Ireland's Child Detention System
Published on December 3, 2004 By theknitter In CursorFX

Revealing the horrors of Childhood Detention in Ireland's Child Detention facilities - 2024 update


Comments (Page 1)
7 Pages1 2 3  Last
on Dec 07, 2004
Hi Robbie

Hi All,

There is no censorship on this site, no filtering of comments. The Philosophy I believe in:>

"...no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

So post your comments and let the Detention Orders be damned.

on Dec 23, 2004
One of the catch-cries through communities in the 20's, 30's, 40-'s, 50's and 60's was "Watch Out for the Cruelty Man"

The members of the NSPCC/ISPCC were all Roman Catholic and the Cruelty Men themselves were "the eyes and ears" of the Church in the community. If anyone in the community were to step outside of what the Church thought was right the person was condemned from the pulpit. Only a few years ago a famous Irish athlete was condemned during Sunday mass by the officiating priest for having a child out of wedlock.

The Church's dead hand on the progress of society led many people to emigrate, particularly to England. And from the Institutions many on their release headed straight for the boat.

This UNHOLY TRINITY have a lot to answer for. The Government has gone some way towards healing wounds but the little it has done has been done very grudgingly and in some instances they have taken back.

The Church is STILL in denial, STILL as arrogant as it ever was, STILL trying to control the lives of people, STILL considering itself as the Judge AND Jury of OUR morals. Only this weekend they condemned Registry Office weddings and said that Catholics MUST NOT attend as witnesses. Like I said ARROGANT BASTARDS.

But the NSPCC/ISPCC have got off scot free. They obviously saw ahead what was coming and destroyed their files. But how files from Kerry, Donegal, Kilkenny, Galway, Offaly, Cork, Roscommon, ....... all ended up being burned in a fire in Dublin is beyond me ....... It's a bit of MAGIC just like Judge Curtin's Computer.

THE nspcc/ispcc MUST COME CLEAN ON THIS ISSUE.


on Dec 23, 2004
WHAT THEY DO BEST:[LEGAL TIDBITS FROM THE WEB]

The Christian Brothers have been employing legal stalling tactics and shouldn't comes as surprise to victims of Institutional/sex abuse. The Catholic Church's approach to dealing with allegations of abuse, and that legal stonewalling is a continuing fact of life for victims desperate to take on these religious orders. The Catholic Church and their lawyers have traditionally taken a very hardball approach to litigation, relying on all sorts of technical points. It's very, very rare for negotiations to take place at all.

The Catholic Church/Religious Orders rely upon each unique situation of not being a body corporate, which can be sued. It also relies upon a doctrine, which says it ought not to be held liable for the acts of its servants or agents, that is to say the priests and the clergy. It denies what the lawyers call vicarious responsibility, or vicarious liability, for them. And blaming the victims and suggesting that as children they enticed the priests and the clergy and were themselves to blame if any sexual behaviour took place.

THE KNITTER
on Dec 23, 2004
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I remember watching TV in the early 70's when Sister Stan appeared on the screen. It was some report about the great work being done in the Kilkenny area (Kilkenny Social Services ??) by Sister Stan and the sisters of charity. Her face triggered something in me. Well you wouldn't believe the foul-mouthed language that escaped from my mouth. Such filthy language I had never used before (or since) to describe another human being. And yet this lady is able to tell anyone listening that she NEVER worked in any institutions. The early 70's was still very very close to the time I was in those child gulags and my memories of those times was still very fresh. And yet what provoked such a reaction in me?

Is it the sanctimonious nature of these type of people, the "I'm doing God's work so don't dare question me" arrogant pose of them. You know I've seen those big posters as I pass up and down the Dart, the ones about homelessness, they are placed their by FOCUS IRELAND, an organisation which Sister Stan has a link to; One of the posters shows an empty, dirty, filthy doorway and on the wall is a plaque commemorating a homeless person who used to live in that doorway, another poster shows a park bench with a similar kind of plaque. Well it provoked a few questions in me: "What percentage of the homeless, in Ireland and the UK, were previously in the Irish child gulags, and what contribution did those religious orders make in creating and exacerbating the homeless problem in both countries" Sister Stan is going to use her humanitarian award for immigrants......would that be the immigrants who, when they fled the child gulags in Ireland, took the first boat to the UK?

