Fionna Fox: Sealing records only prolongs our shame

My mother suffered in State-run children’s homes, but the bill proposing to lock away for 75 years all evidence of such abuse is concerned with secrecy, not privacy, says Fionna Fox.

IN 1946, my 12-year-old mother was placed in a religious-run industrial school. Her two brothers, aged 8 and 7, were sent to Artane. They were abused, neglected, and dehumanised. My mother was forced to work in the laundry attached to her orphanage. She did not meet her brothers again for many years.