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Showing posts with label Historical Institutional Abuse Inquiry. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Historical Institutional Abuse Inquiry. Show all posts
Suzanne Breen - Let it go into the history books in all its damning detail. 


The reality of life for thousands of women and infants in Ireland - so far removed from the image of comely maidens dancing at the crossroads, and all the children of the nation being cherished equally.

This wasn't something that the British inflicted on us. This is something that powerful Irish people did to the powerless. Now that it's too late, Ireland is up in arms at the mother and baby homes. But when it mattered, when lives could have been saved and torment prevented, who spoke out or took a stand?

A so-called Christian country devoid of compassion and charity, where successive blind eyes were turned to the most heinous acts. The Catholic Church is first and foremost to blame for the unspeakable evils inflicted on women and girls as young as 12 - not over a handful of years, but over half a century.

Next in the dock stands the state which funded, inspected and licensed these abusive institutions.

It's guilty of collusion and cover-up of colossal proportions. Last week's mother and baby homes report revealed that 15% of children incarcerated in these clerical concentration camps - 9,000 precious girls and boys - died.

Continue reading @ Belfast Telegraph.

Catholic Church Hid Its Dirty Secrets In Unmarked Graves Just Like The IRA And Vile Deeds Went Unchallenged

The Guardian ✒ ‘We embraced judgmental, moral certainty and perverse religious morality,’ says Taoiseach.

A judicial commission of investigation published a long-awaited 2,865-page report into a network of “mother and baby homes” that inflicted abuse and shame – with the complicity of wider society – for much of the 20th century.
Ireland has ripped back the veil on a dark historical chapter that condemned tens of thousands of unmarried mothers and their babies to callousness and cruelty in institutions run by both the state and the Catholic church.

A judicial commission of investigation published a long-awaited 2,865-page report into a network of “mother and baby homes” that inflicted abuse and shame – with the complicity of wider society – for much of the 20th century.The five-year investigation into the homes – religious institutions for unmarried mothers and their children that doubled as orphanages and adoption agencies – chronicles deprivation, misogyny, stigma and in some cases shocking levels of infant mortality, adding up to a blistering indictment not just of the institutions but the wider culture of oppression that sustained them.

Most of the homes were Catholic run but a small number were Protestant. The commission also investigated four state-run county homes.

Continue reading @ The Guardian.

Ireland Publishes Report On 'Appalling' Abuse At Mother And Baby Homes

Margaret McGuckin ✒ with some very traumatic thoughts following publication of the Report by the Historical Institutional Abuse Inquiry.

When I think back, the HIAI didn't cover half of it. To think as wee babies, crying out for someone to cuddle you, to come and rescue you, take you away from those bad nuns dressed in Black ..... . And no one did. They were allowed to do it. Leaving me all my life, blaming myself ... that I was to blame, it was My fault. I was hated, no one wanted me, I was bad, mad, and untouchable, unwanted, unloved and a total alien outsider. 

This will never go away, no matter who I talk to, or how many counselling sessions I get. Damaged For Life!!  

Was in Zoom counselling link with Julie Murphy Wave Trauma Counselling service there. Wow. Triggers of yesterday? Didn't realise they would affect me -  again and again. Stuff came up, thinking of the neglect, starvation, humiliation, beatings, treated like filthy scum of the earth, the Spawn of the Devil etc, by those So called Christian Religious Orders and Priests.. Hidden behind the high walls, covered in barbed wire and glass atop of them. Hidden out of sight away from  the outside world, where they could at will, under the cover of darkness, cruelly abuse children - a dark power unto themselves!! Answering to no one, as State and Church acted together as one, turning a blind eye, choosing together not to listen to the muffled cries of the innocents, dressed in rags, shoeless, hungry, rejected by society.

Any wonder they called me Mad Maggie on the Ormeau Road and Market's, etc etc, I was notorious. Even the Brits and peelers knew me so well. But, yet, underneath that exterior that persona was a real child crying out to be accepted, loved, wanted etc.  

The last few days, listening to the stories of the Mother and Baby Homes Report, brought it all back to me, and just how we all had been treated in these dark, cold, harsh and Loveless Institutions run by the RC Religious Orders and Churches. Memories, of babies, toddlers crying out for comfort and reassurance - had no one to lift them up, cuddle them lovingly or to feed them with the love only a Mother can do. These unholy nuns, these creatures of habit, in habits, dressed in black looked down on us children with disdain and disgust. We could see it in their eyes, the only part of them that was uncovered! They say, the eyes hold the secrets of your heart and your soul? These eyes of these nuns, I'll never forget, the hatred, the sniggering, that terrified me so much as that very young 3 year old, until aged 11 when I was finally released from their clutches and the dungeon-like prison. 

The absolute fear and dread I felt every time I looked at them! The harshness of this cruel un-Christlike regime, has come back to me in the stillness of the night, as I try to sleep, I'm awoken by nightmarish dreams, bringing it all back to me. Even though I've kept myself so very busy with the HIAI Campaign, I realise now why I kept so busy. I didn't want to dare think back in time, it hurt too much! I'd rather believe those things were in the past, they happened to others and not myself. That's why I looked after other abuse victims rather than think about myself as that very young child who also endured the barbaric torturous ill treatment and Neglect from these Church run Institutions. 

Now, I'm left as I've some time on my hands, in particular with this news in the past few days of how young children were left lying in cots, starving, cold, crying out, sick, ill, unchanged in filthy rags, and no one coming to their aid....children ending up lifeless, because of the Neglect and deliberate rejection and heartless uncaring attitude and behaviour from these cold hearted un-Christlike, so called Religious Orders and Churches. May God forgive them.