THE KNITTER

on Dec 24, 2004
SISTER STAN: (speaking of the great value of Celibacy) ""in the context of child care, consecrated virginity adds a dimension far more important and more positive than freedom from the 'distractons' of married and family life. Because of the 'gift' of Celibacy the needs of children whom we receive under our care may be answered in a unique way by the consecrated religious"" Posted (in the hope that she comes to EAT HER OWN WORDS)
on Dec 24, 2004
SISTER STAN: (referring to nuns engaged in Institutional child care) "These nuns are not isolated but operate within a community of religious. One of the advantages of this is that each member of a community (of nuns) has a responsibility to prevent other members (nuns) becoming neurotic and unchristian through lack of love"

on Dec 24, 2004
SISTER STAN: (arguing for nuns continuing their work in Institutions) "The child's need for permanence in the person who cares for him/her. The very fact that the religious (nun) is someone whose commitment is for life and that the service which is inherent in her vocation is a life-long, and not a transient one, should give to the children that feeling that the loving care they receive is no passing thing"
on Dec 27, 2004
i dontent see that on the website?hes dosent allow it at all there not like ud was a discrace against other victims like us- yous are doing the same here
on Dec 29, 2004
Reply By: Old Ferryhouse Lag(Anonymous User) Posted: Wednesday, December 29, 2004 Every child 'tried to run away' from industrial schools Patsy McGarry, Religious Affairs Correspondent

Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse: Every child in industrial schools "tried to run away, or ran away at some stage", a former school manager told the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse yesterday. Father Joe O'Reilly, provincial of the Rosminian congregation and a former manager at St Joseph's industrial school at Ferryhouse, near Clonmel, told the commission's investigation committee that "absconding had always been an issue in every industrial school, in every school to some degree... In my experience every child tried to run away, or ran away at some stage." Boys did so to escape abuse, or because of excessive punishment, being misunderstood, being lonely and homesick, bullying, resentment at being in the school, as a lark, or as a challenge to the system, he said.

Absconding had a "very unsettling effect" and there were times when staff were "truly in danger of losing control of the place". At one time they considered closing down the school for a time, such was the problem. Boys who ran away were "almost universally caught", or returned themselves. Punishment mainly involved "the strap". Boys had their heads shaved for a time, but this was stopped by the school manager. Bed-wetting was an issue "then as now", involving between 20 to 30 per cent of boys. A section of dormitory was reserved for such boys, known as "the sailors' dorm". Other boys resented sleeping near that dormitory and ridiculed colleagues with the bed-wetting problem. He agreed bed-wetting had been treated by school authorities as a discipline problem, for which boys were punished.

He had heard such boys had been made carry wet mattresses on their heads, but believed this was as they brought mattresses to be dried. Drying sheets was "a big issue", with the limited facilities. Previously Father O'Reilly told the committee that on opening, St Joseph's had a licence to accommodate 150 boys. The vast majority stayed six years, before leaving at 16. However, from the 1930s numbers exceeded that, and were over 200 in the 1960s. At any time there were approximately 10 staff, about half of them priests and half of them brothers, with two prefects responsible for keeping discipline. These slept in a room off each of two dormitories. In addition there were four or five lay teachers in the school. Today at St Joseph's 36 boys are cared for by about 60 care workers with an additional 30 staff in auxiliary roles, he said.

