Christine Buckley - A life of courage and inspiration

Christine Buckley, who died yesterday, was a lifelong campaigner for survivors of institutional abuse.

She was one of the inspirational figures in the first generation of Irish people who successfully challenged the evil active in so many of the institutions entrusted with the care of this society’s unwanted and most vulnerable children.

Her terrible experiences — and those endured by some of her peers — and her determination to see truth acknowledged, as well as the steel in her soul, made her a catalyst for change and a rallying point for so many of those who were repeatedly betrayed by the cruelty and hypocrisy of this society. Betrayed in the first instance by family, then by those charged with their care and later by a society that refused to believe, or in reality pretended, that the horrors recorded in report after report, harrowed face after harrowed face and broken life after broken life, could happen in a society that was, superficially at least, dedicated to high ideals.