicly called to account for their actions. One of the consequences of Michael O’Brien’s brave statement appears to be that the politicians have belatedly got their act together on this one, as evidenced by the all-party Dail motion that has been tabled for today.
As for your remark – “I guess I’ll be accused of doing down the image of the country abroad and ruining the economy into the bargain ” – I take it that it’s tongue in cheek, though listening to Michael O’Brien’s further remarks on Q&A, it’s obvious that he suffered from blowing the whistle on his childhood experiences; was shunned in quarters where previously he had been treated with respect, and attempts made to brand him as a liar in others. The answer to anyone who would even dare to accuse you of ‘doing down the country’ is pretty straightforward in my opinion: there is no Statute of Limitations on criminal behaviour.
The system of child slavery, and the crimes of sexual, emotional and violent abuse that were endemic within that system, was endorsed and financed by the State over several decades. If those of us who love this country and want a State in which our own children and their children can have some pride, then we have to face up to its criminal past and deal with it squarely. How we do that defines more about who we are and what sort of future we can build for our country than any immediate fallout in terms of Ireland’s reputation abroad.
What do you mean “keeping the past alive”? The people affected are still alive so it is de facto and de jure a live issue. I suspect you see “anti-Catholic hysteria” in Eastern Orthodox and Scandinavian countries winning the Eurovision.
And what is this guff about going to America for compo for the famine? Did they make the blight or something?
Dan,
You have to hand it to EddieL. Everytime someone lights a fire under his latest straw man, he simply substitutes it with another one! So, we have journeyed from ‘tiny thatched cottages’ where we were all happily and stoically starving together (I grew up in the 1950s and ’60s and it wasn’t in a tiny thatched cottage and I don’t remember ever going hungry either, but what the hell! Obviously, my childhood experience was very defective!) to international oil wars, children enduring forced labour in the third world to the survivors of the ‘coffin ships’ of the 1840s. And we have arrived at our destination : it’s all about ‘compo-culture’ and ‘anti-Catholic hysteris.’ Nowhere along any point of the journey on which Eddie L is hellbent on dragging us all is there any acknowledgement of a crime having being committed, even if all the signposts are pointing that way. So given that EddieL will not acknowledge any crimes were perpetrated on vulnerable children who are now adults and thereby appears to condone such criminality and further since he proclaims he’s in the best of company in his solitary view of these matters, it might be best to leave him there.
Veronica: Here’s another straw man. As I said before there were about 50 million people murdered in the second world war 1939-1945. And who are pursuing the perpetrators? The Jews. So if you are pursuing perpetrators of past deeds you could be in good company.
This whole thing is a farce which I expect to end with the election next week.
You mentioned the newspapers! Someone today want me to contribute my contribution at mass to the compensation fund. He never said why I should be forced to make such a contribution. Will you contribute? Needless to say I have no intention of adding to the 100+ millions euro the legal profession are going to get out of this.
And talking about oil. 1.3 million people have been murdered in a foreign invasion of Iraq since 2004. Millions more have been made homeless. The country has been destroyed. Why aren’t you jumping up and down over the death and destruction in Iraq? Why aren’t you pursuing the perpetrators of this event that is still going on. Can you even tell me how many people have been murdered by the invaders of Iraq in the past six months. Why aren’t you in Shannon trying to stop the war machines passing through? But I forgot! We all benefit from cheap petrol and home heating oil.
“And who are pursuing the perpetrators? The Jews. So if you are pursuing perpetrators of past deeds you could be in good company.” are you really trying to add some anti-Semitism to your list of traits EddeiL?
Dan: We can bash the Catholic Church from morning till night day after day, week after week but mention the Jews? What a farce! Farewell.
believe that if we got rid of all de paedophile priests and Fine Failers we would have a better country all round. Ye have no idea what a bunch of idiots is running the country. runnin it into the ground is what there doing.I use to vote fine Fail but I have given up almost.i dont think i will vote in the next election i am not votin Fine Fail but i will be damned if I am votin for anyone else eider.
all me family have voted for the Failers even though they never accepted the mandate of the people in 1921.
I believe that if we got rid of all de paedophile priests and Fine Failers we would have a better country all round. Ye have no idea what a bunch of idiots is running the country. runnin it into the ground is what there doing.I use to vote fine Fail but I have given up almost.i dont think i will vote in the next election i am not votin Fine Fail but i will be damned if I am votin for anyone else eider.
all me family have voted for the Failers even though they never accepted the mandate of the people in 1921.