NORTHERN IRELAND
Belfast Telegraph
18 MARCH 2014
HEATHER LASKEY
THE brave women and men who relive the acute emotional pain of their tragic stolen childhoods when they speak out at the Historical Institutional Abuse Inquiry need all the support they can be given.
One of the most horrifying interviews I’ve ever done was in 1976, with a man who had spent his childhood at the Nazareth Lodge in Belfast.
I was shaken by his memories of the sadism, casual brutality, unending harshness, perversion, neglect and near-starvation inflicted on unprotected children.
His story went into a book written by myself and Mavis Arnold – The Children of the Poor Clares: The Story of an Irish Orphanage.
At that time, no other book had come out on the subject. No publisher in the Republic, or in Britain, would touch it until it was courageously taken on by Appletree Press in Belfast.
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.