A journalist who used the truth to set us free

MARY Raftery was a remarkable person. She shone a light into the hidden past of Ireland, exposing the horrors of the industrial schools and laying bare a crime against humanity for long covered up and denied.

Her book Suffer the Little Children and the brilliant States of Fear TV series appeared before the Ryan Report, alerting us to the shattering catalogue of shame that was slowly approaching publication.

She revealed the truth about what we now refer to increasingly as the “Irish Gulags“, where boys and girls cowered in terror from people who beat, bullied, and traumatised them on a daily basis or scarred their lives with sexual abuse.

There are many men and women who have been elevated to sainthood. Mary Raftery, who uncovered the activities of human beings who hid behind masks of religion and clerical prestige, is in my opinion a lot closer to whatever God is out there than any clerical institution could ever be. For this dedicated journalist did what they in spite of all their power and splendour could not bring themselves to do: She used the truth to set people free.

John Fitzgerald

Lower Coyne Street

Callan

Co Kilkenny