We often make jokes about things that frighten us.

A !! TWO HOUR MASS !! would frighten me ...... it would be so desperately dull ..... dulldulldulldull .... dreadfully dull. All that mumbling and jumbling .... and standing up and sitting down ..... and that weird language they use .... aday um qui le tificat ... juven tu tum mayan .... or something like that ..... so dull dul dull dull ........ it would bore me ..... boring so terribly boring ..... frighteningly boring ........ all that repeating of stuff ... over and over and over and over and over again and again ..dull dull dull dull ........ YOU know what I mean!

Religious Freaks, It was not said that a two hour mass had taken place, it was said that the priest came back after two hours, read what is said not what you want to read. This posting has brought all you defenders of the abusers within the Catholic Church out into the open. The abusers and their defenders have a lot to be afraid of but your days are numbered are they not ? How dare you pretend to want to protect CHILDREN FROM THESE MONSTERS ????????????????????????. THE LAW OF THE LAND IS THE LAW ?

!! THE LAW OF THE LAND IS THE LAW !! And would that be the 1908 Childrens Act you'd be talking about ? That's the law that put most of us into the Child Gulags. There was an attempt to change this law and make it more "modern" in the 1940's (Childrens Act 1940) - but when the father of 4 children tried to retrieve his children from the Gulags the religious order refused to hand HIS children over to him. A subsequent Supreme Court hearing discovered that the father of the 4 children had a common law wife who happened to be, horror of horrors, Protestant. Thankfully the Supreme Court was not, at that particular time, under the sway of Archbigot McQuaid and the children were released. The Supreme Court found that the Childrens Act 1940 was unconstitutional. After that they.... [THE LAW OF THE LAND] reverted to the 1908 Children's Act.

So excuse me if you feel I have NO RESPECT whatsover for THE LAW OF THE LAND ..... I Don't!

One of them covered up criminal activities, thought he was above the law, and the other is going to jail for being a tax cheat?

I was told my friend Angry was not well so I went visit him and yes I took the old fecker some grapes and some print out's just to keep him up to date and yes you guess't it after he read the printout's he as only can got so fucking mad he threw the fucking grapes at me so I though it was good to see the old Angry .HE cant wait to get back on his PC.and I can't wait to get out of this fucking hospital ward before the fecker throws the pisspot at me dont you just love the old fucker so you lot out there hard hats on ?I just wonder what it was that upset my old friend ?cant wait to find out.my friend is Angry.

Pardon!

""Canon Law continues to be used as an excuse for why best practice in child protection cannot be adopted across the Irish Catholic Church. It is one of the excuses offered as an explanation for the Church’s rejection of the recommendations of the Lynott Working Group. We are asked to accept that Church leaders cannot consent to the surrender of any decision making power to professionals working for the Church. We are told that this, and a requirement for transparent and public reporting of child protection, is incompatible with Canon Law. "" It appears Ireland can have a Child Protection Law .... SUBJECT TO THE APPROVAL OF THE VATICAN!! ---- The Vatican's canon lawyers have placed a choice before Catholics in ireland: Either obey a rule that encourages the hierarchy of the church to refuse to cooperate with those investigating child abuse (the canon law option), or obey a rule that requires such cooperation (the rule of law option). Most American Catholics chose the latter a long time ago.

In an IDEAL WORLD the Laws enacted by the democratically elected representatives would be The Law of the Land .... but to those in the Church the IDEAL WORLD has always being the NEXT WORLD and their respect for The Law of the Land was always of little consequence. The Church only recently asserted that they intend defending their prerogatives derived from canon law .

 

Baby A demands the truth

 

There are a million questions you want to ask. One door just opens another. And finally you end up with the most basic question of all - why me?" These are the words of the man known as Baby A, writes Mary Raftery.

He is the only person who so far has had it confirmed to him that he was the subject of an experimental vaccine trial in a mother and baby home in 1960. "When I was a baby," he told me when we met some weeks ago, "I was just a number, a category. Why are they still making me feel like that?" The vaccine trials on newborn infants have been the subject of considerable public concern since first exposed over 15 years ago. For a decade, the Government stalled on the issue but finally decided to act.

