We’re all to blame for the child hellholes
Everyone of us – including our parents, aunts, uncles and siblings – are guilty at the very least of the most craven moral cowardice in not speaking out against what went on.
No Irish citizen of the period, from 1930 to the abolition of corporal punishment in state schools run by the religious orders, can honestly say they did not know what these sadists and hypocrites were capable of.
Even if they themselves were lucky enough to escape the worst extremes meted out, they certainly witnessed the beatings and humiliations of their less fortunate classmates.
Indeed the most frightening threat a parent could make to their children in the 1940s and ‘50s was that they would have them put into one of these institutions, thereby giving the lie to the excuse of not knowing what went on behind the walls of these places.
The appalling truth of those days is that children were not valued or protected as they should have been in a more enlightened and caring society.
How could they have been when their parents were prevented from acquiring the most basic means of planning their families by a state run by the diktat of Rome.
Is it any wonder then that so many innocent children were handed over to these monsters to do with as they pleased?
Quite honestly, if they had boiled the unfortunate children in oil I doubt the inhabitants of the island of saints and scholars would have cared less so conditioned were they to believing that in some way the children were deserving of no better by virtue of their poverty and lowly state. Never again in this country must we allow ourselves to kowtow to the authority of the state or church.
We must learn to think for ourselves and take full responsibility for our actions.
We must never forget what happened in those dreadful places and let’s make sure it does not happen again
Mick Roche
The Downes
Douglas
Cork
CONNECT WITH US TODAY
Be the first to know the latest news and updates