The "vast majority" of boys in the school had committed no offence. In 1950, of 182 boys there, just four were sentenced for breaking the law. He felt admission to the school must have been " an absolutely terrifying experience" for "a frightened, trembling child", arriving in the school's dark corridor, usually accompanied by a Garda, to be then "despatched to the main yard where they encountered a huge number of children". About half of the boys came from Dublin, with the rest mainly from Limerick, Cork, Waterford, and Tralee.

Most staff, many with little education and none with training in child care, were from rural backgrounds. "Food was a constant issue," he said, with its quantity and quality remaining a problem until the late 60s. "Most children were hungry in any school in the country at the time." He said the capitation system, whereby schools were paid grants per boy, forced managers to have greater rather than a lesser numbers, and when these dropped it was raised with the Department of Education and with politicians, he said.

From 1940 to 1967, eight Ferryhouse boys died, with death certificates giving reasons ranging from chronic hepatitis, through gastritis, TB, anaemia, to the last death, from meningitis, in 1967.

The Irish Times
on Dec 29, 2004
As a former detainee from Ferryhouse I'd like to state here that child detainees who wet their beds were punished......

Firstly they were segregated in the Dormitories. Secondly they were given a Special Name: SAILORS. Thirdly they were severely thrashed. Fourthly they were forced to wash their sheets with carbolic soap. Fifth they were separated from the rest of the boys for verbal and psychological humiliation. Sixth they were disallowed from washing themselves forcing them to go around all day smelling of urine - this meant that they received more physical punishments from those who were teachers or workshop managers.

At the farce they call the commission to inquire into child abuse on September 8 2004 the current representative of the child-gaolers from Ferryhouse, stated that boys who wet their beds at night were not punished. He said he asked those older members of his "celbate" organisation whether there were punishments for bed-wetting and they stated that there were no punishments. They are LIARS. Or is what I stated a fantasy?

Another this representative said was that punishments were mostly spontaneous and not formal. That is another lie. Punishments were formal.

You were hit for Belching (this was entered in a book)
You were punished for having a hole in your sock (this was entered in a book)
You were punished for having a button missing from your shirt (this was entered in a book)
You were punished for having a button missing from your trousers (this was entered in a book)
You were punished for having a hole in your jumper (this was entered in a book)
You were punished for basically growing out of your shoes (this was entered in a book)
You were punished for having dirt in your nails and this after spending the whole day picking spuds or turnips etc. (this was entered in a book)
You were punished for having a "tideline" after washing in the morning (this was entered in a book)
You were punished for having soiled underwear - one of their obsessions (this was entered in a book)
You were punished for whispering in the chapel (this was entered in a book)
You were punished for walking when you should have been running (this was entered in a book)
You were punished for running when you should have been walking (this was entered in a book)
You were punished for turning left when you should have turned right (this was entered in a book)
You were punished for turning right when you should have turned left (this was entered in a book)
You were punished for not joining your hands in the chapel (this was entered in a book)
You were punished for getting a spelling wrong (this was entered in a book)
You were punished for not standing to attention when a Brother entered the room (this was entered in a book)
You were punished for not knowing your cathechism (this was entered in a book)
You were punished for dropping a stitch in the knitting shop (this was entered in a book)
You were punished for having dirty knees after being digging in the fields (this was entered in a book)
You were punished for being dirty after working in the pigsty (this was entered in a book)
You were punished for refusing to play hurling (this was entered in a book)
You were punished for refusing to play gaelic footbal or hurling (this was entered in a book)
You were punished for being insolent - that's when you ask why you are being battered (this was entered in a book)
You were punished for snoring (this was entered in a book)
You were punished for having your hands and arms under the blanket at night (this was entered in a book)
You were punished for having a runny nose (this was entered in a book)
You were punished for having scabies (this was entered in a book)
You were punished for not asking permission to go to the toilet - this involved you having to raise your righ-hand in the air and placing your left hand over your scrotum if you wanted to have a pee or placing your left hand on your anus if you wanted to have a shite (this was entered in a book)
You were punished for reading the Bunty or the Judy comic - these were deemed "corrupting" (this was entered in a book)
You were punished for looking sideways at a Brother or priest (this was entered in a book)
You were punished for making noises at night when you went to the toilet (this was entered in a book)
You were punished for not writing what was on the board when you got to write a letter to your mum or dad (this was entered in a book)
You were punished for scratching your head (this was entered in a book)
You were punished for vomiting during mealtimes (this was entered in a book)
You were punished for vomiting at anytime (this was entered in a book)
You were punished for having nits in your hair (this was entered in a book)
You were punished if you cried for your mum or dad (this was entered in a book)

