A DAY IN THE LIFE>>>> DATE: 1962>>>>> Hard to know what time my day started at but as it was the Farmer priest who was calling me to serve mass I guess it was very early. Being able to tell the time in these gulags wasn't given any priority. We kind of went through our day too the sounds of bells. There were bells for every fucking activity. A bell to rouse you, a bell to tell you to line up for washing, a bell to tell you to line up to receive your bit of toothpaste - two lines for the t...
A DAY IN THE LIFE DATE 1959: It was a fairly cold year the much of it I can remember, heck was it ever warm in those places?. But then in those gulags it seemed to be always cold. We all had runny noses, anyone remember the chilblains and the way the tops of your fingers started to swell? The ringworm was fucking awful, not the fact that you had it but the solution these nuns used to come up with, and solution is the important word here as they used to fill them white ceramic buckets (rem...
Good Morning Children Good Morning Children! Today I am going to raffle some bananas I remember the first time I saw a banana, it was while I was under the " tender care " of the Sisters of Charity. And it seems somebody had donated a whole box of bananas to them. Obviously there wasn't enough bananas to go around over 200 hundred children so they decided to raffle a few of the bananas. Their " Pets " had already received a banana each and were busy scoffing...
A DAY IN THE LIFE 1958: There is nothing these nuns hate more than the insolence of a child. Over their CHILD GULAG they had a Latin phrase which translated meant: I WILL TEACH YOU THE FEAR OF THE LORD. Of course all that Latin bullshit was beyond me as a five year old - well most of it - the bit that I could grasp told me that this Lord was a bullshit artist. I mean how could a child be expected to say a prayer before a meal which consisted of slop - green mash, GREEN FUCKING MASH!!! an...
LETTER MAKES LIARS OF SISTERS OF LETTER MAKES LIARS OF SISTERS OF MERCY 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 o...
New Page 6 Sorrowful mysteries etched into bleeding fingers By FINTAN O'TOOLE The Irish Times - Friday, March 01, 1996 STRANGELY enough, of all the images in Louis Lentin's superb documentary film on Goldenbridge orphanage, the most disturbing for me was not one of the violent ones - a child deliberately scalded with boiling water or beaten with a club until her whole leg from ankle to hip burst open. We see so much brutality on the screen that most of us, I suppose, hav...
New Page 5 Brothers should be contrite Founded on Fear by Peter Tyrrell Mary Raftery 19/10/2006 Primo Levi, the Italian writer who gave us probably the most compelling account of life and death in a German concentration camp, told of a recurring nightmare common among inmates. He and his fellow sufferers at Auschwitz dreamt of a time in the future when they were free and were trying to tell people of the horrors in the camps, of the depths of depravity to which human bein...
New Page 4 Exhumation examination shows boy had skull damage By CHRIS DOOLEY The Irish Times - Thursday, April 19, 2001 An examination of the remains of a 13-year-old boy exhumed yesterday in Kilkenny found that his skull had been damaged. The remains of Willie Delaney were disinterred at St Kieran's Cemetery as part of a long-running Garda investigation into allegations of sexual and physical abuse of children at a reform school in Letterfrack, Co Galway. The remains were t...
New Page 3 Brother says abuse took place in Letterfrack Martin Wall 17/06/2005 Irish Times Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse: A senior member of the Christian Brothers has accepted that boys were abused at St Joseph's Industrial School at Letterfrack, Co Galway, but has completely rejected claims that there had been suspicious or mysterious deaths in the institution. Brother David Gibson, provincial leader, St Mary's Province of the Christian Brothers, said abuse had b...
New Page 2 State 'ultimately responsible' for children in care Patsy McGarry 13/06/2006 Irish Times The secretary general of the Department of Education and Science has accepted that the State had "ultimate responsibility" for the care of children held in residential institutions owned and managed by religious congregations. Replying to a question from Patrick Hanratty, senior counsel for the Christian Brothers, Brigid McManus yesterday said "the State had chosen to ...
Christian Brothers Christian Brother thanked Burke over rezoning decision Olivia Kelly & Martin Wall 11/11/2006 Irish Times Mahon tribunal: A senior Christian Brother has said he wrote to the former Fianna Fáil minister Ray Burke in 1993 to thank him for Fianna Fáil's support in passing a Dublin County Council rezoning motion, even though Mr Burke had not been a member of the council since 1987. The Christian Brothers were in the early to mid-1990s seeking to hav...