A lone voice for the lost children

"I do not believe that a child can be reformed by lock and key and bars, or that fear can ever develop a child’s character."

The words of Fr Edward Flanagan, founder of Boys Town in Omaha, Nebraska, in the US and made famous by a 1938 Hollywood movie starring Spencer Tracey.

It was part of a speech he gave at the Savoy cinema in Cork in 1946 when he called Ireland’s penal institutions “a disgrace to the nation”. Addressing the large audience at a public lecture he said: “You are the people who permit your children and the children of your communities to go into these institutions of punishment. You can do something about it.”