By Colm O'gorman
May 21, 2009
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1185591/Child-abuse-brought-home-The-80-year-old-happy-memory-given-glass-milk.html
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| Time to act: Colm O'Gorman says Ireland must reform its Constitution to ensure children's rights are upheld |
Reading the long-awaited report of the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse yesterday, one desperately poignant story stood out.
Among all the horrific accounts of rape, ritualised beatings, abuse and neglect, it seemed to me to speak of the extent of the abandonment of many thousands of children to lives of misery and deprivation in a more gentle but nonetheless heartbreaking fashion.
The Commission, in an effort perhaps to ensure balance, had sought to record and document the positive experiences of those who were confined to institutions funded by the State and operated by the Catholic Church.
A man in his eighties was able to tell one such story, an act of kindness that stood out for him in a childhood defined by neglect and brutalisation. He told the Commission how he had never forgotten the day when aged six, he was given a glass of milk to drink.
Can you imagine a childhood so deprived that the one exceptional moment, still recalled more than three-quarters of a century later, was a simple glass of milk?
What the report also finally makes clear is that such awful deprivation was not the result of a shortage of funds.
The monies paid to the Catholic Church by the State were ' adequate'. In contrast, the standard of care provided was found to be inadequate in every single institution investigated.
It is clear that very significant levels of funding were paid by the State to provide care to those confined to institutions. What is also clear is that this money was not used to provide such care, but instead to support a bloated system more concerned with its own selfpreservation than with the proper and compassionate care of children in its charge.
Perhaps nowhere was this more evident than in the Christian Brothers-run Artane Industrial School.
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