Abuse victim uses pulpit to urge atonement

A survivor of industrial school abuse, who took to the pulpit to call for a national day of atonement, has urged priests to give survivors an opportunity to speak to their fellow parishioners.

On the third anniversary of the publication of the Ryan Report into child abuse, Christopher Heaphy spoke to the congregation at Aglish Church in west Co Waterford at 11am Mass yesterday about how he and his two brothers spent a total of 35 years at Greenmount, Passage West, and Lota industrial schools in Cork.

The 67-year-old survivor, who has acquired a degree in electrical engineering and now lives in Co Waterford, asked the State, the Catholic Church, and the Irish people to establish a national annual day of atonement “where all of the perpetrators ask our forgiveness and the forgiveness especially of those who are in trauma, physical pain, and feel excluded from the mainstream of Irish life”.