You were punished for having a broken heart (this was NOT entered in a book).
on Dec 30, 2004
HEY STAN, HOW ABOUT THIS - BEING TREATED LIKE A HUMAN BEING.

In those times and in those places our jailors singled out certain people for their brand of "religious" invective. On many occasions this fell on a particular ethnic group within our country. Travellers. I remember with horror the treatment meted out to the Wards, the Conners and the Stokes. The nuns had a particularly nasty hatred for Travellers. I'm sure it was to do with their own attitude to their bodies. Whereas the Travellers had no problem with their nakedness during bathtime. The nuns used to be horrified at this, and would beat these little children quite mercilessly in the bath house with switches. The effect this had on the rest of us was to makes us extremely frightened of anyone seeing our bodies. On Sundays the nuns took us for walks outside the gulag.

On occasions we would turn left and walk us up to the outskirts of Kilkenny City, in pairs holding hands all of us being warned to keep our eyes on the ground in front of us, and then turn us around without entering the city. On other occasions we would turn right and take a "walk in the country". On this "country walk" we would sometimes encounter Travellers parked along the road. The nun would warn us of the dire consequences if we dared take a peek at this exotic sight. Of course some of us did and we were walloped. Myself, I thought the Travellers had an ideal life. The aroma of the food was mouth-watering, the sight of the campfire was romantic, their caravans, those old one with the arced roofs, were magic looking. The nun had no problem in shouting vicious insults at the Traveller families at the side of the road, calling them evil, filthy pigs. The Travellers ignored the nun and this made her even madder.

Naturally we would look then as it was plain to us that she was going to "fly off the handle". When she did it was to us that she vented her spleen. So much for "country walks". I remember once "absconding" from that place and heading through the fields towards a Traveller family parked alongside the road. They took me in and fed me. I have never since tasted such fresh bread, or tasty rasher and sausage and their mug of tea was MAGIC. Even I could tell that these people were SPECIAL. They had NO FEAR of the nuns, and they bent the knee to no one but God. They WERE very religious but it seemed to me, and I was only about 8 years old, that their religion was a HAPPY faith. In any event they took me all the way into Kilkenny City where I was hoping to get to my sister, but I was hopelessly lost and some man from a butchers' shop grabbed me and handed me back to the nuns. Later on in another gulag a guy called Ward saved me from a rape and for a time (until he left) I had a protector. This actually taught me the value of family. Because when my brother arrived I tried to protect him.

I learned about HUMANITY from people who these BLACK-GARBED CHRISTIANS NUNS denigrated. I learned more about LOVE and FAMILY and BELONGING from people who were called PIGS by the same BLACK-GARBED NUNS.
on Jan 01, 2005
Wishing a Health Peaceful New Year to all who post here.
on Jan 04, 2005
265,000 Euro paid out to abuse victims, says bishop - by Gordon Deegan – Irish Examiner

The Bishop of Killaloe, Dr Willie Walsh confirmed yesterday that the diocese paid out over a quarter of a million euro last year in the compensation for the pas sexual abuse of children by priests. In publishing the diocese’s annual accounts for 2003, Bishop Walsh confirmed that a total of 265,000 euro was paid to two victims of sexual abuse last year.

