IRELAND
Bette Browne
Stolen Lives brings us the voices of 10 abuse survivors from Baltimore in Cork, to Tralee in Kerry, to Artane in Dublin and in London and Liverpool, who suffered in Ireland’s religious-run industrial institutions, abandoned by courts of the State and in many cases by their families in one of the darkest chapters in Irish history.
Stolen Lives grew from the aftermath of the first national March of Solidarity with survivors on June 10, 2009, which the late Christine Buckley and the author organised with support of Barnardos, One in Four and the Children’s Rights Alliance after publication of the Ryan report.
It focuses on 10 survivors, ranging in age from 54 to 87, and breaks new ground in its chilling level of detail on the effects of the abuse on their lives as adults.
“We cannot re-write those stories, nor can we write a happy ending to them. But it is our clear and inescapable duty to reach out and rescue, to listen and to learn and to create something out of this catalogue of cruelty in which, as a nation, we can take some pride.” – Enda Kenny (now An Taoiseach) speaking in the Dáil Éireann debate on Ryan Commission report, June 11, 2009.
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