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	Christian Brothers in Court over 14-year-old Boy - 128 Years Ago The Times May 21, 2009 http://timesonline.typepad.com/timesarchive/2009/05/christian-brothers-in-court-over-14yearold-boy-128-years-ago.html Patrick Walsh tells the appalling story of his childhood today, stolen from his mother at the age of two by a collusion between the Church and State in Ireland, and condemned to 14 years of physical and sexual abuse at the Artane Boys' School near Dublin, run by the Congregation of Christian Brothers. It's a breathtakingly terrible read, but his case is by no means unique. Thousands of children have been found to have suffered in Catholic-run institutions, many run by the Christian Brothers, in the period covered by the investigation, from 1914 to 2000. Apart from the sheer wickedness of what went on, one thing that boggles the mind is the fact that the Church seems almost to have been able to kidnap children, against the will of at least one of their parents. Walsh's mother spent years trying to get him and his brothers and sister freed, but wasn't allowed anywhere near them. A strangely similar case came before the Master of the Rolls in Dublin in 1881. Robert Hartigan, aged 14, was one of six children of a sergeant in the Dragoon Guards, a Crimean War veteran. Hartigan senior was relatively prosperous, and when he died in 1875 had left his wife nine cottages, which were rented out to provide for her and the children. The trouble was that he was a Roman Catholic and she was a Protestant. When Mrs Hartigan enrolled the two eldest boys in a Protestant school, her husband's brother had them made wards of court. The court ruled that they should be educated in a Catholic school. Mrs Hartigan then got a letter from Mr Peter L. White, superior and director of the Christian Brothers' Schools at Clonmel, telling her that he could arrange for the boys to be educated, free, at the Christian Brother's School at Limerick and, since she was currently working there as a nurse, she would be able to see them often. As soon as she accepted the offer, things started to go wrong. White told her that the boys could not, after all, go to the Limerick school, and that he would keep them with him at Clonmel. Next thing, the boys were brought up before the magistrates on a trumped up charge, and on evidence sworn by White were committed to the Artane School as juvenile offenders. Mrs Hartigan was told nothing about it. The first she knew was when she got a summons from a Dublin court for not paying support fees to Artane. She got the magistrates to dismiss the charges, but then found that Artane refused to release the boys. It transpired in the court case that a Roman Catholic priest called Flavin had been paying White for their keep. If there had been physical or sexual abuse going on at Artane, it wouldn't have been reported in those days. It may be significant though that Artane had refused to let Robert go for the medical examination he needed in order to join his father's regiment. In this case at least, the boys seem only to have fallen through the net for a couple of years. The court ruled in Mrs Hartigan's favour as long as all the children were educated in Catholic schools. The full explanation of Peter White's financial shenanigans is never fully explained, but what is clear is the astonishment both of the Master of the Rolls and the reporter who wrote up the case that such an abuse of the system should have been possible. And we're still being astonished today. Let's hope the publication of this report will finally bust open the disgusting conspiracy of secrecy that's protected these people for so long.
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