A spokesman for the diocese is in the process of making a payment to a third victim. He declined to say how much had been paid to each victim, saying the bishop did not wish to comment on individual cases. The vase proportion of the monies paid to the two victims came from a general church trust fund, the Stewardship Trust, established by the Irish Catholic Bishops to cover claims of clerical sex abuse. The accounts show that the trust paid 252,622 euro while the diocese paid 79,981 euro towards the trust in 2003.

According to a spokesman for the diocese, instead of seeking the funding from church members, the diocese’s finance committee has decided that its contribution to the trust should come from the proceeds of the sale of six acres of land at the Bishop’s Ennis residence to Ennis Town Council in 2001 for 1.5 million euro. In 1999, the overall Stewardship Trust fund stood at 10.6m euro and it is not known how much has been paid from the fund to victims since that time. The trust also funds child protection and other victim response initiatives undertaken at national level by the Bishops’ conference. It is understood the two cases of sexual abuse predate Bishop Walsh’s time as bishop and that the clergy involved are deceased.

In a statement accompanying the publication of the accounts, Bishop Walsh said “Over the past years, our church has been darkened by the revelation of the tragedy of serious abuse by a very small number of clergy. It is important that we try to understand and help the victims of such abuse towards healing. The diocese of Killaloe has and will continue to play its role in trying to heal the hurt and wounds of abuse. Some victims from both within and outside the diocese have sought my assistance in journeying towards that place of healing over the years. In helping them on that journey, I have made some finance available from the charitable funds of the diocese towards provision of counseling. In 2003, the diocese’s finance committee approved special financial payments to two victims of abuse”, the bishop said. A spokeswoman for One in Four, a support group for sexual abuse victims said “It is our understanding that Bishop Walsh has attempted to speed up the process of payments as much as he can and our experience is that he has been very positive in this area”.

In a recent interview, Bishop Walsh said he has dealt with possibly six our seven allegations against priests, some of which dated back to the 1050s. The bishop’s spokesman declined to say if any of the payments were made to victims of the late Fr Tom McNamara. Last June, Bishop Walsh traveled to two east Clare parishes to apologise for the abuse perpetrated by Fr McNamara over a 20 year period during the 1070s and 1980s. Tony Muggivan, the foster-father of triple murder Brendan O’Donnell has since claimed that O’Donnell was also a victim of the late priest.
on Jan 04, 2005
Ireland faces schools' abuse legacy - Elderly victims grew up in church-run facilities - By Glenn Frankel

It's been nearly 60 years, but John Griffin said he still remembers many horrible things about his time at the Baltimore Industrial School here -- the lice-infested bedding and clothing, the smell, the rats, the beatings and the sexual abuse. But what he recalls most vividly is the hunger. "We were starving all the time," said Griffin, now 71, "and we were begging for food. Anything to keep alive."

Baltimore was one of the most brutal of the youth institutions operated by the Roman Catholic Church with Irish government funding throughout much of the 20th century -- places where orphans, children born out of wedlock, those from broken homes and those convicted of crimes were held until they turned 16. The boys sent to this small harbor village on Ireland's south coast were supposed to learn fishery skills. Instead, according to a report released in January by a public commission of inquiry, they were subjected to "appalling conditions and deprivation," including "widespread and pervasive sexual abuse" by adults in positions of authority.

Political ramifications
When tales of persistent abuse at Baltimore and many of the 70 other state-sponsored institutions first emerged five years ago, officials issued long and seemingly heartfelt apologies, promising restitution to the survivors among the estimated 130,000 former residents of the schools, the last of which was closed in the late 1980s. The government established the commission to investigate and report on what seemed a bygone, Dickensian chapter in Ireland's history. But the past is not so easily buried. More than 1,700 former pupils have lodged formal complaints seeking compensation, while the judge who chaired the commission resigned in protest last fall, alleging that the government and the church had failed to cooperate with investigators. Justice Mary Laffoy has refused to comment publicly since stepping down, but her report, released in January, alleged that the department of education "has not adopted a constructive approach to dealing with its role in the inquiry" and that most of the religious orders accused of abuse "have adopted an adversarial, defensive and legalistic approach."

