By Terry Prone
Herald
May 22, 2009
http://www.herald.ie/opinion/comment/we-will-not-share-the-burden-of-guilt-for-such-sickening-abuse-1748312.html
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| BLAME GAME: Justice Ryan's report into institutional child abuse shocked us all ... now we need to punish the guilty |
UNREAL: We are wrong to wallow over horrors that we knew nothing about. Now it's time to punish and prevent
Mixed in with the coverage of Justice Ryan's report on appalling child abuse, have been suggestions from some commentators that we are all responsible.
These suggestions are based on the fact that each of these orphanages and industrial schools were our institutions. They were funded -- inadequately -- using taxpayers' money.
They operated at the behest of a series of governments we elected. Therefore, we are all equally guilty for the horrors visited on the children in these institutions
It's a bit like the argument that's been put forward suggesting that we are all equally responsible for overheating the economy. And just as untrue.
Future
Each person who has read the details of the Ryan Report is sickened and sorry about what happened to children down through the decades.
As a result, the temptation is to take the blame; to agree that we are all equally guilty for what happened to them. It's the easy option, since it's unreal. It's the wrong option, because it will prevent us from dealing honestly with the past and realistically with the future.
The entire population of Ireland during the Fifties, Sixties and Seventies didn't know the details of what was going on in these institutions. How could they?
The very phrase "freedom of information" didn't exist at the time. People passed the high walls of these institutions and assumed they housed dangerous children who were being properly taken care of.
In today's Ireland, most people arguably know even less about children in care than they did a few decades ago.
They come across statistics about children missing from the records, and they don't do anything about it -- because they're not professional childcare workers. They know that while they're responsible for their own family, they're not responsible in any real way for children they don't know, housed in disparate locations they can't reach.
Of course, some people did know what was going on in the homes and schools. And many complained, sometimes publicly. Like Justice Kingsmill-Moore.
At the time, good people reacted with dismay. Or horror. They wrote to the papers. But -- back then -- there was no Liveline to flood with phone calls. There was no Prime Time Special, with a hidden camera to record the reality of what went on behind the high walls.
Nor should we forget that the people in charge of these institutions were in positions of authority, wearing uniforms that marked them out to be respected.
Around the same time, a professor of psychology named Stanley Milgram did an experiment to test the power of uniformed authority. It was fascinating -- and terrifying.
Shocks
Milgram told a group of volunteers that they were part of a new training programme which required a man behind a glass window to give a correct answer to a series of questions.
The participants were to give the man little electric shocks when he got the answer wrong. The electric shocks would do no harm. And there would be a supervisor in a white coat present the whole time.
Once the experiment got under way, the participants found the supervisor demanding that they quickly administer the shocks and up the strength of those shocks.
They were, he told them, to ignore the screams of the man behind the glass. It bothered them. But they did it.
The man behind the glass was shamming. There were no electric shocks. But the point is that good, decent people continued to (as they believed) grievously hurt a complete stranger. Because they were told to, by an authority figure.
Authority figures hurt children for decades. And frightened off challenge. Only a handful of them have experienced real punishment. That's the problem, and the inadequacy in our current laws.
Blaming everybody is utterly pointless. We need to punish those guilty. And prevent child abuse in the future.
Punish and prevent, not wallow in unearned shared blame.
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