In a passionate speech to the Seanad in November 2000, the then Minister for Health Micheál Martin outlined the critical concerns raised by these trials. "The key issue," he said, "that of consent, cannot be fudged because it is fundamental. Children in care have the same rights as other children." He pointed to a number of issues related to the ethical basis of the trials and emphasised that he found the lack of documentation on them both "puzzling" and "unsatisfactory". In 2001 the Oireachtas passed legislation to direct the Commission on Child Abuse to investigate the issue. This was described by the minister as "the ultimate guarantee against a cover-up or whitewash".

Referring to those who were the subject of the experimental vaccine trials, he said: "We do not know whether your rights were protected all those years ago, we just do not know, but we believe it is important for you and for the wider society to move heaven and earth to find out." However, the commission's inquiry quickly became bogged down in court challenges. When the Supreme Court ruled in 2003 that Prof Patrick Meenan, who had directed Baby A's 1960 trial, did not have to give evidence, the investigation procedure was shelved. Last summer, it collapsed completely. On application from Prof Irene Hillary, who had conducted a number of the vaccine trials, the court ruled that the Government's order directing the Child Abuse Commission to investigate the vaccine trials was invalid.

When you ask the Department of Health these days how they now intend to pursue the inquiry, what you get is the standard fudge that they are considering the matter - a far cry from "moving heaven and earth" only a few years ago. Baby A - we will call him Peter - finds all of this intensely frustrating. For the sake of his family and small children, he wants to preserve his privacy. But he feels that unless someone speaks out, "the Government will just let this one quietly die away".

For most of his life, Peter had no reason to think that there was anything unusual about his background. When his mother died 10 years ago, he began to hear rumours locally that he had in fact been adopted. It transpired that the woman he thought of as his aunt was in reality his true mother. She had been in the Bessboro Mother and Baby Home in Cork, and it was there that four-month-old Peter received the experimental 4 in 1 or Quadrivax vaccine from Prof Hillary in 1960. No evidence has emerged that either he or any of the other babies suffered harm as a result of this.

According to Peter, his birth mother (who now lives abroad) has told the Child Abuse Commission that she neither gave nor was asked to give consent to her baby's participation in this vaccine trial, and that she was told nothing about it. Peter also had lived abroad for many years, but found himself so upset by the discovery of his involvement in the vaccine experiment that he has returned to Ireland to find the truth. "It's difficult to explain the effect something like this can have on you," he says. "It has just turned my life upside down. I'm four months old, lying in my cradle, I'm completely vulnerable. I want to know who decided to do this to me and what gave them the right." Peter is one of 58 babies included in the 1960/'61 trial, spread across five mother and baby homes throughout the country.

Other vaccine trials to be investigated involved additional children's homes in the early 1970s.

Before its investigation was shut down, the Commission on Child Abuse anticipated that evidence could emerge of further trials involving children and babies. In total, they considered that up to 300 infants were part of such trials. As the only one to come forward so far, Peter feels acutely isolated. "The names of the others are there, but no one has bothered to find them. It means I'm the only one fighting to get to the truth here. That makes it even harder when all I feel is that everyone else just wants the whole thing to disappear."

© The Irish Times

Rory Conor, your days are numbered, ANGELA HAS GIVEN EVERYTHING ABOUT YOU.

I agree ........................ dungarvan no doubt

Who was or is John Fields..............Was he the caretaker in Artane 1966 - 1971 ?..............Why are the Christian Brothers refusing to say who he is ? Is this the same John Fields that was an inmate in Artane was sent out into the world and came back one day and went to bed in number Two Dormitory. When the Brothers came to get him out of bed John started to scream with terror could this be the same John. During the struggle it is alleged that John was badly beaten up and spent time in the infirmary could this be the same John. Is this the same John that stayed in Artane working for food and board until the Brothers got rid of him for telling people that came to Artane to visit that the Brothers were evil people and proceeded to tell them all the horrors that had taken place and was still taking place right up until Artane was closed in 1969 ? Is this the same John that got beaten up for telling visitors to draw a line across the visitors book in the ORATORY to make sure that the Brothers could not add anything nice like "I was in Artane and had a good education and was well treated" ?.............. Is this a dream that I am having ? It must be for the good Brothers would not do anything like that, would they ????????????????????????? now I lay me down to sleep, one sheep, two sheep, three sheep...what a load of baaalicks these Brothers are.

