Sign in. It’s quick, free and it’s up to you.
An account is an optional way to support the work we do. Find out more.
LAST UPDATE | 2 Mar 2020
WHY WERE SO many children incarcerated in institutions all over Ireland? This was the first question that Mary Raftery posed when I started working with her on a television series that she was making about the system for children in the care of the State.
That was back in 1998.
States of Fear was a three-part investigation into the history of industrial schools and other institutions since the foundation of the State and was broadcast in April and May 1999.
At the time, information about these schools was sparse and was often buried out of the reach of journalists and researchers. I knew from the outset that this wasn’t going to be easy.
A lot was certainly known about conditions in many of these institutions because of the very courageous work of people such as Christine Buckley, Paddy Doyle, Mannix Flynn and others. But there was a broader feeling, including from sections inside RTÉ, that the tale had been told and that there wasn’t an audience for more stories of childhood abuse.
The ‘one bad apple’ take
Frequently, when cases of abuse hit the news, individual experiences tended to be dismissed as being the result of “one bad apple”, a particularly cruel brother or nun.
After Louis Lentin’s film, Dear Daughter, was broadcast in 1996, the Sisters of Mercy were given an opportunity, in the form of a Prime Time interview with Sr. Xaviera, the resident manager at Goldenbridge Industrial School in Dublin, to deny and challenge claims made by survivors in that institution. So, you had a situation where one person’s word was being pitched against the word of another.
What Mary Raftery managed to achieve with States of Fear, by talking to literally hundreds of individuals throughout the length and breadth of Ireland, was to pull together a body of evidence that was so compelling it couldn’t be so easily denied or dismissed.
The power of the series was that it described a system of abuse, and while the individual experiences were at the very core of the story, it was the scale of the abuse that shocked the viewers and, ultimately, forced politicians to take action.
A fastidious journalist
Mary was a tough producer to work with. She exacted meticulous standards in every aspect of her work and demanded those same standards from everyone around her. She was uncompromising in her approach to those she felt were responsible for the abuse of power and was often angry at those who exploited, neglected or abused vulnerable people.
And there are none more vulnerable than children. I had huge admiration for the respect she showed to those people who shared their stories with us and the care and attention she gave that material.
She believed she was privileged to make those programmes but also saw the huge responsibilities that came with that. We had to get it right, there was no margin for error.
States of Fear did something that seldom happens with broadcast media. It had an immediate and direct impact that was measurable: it changed people’s minds.
It also led, in no small part, to the Taoiseach of the day making an apology on behalf of the Irish state, to the setting up of an Inquiry, to various changes in the law and the establishment of a compensation scheme costing well over a billion euro.
Most importantly of all, it led to some kind of justice for the victims of institutional child abuse. Denial and complacency when it came to protecting children was no longer an option.
The State has failed these children, again
So how, twenty-one years since those programmes were first aired, are the people who shared their experiences with us and with the watching public? What was their response to the State apology, the Commission and the system of Redress? Do they feel they got justice?
Over the past year, I have been working with producer Máire Kearney and reporter Mick Peelo, to revisit this issue.
We have been asking these questions of some of the people who took part in States of Fear and others who had direct experience of the system that was set up to make amends to Survivors.
The result is a two-part documentary series, Redress: Breaking the Silence, that goes out on RTÉ One on Monday & Tuesday, March 2nd and 3rd at 9.35 pm.
Mary Raftery died in January 2012, aged 54. But the legacy of her work lives on.
Sheila Ahern is the Series Consultant on Redress: Breaking The Silence.
To embed this post, copy the code below on your site
What a Wonderful Woman and Human being. Thanks for your Courage so lacking in those who should have stood up for those who had no voice.!!
The fundamental reason for all the institutions in Ireland was that the Catholic church wanted to completely control Ireland and lock away anyone who dared break their rules. And also because the institutions were a source of massive profits that poured into the Irish church allowing the clergy to live in luxury.
@Paul Jude Redmond: But now we have to deal with the aftermath, it took this woman to Expose a wickedness so Evil and Cruel leading to dispose of Innocent little Children in Pits without even a Marker. “ Suffer little children come unto me” should have been written on those ‘Nuns’ Hearts, what made them have hearts of Stone.? Along with the 800 children in a ‘Pit’ in Tuam all the other ‘Homes’ for children of that Time must have similar ‘Pits’ that need investigating. How can ‘Nuns’ today be Still associated with the New Children’s Hospital in Dublin.
I am one of those children, 21 years later the memorial is a ghost and adds to the crimes by church and state..
@David Dineen: Yes, Friend your not alone.!! Giving credit to ‘The Journal ‘ which allows us sufferers to express the Hurt that will never go away.!!
… I’m not admitting it, you prove it… The church and the so-called pillars of society have used that as their modus operandi
We exchanged English rule for Vatican rule Home rule really was Rome rule but we will never admit it
@Richard Russell: I will. That’s exactly what it was, Christ and Ceasar hand in glove. De valeara betrayed his country and handed it over to Rome
We, Catholic Ireland, had to prove to the World that we were morally superior to “Pagan England” and the moral theologians didn’t accept that sex was part of our Human nature . Even sex within marriage was frowned upon —Hence the requirement that women had to be “churched “after childbirth.
Part One of Redress on RTE last night was riveting, Sheila Ahern was very effective, as were the other brave people interviewed. But the programme was, yet again, a Protestant-free zone. The detention system was a means of socially controlling women and poor people, franchised out by the state to religious institutions, Roman Catholic and Protestant.
The Roman Catholic Church did not abuse children in Protestant-ethos institutions. That was done by Church of Ireland clergy and lay Protestant paedophiles. To give one example, the sorry story of the 2002 redress indemnity deal with 18 RC religious orders was covered. No mention of failed negotiations with the Church of Ireland Smyly’s organisation in 2004-5. Smyly’s abuse victims were still compensated by the Redress Board, because it was a state liability. The Smyly’s organisation did not pay a cent in compensation to the state.
The programme led off with 42,000 in industrial schools and reformatories from 1937-70, but did not mention that the Ryan Commission reported, falsely, in 2009 that 170,000 were incarcerated. See, https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/letters/commission-to-investigate-child-abuse-1.4153014.
I look forward to Part Two tonight (Tuesday, March 3) and will be pleasantly surprised if a Protestant abuse victim is interviewed.
@Niall Meehan: well said Doctor Meehan
@Niall Meehan: Great work Niall!
Let’s get one thing straight and that is that the media were shy about taking on the Church but a large percentage of the population knew what was going on in these schools.
I went to one as a day pupil so I saw the atrocious state the boarders were in.
When we get the TRUTH out there that CHILDREN as YOUNG AS FIVE were DENIED a CHILDHOOD due to HARD LABOUR and the REDRESS seen NOTHING wrong with this what so ever makes us all sick, IT was qnd is against the LAW for CHILDREN in CARE to be put to hard Labour especially without payments IGNORED by the REDRESS THEY DID NOT SEE OUR HARD LABOUR AS WORK YET THEY KNOW NOTHING ABOUT THE HARD LABOUR. WE MANUFACTURED WE WERE SENT OUT TO FARMS WE PROVIDED SERVICES VERY SIMULAR TO THE MAGDALEN LAUNDRIES OUR WAGES WERE THE STRAP OR THREATENED TO BE SENT TO BORSTAL RUN INSTITUTIONS CALLED REFORM IF WE DID NOT DO AS WE WERE TOLD
Legislation coming before Dail on sealing of residents files needs to be vigorously opposed if history isn’t to be repeated.
have your say