While Laffoy's report adopted a dry, legalistic tone, some of its passages betrayed her sense of frustration that time is running out because so many of the former victims are elderly. "Of what relevance will a report of the commission which is published in 10 years time be?" it asked. Prime Minister Bertie Ahern swiftly appointed a new chairman and pledged renewed cooperation. "My agenda and my only agenda in this is to try to find a way to help these victims," he told the Irish Independent newspaper. But critics argue that despite these sentiments, the government has been too slow to acknowledge the extent of the abuse and too quick to exonerate the church for its role in the scandal. "It's an extraordinary situation now where we need an inquiry into the inquiry," said Colm O'Gorman, director of One in Four, a Dublin-based group that counsels abuse victims.

Coming to terms
John Griffin, a diminutive and soft-spoken man who lives in the nearby town of Skibbereen, said he could understand why it is difficult for Irish society to come to terms with what happened at Baltimore and elsewhere. He himself has spent the greater part of his adulthood seeking to understand it. He was born in Dublin in 1934, the youngest of five children in a family that was split up by the authorities after his father died. John, who was 3, spent eight years in a church-run institution in Dublin, and then was transferred south to Baltimore, far from his remaining family members. That first day, the authorities shaved the heads of the new pupils, leaving only a tuft of long hair at the front. It marked the pupils in case anyone tried to escape. It had another purpose as well -- "to hold you for a beating," said Griffin. He remembers frequent punishments. Those who wet the bed or who were caught stealing food or lying were beaten with a leather strap or cane in front of the other pupils by staff members.

"There were six of them, and they had no pity," he recalled. "They could inflict pain anytime, day or night, but they'd often wait until we were in bed at night. I was fortunate. My mattress had a hole in the middle and I would dive inside and hide. I called it my little submarine." The boys were preyed upon sexually as well, he added. "Three or four did the raping," he said. "The lay staff, not the priests." Besides the physical abuse, hunger was the one constant. Each boy got one slice of bread for breakfast, a thin soup for lunch and dinner. They stole food from garbage bins, raw vegetables and clover from farmers' fields and sour milk from the troughs where cows ate. When fishing boats pulled into the harbor after a two-week voyage, the boys would gather at the pier to beg for leftover scraps of meat and moldy bread. "We were like a pack of wild animals," Griffin said. "If you found a bone, you didn't bury it like a dog, you took it back to your bed and kept it."

Complaints unanswered
When Griffin turned 16, he was released into the custody of a local farmer, and worked for several years as a laborer. He was functionally illiterate but slowly taught himself to read and write. But his letters of complaint to the police and to the education department went unanswered. No one listened, he said, until a broadcast journalist from the state-run RTE network named Mary Raftery contacted him several years ago. "Baltimore was not the worst in terms of abuse," said Raftery, whose three-part television documentary on the industrial schools in 1999 and follow-up book, "Suffer the Little Children," was the first to expose the dimensions of the scandal. "But it was unusual in terms of the filth. The squalor of Baltimore was in a league of its own." Raftery's documentary provoked widespread outrage and helped lead to Ahern's public apology and to expressions of regret from church officials. A typical statement came from the Irish Sisters of Mercy, which had operated several institutions. It apologized unreservedly but claimed its orphanages had been under-funded and understaffed and had coped as best they could. "In these circumstances many sisters have given years of dedicated service," it said. "Notwithstanding these facts, clearly mistakes were made."