An Inspector Calls

Or what the Inspector noted after visits to the Sisters of Mercy-managed Newtownforbes Industrial School

A ..... I cannot find any excuse which would exonerate you and your staff from the verminous condition of several of the children's heads .

B ..... I was not satisfied in finding so many of the girls in the infirmary suffering from bruises on their bodies.

C ...... It is observed however that a number of the younger children had no shoes and I am to request you to take immediate steps to remedy this matter.

D ...... The practice of allow children to go barefoot has been condemned on medical grounds as exposing the children to the danger of infection from cuts. It is also uncomfortable for the children."

E ...... "The children looked and were very untidy. Their necks were badly washed. In most cases their heads verminous."

F ......"Mr. (Blank) called to complain regarding the condition of his children in Newtownforbes. ................ and says that they are suffering from scabies from months past.

G ...... One of the girl's hands is practically disabled from the sores between her fingers. The parent says the children's footwear is in a very bad condition and they have no stockings."

H ...... the dirty condition of the heads and the untreated abscesses I discovered in the child in the infirmary.

QUESTION to Mercy Representative :> Were there [any] conclusions which, as a congregation, you were in a position to draw from the accumulated sources of information which became available to you?

ANSWER . Well, I suppose, from these sources of information it became clear to us that Newtownforbes was like other industrial schools, therefore it was run in a very institutional manner. That it was organised in a very routine and fixed way. It was also clear to us that the children who were in the industrial school were very vulnerable children and had special needs, and that the system in place and the industrial school wasn't really able to meet or provide for the needs of the children.

EMPHASIS ADDED

1. Newtownforbes was like other industrial schools, A BLANKET ACKNOWLEDGEMENT that Newtownforbes was not an out-of-the-ordinary bad Industrial School, that it was no different than other places of Detention. ..... As yet we have to hear ANY denial from other Religious Orders that the conditions in their own particular Industrial School was LESS SALUBRIOUS than Newtownforbes.

2. .... run in a very institutional manner. Basically this means that there was little to no individual attention given to children, indeed it seems that if one child had a verminous condition on her head then this condition would spread to other children's heads. Beatings seemed to take happen to groups of children and it seems these beatings required care in the Infirmary (see B). Is there an implication in B, telling the Sisters of Mercy to refrain from beating big numbers of girls all at the one time? The Inspector writes .... I was not satisfied in finding so many ....... suffering ...... Is this an EXHORTATION from the Inspector to the Sisters of Mercy? And I remember from my Catechism that an EXHORTATION is a gift of the Holy Spirit whereby one is blessed with the ability to encourage others in the godly way !!!!

3. ....organised in a very routine and fixed way ... She is really describing an UNYIELDING FORCE so to speak. Just take the matter of the barefoot children, presumably the Inspector's Report on Newtownforbes was written up when he/she returned to the Education Department, someone higher up the chain read it and made notes and, probably, wrote to the Mercy nuns about the health risks of allowing children to go barefoot. The Mercy nuns then, probably, wrote back to the Education Department looking for funds to buy shoes, that letter would have been sent higher .... and so on ..... but the children would STILL be barefoot.

4. children ..... were very vulnerable ..... and had special needs ....... the industrial school wasn't really able to meet or provide for the needs of the children Special Needs for scabies, bare feet, abscesses ??? The mind boggles, this order of nuns were already managing Secondary Schools and Boarding Schools ..... surely a Degree in Childcare was NOT needed to see the hurt of the children in Newtownforbes! Special Needs indeed! Yet this order of nuns continued to claim more and more money from the State ostensibly to cater to the special needs .. of... very vulnerable children ..... yet they were UNABLE TO CATER FOR THE BASIC NEEDS OF THE CHILDREN

Treatment of children by nuns in industrial school 'intolerable'

DAMNING letters from the Department of Education setting out the serious neglect of children at Newtownforbes industrial school, Co Longford, in the early 1940s, were presented to the Commission on Child Abuse yesterday.