The stench was awful. Cobwebs hung from the ceiling. And cots were covered in dirt. In one battered pink cot was an 18 month old coloured boy lying on a torn and pitted foam mattress. There were no sheets on the mattress and the only covering was a tiny piece of blanket in one corner. A six-month old baby was in a cramped Moses-type basket. Another in a carry cot inside an ordinary cot, had his own sick all over his clothes. It had caked dry on him.

Margaret McGuckin emerged from a regime of abuse held in place by religious orders. She is the driving force behind Survivors & Victims of Institutional Abuse (SAVIA).


HIAI Didn't Cover Half Of It

Anthony McIntyre ponders a serious breach of data protection in the North.

As if Covid-19 and its prolonged ripple effect on daily life was not enough to cope with in 2020, the year has proved a dispiriting one for institutional abuse victims in the North. No strangers to disappointment and let down, they have already this year been dealt a double blow by authority. 

The first came in February when Boris Johnson fired from his cabinet the North’s Secretary of State, Julian Smith. In the light of what we now know about the infidelity to public duty so brazenly and contemptuously displayed by Dominic Cummings the decision to have sacked Smith, even more than it did at the time, smacks of vindictive political revenge executed because Smith failed to echo the obligatory Westminster deference of Yes Prime Minister.

The tenacity with which Johnson has battled to retain his wayward chief advisor, a man now widely regarded as an unremitting liar seriously deficient in redeeming attributes, has placed in full public view the arrogant Tory Toff disdain for the public. What say you old chap - the smelly plebs are up in arms because they can't see the value of double standards. They should go to Specsavers. 

Which is where Cummings should have went rather than Barnard Castle, but that's another matter. 

The way in which Smith, a politician who won the admiration of many in the North for the political dexterity he brought to the job, and who for survivors of institutional abuse, was a “guardian angel” is a salutary lesson, suggesting that there remains one Tory blood sport in need of banning. 

For those who have been campaigning for justice, Julian’s brief time in Belfast should be remembered for championing our struggle. Julian did more to ensure survivors of sexual and physical abuse in state-funded institutions got recompense and recognition than any other politician over many years.

The words of  Margaret McGuckin who chairs the SAVIA Lobby Group, and who since the 2008 release of the Ryan Report on clerical abuse has been “campaigning for an inquiry into institutional abuse in Northern Ireland.” 

Not of her own volition, Ms McGuckin has been in the news again. On this occasion to vehemently protest a second blow to victims which came at the weekend when “the names and emails of 250 abuse survivors were revealed in a monthly newsletter of the body set up to investigate their claims and compensate the victims.” 

It was a seeminlgy serious administrative error on the part of the office of the Interim Victim’s Commissioner, Brendan McAllister. People who had every right to anonymity saw that right vanish with the tap of a send email key. Those exposed had been part of the Historical Institutional Abuse Inquiry which had been set up “to investigate widespread allegations of historic sexual and physical abuse at 22 institutions run by religious, charitable and state bodies in Northern Ireland for more than 70 years.” 

No one is blaming McAllister directly or ascribing malign intent to him but that has not prevented a furore swelling. Although he has apologised for the actions of his office, that has failed to stymie anger. The Unionist MLA, Doug Beattie, went as far as to call for the resignation of McAllister:

It is clear that Brendan McAllister should accept responsibility for this data breach and stand down. If he does not, then the executive office [devolved government] must take action to remove him from post and immediately begin the process to appoint a HIA commissioner, a process that should have been started in November 2019. Victims must come first in all we do, and establishing and maintaining confidence and trust is at the heart of helping victims … if there is no confidence and no trust, we are failing victims.

This is a view echoed by Margaret McGuckin who explained to the The Pensive Quill how those left marooned on an island of publicity as a result of the leak felt:

One let down after another, coming against HIA victims. Julian Smith was like a saviour coming their way, an answer to prayer almost! He was man enough to stand up for victims and honest enough to continue on his promises of bringing legislation through Westminster. Now, just at the start of the Redress Scheme Panel opening and issuing payments for HIA victims who have waited a LIFETIME for some form of justice, a government figure and one supposed to be their Advocate, Brendan McAllister, has let them down terribly for not over-seeing proper protocols from his office and staff, who have sent this leaflet out to 250 Abuse victims with their confidential details, names and email addresses for all to see.
A clear breach of Data Protection of the most vulnerable people in society which has set them back mentally and emotionally, as they cry out for help trying to understand why now this could happen to them once again.
Grown men who contacted me in confidence told me off their rape and abuse whilst in "care" and I reassured them that no one would ever know of their names, that they would be helped in the highest degree of Confidentiality and never would they be exposed to the public.
Well, this is exactly what had happened. They are inconsolable, angry, and traumatised all over again. And we, SAVIA Lobby Group, and Claire McKeegan, our Solicitor and friend, are left to comfort and to listen to their cries for help and to try to make them understand what and how and why. This has been yet another attack on their personal being yet again.
This will have to be resolved. They have absolutely no faith in the Interim Advocate and want his resignation immediately. The HIA Commissioner proper should be in place. Legislation was passed through Westminster last November for this to happen and we are still waiting. HoCS David Sterling must see that this happens immediately.

The "dreary steeples" that for aeons cast a shadow which concealed the abuse taking place in dark confines have yet to be fully exposed. Their continued dreariness a reminder of the Bleak House they sit atop.  Those who suffered horrendously in the shadows and who both craved and needed anonymity to spare them further anguish, have, paradoxically,  for their efforts been pushed into the public spotlight.

The American writer, Wendell Berry, has stated: “Rats and roaches live by competition under the laws of supply and demand; it is the privilege of human beings to live under the laws of justice and mercy.”

Is that so? Excuse the victims of abuse for not knowing that such things exist. 

⏩Follow on Twitter @AnthonyMcIntyre

One Let Down After Another

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