The Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse
When I was a young lad in primary school in Ireland, I was an energetic, impulsive little bastard. For this, I was beaten regularly and mercilessly by a sadistic old bitch called Bess Sheedy. She didn't belong in a classroom; she should have been in a prison. But because of the collusion of Church and State, she was allowed to mistreat children under the guise of teaching them. Everyone knew what she was doing, but nobody stopped her. The hierarchy, in every sense of that convoluted word, ruled — with an iron hand.
Still, I was one of the lucky ones. Despite being harmed by a psychopath whose vicious conduct was sanctioned by the Department of Education, I never attended one of the institutions mentioned by the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse, which released its horrific findings yesterday. The religious and the secular emerge very badly from Judge Sean Ryan's report and it will be interesting to see how the country now deals with the past that has been laid bare. Just like Irish Republicanism, a perversion that has untold crimes on its conscience, Irish Education has a dark soul that needs to be examined and unless this is done openly and honestly one can only assume that another layer of cynicism will be added to the ones that already mark the modern Irish character.
Sure, there were and there are principled teachers in the Irish educational system, just like there were and there are devoted clerics in the Irish churches, but the 20th century phenomenon of silent collusion in wrongdoing that led to catastrophe on a bigger stage operated just as malevolently in Ireland, where its victims were the most defenceless of all: children. There will have to be a reckoning.
