IRELAND
Sunday Independent

Majella O’Sullivan
Published 08/06/2014

THE body of a 15-year-old boy who was brutally beaten and died a few days later in hospital lies in a communal unmarked grave. John Pyke had no family to claim his remains or ask why he died days after he was beaten with a leather strap at an industrial school in Tralee, Co Kerry.

Historian, author and columnist Ryle Dwyer, who grew up within a mile of St Joseph’s Industrial School or Christian Brothers’ Monastery, which was demolished in the eighties, said he wasn’t surprised to hear about the discovery of a mass grave near Bon Secours Mother and Baby Home in Tuam, Co Galway.

He says when the murder of a child in Tralee went uninvestigated it was not any surprise to hear the burial of children in an unmarked mass grave had been covered up.

John Pyke’s death…