The letters catalogued attempts by the Department to improve conditions at the school up to the mid-1940s, when their efforts began to bear fruit.

Sr Margaret Casey, leader of the western province of the Mercy Sisters, testified to the Commission yesterday and admitted that many of the children found their time at the school to be "harsh, impersonal, abusive and deeply humiliating".

A 1940 letter, addressed to the nun in charge of the school, told her: "I cannot find any excuse which would exonerate you and your staff from the verminous condition of several of the children's heads."

The letter, written by the medical inspector of the Department, Dr Anna McCabe, continued: "I was not satisfied in finding so many of the girls in the infirmary suffering from bruises on their bodies. I wish particularly to draw attention to the latter as under no circumstances can the Department tolerate treatment of this nature."

It blamed the "neglect of supervision and individual attention" as the reason for "the dirty condition of the heads and the untreated abscess I discovered in the child in the infirmary".

It warned that "immediate steps will have to be taken to remedy" conditions at the school, and that, unless there was "a marked and sustained improvement when the school is next inspected . . . I will be reluctantly compelled to take the matter further."

Sr Casey, who was a day-pupil at the school between 1954 and 1967, told the Commission that prior to the 1990s there was no awareness within her order of the damage done to some of the children in its care.

She said the first complaint about Newtownforbes surfaced after the 'Dear Daughter' drama-documentary about life at Goldenbridge orphanage was aired by RTE in 1996.

In all, five complaints about abuse and ill-treatment suffered by residents of the industrial school were received. These related to the period 1939-1965. The school was opened in 1869 and closed in 1969. At its peak it housed 159 children.

David Quinn

Religious and Social Affairs Correspondent

I have just read the post re:the grave in the woods in Letterfrack in Connemara. The four year old child,a boy called Bernard Kerrigan seems to have been well,in fact playing in the schoolyard,one day and buried in the woods the next. How in the name of Christ could this happen without there being any explanation? Does anyone know who this boy might be and where he might be from.? I think this calls for an explanation from the Christian Brothers immediately. A statue should be put up in Eyre Square in Galway where the Paraic O Conaire statue is to this innocent child. The people of Galway must honour the death of an innocent buried in their woods with
out a sign to mark his short life and unknown death.Because he is someone,he comes from somewhere and he deserved even in 1935 dignity in death that his cruel captors failed to give him. He had to wait all those years but his little friend became a man and finally made it back to give him the respect and dignity that he deserved.
The nearly 100 deaths in Letterfrack --again very strange. The children were taken so that they presumably could be given a better life but are we now looking at a sitaution where there chances of survival and development would have been better by far even in difficult circumstances outside?Sadly I conclude myself that the beneficiaries of the incarceration of thousands of children were the bank balances of the religious orders the dirty christian brothers and the sneaky freaky sisters of mercy in particular. These parasites were then able to afford a silver serivice upstairs downstairs lifestyle like the aritstocracy which they imagined they were. House slaves, field and factory slaves, starved, beaten,neglected, brought back by the old gardai if they ran away, raped, sexually abused and sexually demeaned this is the hidden Ireland. The dark side of this country has to be exposed to the light. We must never stop talking about this, contrary to what others might say, because by talking about this and bringing the real horrors out we are not only helping ourselves but also bringing to consciousness, bringing to the heartless and soulness nation that the Republic has become, an account of its brutality, its subterfuge, its abuse of power,its exploitation and what was done in the name of the people by Government and its agents. Forgetting for any of us is not an option. Mrs Mc Aleese, take note we will not move on. Move on you if you like I aint for moving Mrs. A statue please to Bernard Kerrigan, four years old, a child of the nation, deserving of respect like any other child of the nation.