While government officials were pledging restitution, the department of education was secretly negotiating with the church, resulting in an agreement two years ago that limited the church's liability to about $140 million. "The church was seen to be putting an enormous effort to get themselves off the hook," Raftery said. "No financial responsibility, no moral responsibility." But the documentary also helped trigger a wave of new groups and organizations founded to represent victims and their families. More journalistic reports and the feature film "The Magdalene Sisters" have helped spread knowledge of what happened at the institutions. The state has helped fund many of the groups, and has also established a counseling service for abuse victims that even critics concede is innovative. One of the most prominent of the groups was Right of Place, based in the southern city of Cork, founded by a dozen survivors of the nearby Upton school. Tony Treacy, one of Right of Place's founders, spent much of his childhood at Upton, where he said he and his fellow pupils were routinely abused. "The state and the church conspired to totally neglect us," he said. "They neglected to educate us, they even neglected to feed us."

Deplorable conditions
The Baltimore school was one of the first ones examined by the Laffoy commission. It heard testimony from Griffin and 20 other former pupils. The life they described, said the report, "was so harsh and deprived by the standards of today as to verge on the unbelievable." It concluded that their accounts were credible. According to the report, the state inspector in charge of monitoring the school gradually realized how deplorable conditions were. "It is easily the worst of all the schools and stands alone for inefficiency, slackness and neglect," wrote Anna McCabe in her 1946 report. Yet the school continued to operate for four more years until the state finally closed it down. Indeed, right up to the end its overseers were seeking to have more pupils sent there to increase its state subsidy. The commission awarded an average of 110,000 euros -- roughly $135,000 -- in compensation to Griffin and other former residents. One of those who testified, Christy Sutton, now 77, said the money was not enough. "I should have gotten three times as much for what we went through," he said. "Every day I was beaten and crippled." John Griffin said he still goes back to Baltimore for an annual reunion with fellow ex-pupils, although each year their numbers decrease. The main hall has been turned into a wing of a hotel. These days it houses a swimming pool. "In my mind I still see it the way it was," Griffin said. "I don't see the swimming pool. I see the dorms upstairs and the rectory and the dirt and filth." Griffin has written an 89-page account of his time there. It is a vivid portrait. Describing how one overseer beat boys who were tardy in leaving their beds on a cold morning, Griffin wrote, "They jumped like fish caught in a net."

On the wall of his modest kitchen in Skibbereen is a grainy black-and-white photograph of a dozen young boys standing outside the school during the winter of 1947. The boys look like black shadows in the snow -- they are wearing shorts, and all of them look painfully thin. Griffin calls them "matchstick boys." "When the prime minister apologized, I felt at last that someone had heard us," he said. "But we can never be compensated. Our innocent lives were taken from us. We were made to suffer for the sins of our parents, and pay we did."

© 2004 The Washington Post Company

KATHY FERGUSON
on Jan 07, 2005
Medical Record
Child Detainee's Medical History Covering 96 Months
Year Month Height Weight Record of Illnesses
  Feet Inches Lbs  
1 Jan       Vaccinated
9 April 3 11.25 49
5 July 3 11.5 47
3 Oct 4 0 49
           
1 Jan 4 0.25 49 One tooth extracted
9 April 4 1 51
5 July 4 1.25 52
4 Oct 4 1.5 54
               
1 Jan 4 2.25 58 Cod liver oil. One tooth extracted  …. (not clear?? left the school)...
9 April 4 2.5 56
5 July 4 2.6 56
5 Oct 4 3.25 56
               
1 Jan 4     One tooth extracted
9 April 4 4.75 64
5 July 4 5.325 65
6 Oct 4 5.75 66
               
1 Jan 4 4.325 66  
9 April 4 6.25 68
5 July 4 7.25 68
7 Oct 4    
               
1 Jan 4 8 70 Cod Liver Oil & Milk Tonic     ….. ….. … … … …
9 April 4 9 72
5 July 4 10.5 73
8 Oct 4 10 74
               
1 Jan 4 10 76 Cod Liver Oil
9 April 4 10.25 77
5 July 4 10.6 79
9 Oct 4 11.375 80
               
1 Jan 5 1 86 Mumps
9 April 5 1 87
6 July 5 1.5 94
0 Oct 5 3 98
               
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