BishopAccountability.org
	In Ireland, Lessons and a Beating By Padraig O'Malley Boston Globe May 27, 2009 http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2009/05/27/in_ireland_lessons_and_a_beating/ IT WAS NOT the first sharp smack of the leather strap across your outstretched hand that hurt or the knowledge that five more might follow, but the knot in the stomach from the fear you might begin to cry in front of the other boys, and would be derided as a crybaby when school broke. "O'Malley is a crybaby. O'Malley is a crybaby," I could hear the chorus of derision swelling in my subconscious while I was reading portions of the just-published 2,600-page report that documents the horrific and pervasive scale of sexual, physical, and emotional abuse of tens of thousands of boys and girls committed at church-run institutions in Ireland - orphanages, reformatories, and "industrial" schools for the recalcitrant, the rebellious, and the renegade - between 1930 and 1990. The breadth of the abuse does not surprise me. I think nearly everyone in Ireland who grew up through that period had some idea about what was going on, except perhaps for the sexual abuse. The most opaque threat that you might be sent to a reformatory school if you didn't shape up snapped you into immediate correctness. As children, we knew bad things happened there. Of course we had no idea what "bad" was. But "bad" was enough to instill fear. The Christian Brothers ran most boys' schools in Ireland, including mine, Synge Street. The Brothers emerged from seminaries in their 20s, lived in cloistered communities, were celibate, and wore priest-like clothing including the Roman collar - a life of self-imposed deprivation before them, with the compensation of being able to tyrannize. Some were good men, but on the whole they were a brutal lot who prowled their classrooms lovingly caressing the leather strap that was their stock in trade, with a license to beat education into the boys in their classes. Late for school? A whack. Whispering to the boy sitting beside you? Two whacks. Missing an answer to a homework question? At least three good ones. Pretending you knew the answer to a question? Ah, six of the best. And then there were the specials - a well-placed punch or a kick to the groin might stagger you into recalling an answer. We, the boys, were cruel to each other, a prerequisite for getting through the school day - either it was you who would get the leather strap or the petrified boy sitting next to you, and his being signaled out for the bout of perversity gave you a reprieve, if only a temporary one. For in the end, none of us was spared. Eventually your turn came. Hence the lack of compassion; you took your punishment like a man, and the more you could take it and not flinch the more you were admired. Some of us did not make the cut of "manliness" and were held to account. When a level of abuse is pervasive, being able to survive it requires a certain insouciant bravado. Otherwise, the collective sense of being able to cope is threatened. The weak undermined the tenuous balance between the absolute fear that paralyzed and the fear that still prompted you to wave your hand eagerly crying, "Sir, Sir, Sir!," your heart pounding, appearing to be begging the teacher to pick on you to answer a question, the answer to which you were clueless. Irish roulette. You never complained to your parents. In holy, Catholic Ireland, a man in God's cloth could do no wrong. Whatever the Brothers dished out was deemed well deserved and supplemented a culture where parents themselves frequently administered physical punishment to their children for transgressions small and large because families were large, houses small, and the only way to keep order was to instill a little fear. We were all complicit. One generation handed the system over to the next. Insular, priest-ridden, and in perpetual fear of damnation, we didn't know any better. And so, we damned ourselves to an eternity of damage. Padraig O'Malley is professor of peace and reconciliation at UMass-Boston and author of the forthcoming book "The Greater Middle East, Different Starting Points, Different Histories."
Any original material on these pages is copyright © BishopAccountability.org 2004. Reproduce freely with attribution.