SHATTERED LIVES

GENERATIONS of children who suffered savage abuse at the hands of religious orders were also failed by the Department of Education, which ignored its own regulations and kowtowed to the Church. The Commission into Child Abuse Report found various arms of the state failed children in industrial schools.

CRUELTY of the scale, intensity and impact revealed to the Child Abuse Commission is almost impossible to encapsulate but one man epitomises the system that savaged the childhoods of thousands of innocents.

He is given the name John Brander in the report, but his real name was Donal Dunne

GIRLS living under the care of Sisters lived mainly in large unheated buildings with communal dormitories and poor hygiene facilities.

There was little time for recreation and the children were largely isolated from the outside world, including their family.

WE must never again see people who, as children, were terribly abused while in the care of the State, declare on an occasion like yesterday that they feel “empty and cheated” despite a decade-long inquiry. The commission recorded systematic and social failure on a grand scale.

HAVING given evidence to the inquiry on behalf of a voluntary organisation, I witnessed directly the anger, sadness and emotional trauma of those victims of institutional abuse. Some had found ways to cope with and overcome the psychological damage. Others carried the damage throughout their lives.