Will Knott

Michael O’Brien, former councillor and Mayor of Wexford(correction May 27) Clonmel attended the RTÉ programme Questions and Answers on 25 May 2009 and, after Minister Noel Dempsey, the sponsoring minister of the Ryan Commission report in to Child Abuse allegations spoke, Mr O’Brien spoke to the minister and to the panel.

I’ve done the transcript of the video clip below mainly because audio indexing does not work that well for video clips. And video clips have a habit of disappearing off the web.
The other reason is that this clip seems to be the turning point for a lot of discussions. And possibly some action.

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—Start of transcript

Mr. Chairman, I’m surprised at the minister there now.

First of all Mr Minister (directed at  Minister Noel Dempsey) you made a bags of it in the beginning by changing the judges. You made a complete bags of it at that time, because I went to the La Foy commission and ye had seven barristers there, questioning me and telling that I was telling lies, when I told them that I got raped of a Saturday, got a merciful beating after it, and then stuffed…

… he came along the following morning and put holy communion in my mouth.

You don’t know what happened there. You haven’t the foggiest, you’re talking through your hat there. And you’re talking to a Fianna Fáil man, a former councilor and former mayor you’re talking to, that worked tooth and nail or you, for the party that you’re talking about now. Ye didn’t do it right, ye got it wrong.

Admit it.

And apologize for doing that. Because you don’t know what I feel inside me. You don’t know the hurt I am.

You said it was non-adversarial.

My God.

Seven barristers.

Throwing questions at us.

Non-stop.

I tri.. attempted to commit suicide, there’s the woman who saved me from committing suicide,  on me way down from Dublin, after spending five days at the commission. Five days I spent at the commission. They brought a man over from Rome, ninety odd years of age, to tell me I was telling lies.

That I wasn’t beaten for an hour, non-stop by two of them.

By two of them.

Non-stop from head to toe without a shred of cloth on my body.

My God minister.

And could I speak to you (comment directed to Leo Varadkar, Fianna Gael), and ask your leader, would you stop making a political football of this.

You hurt this when you do that.

You tear the shreds from inside our body.

For God’s sake, try and give us some peace.

Try to give us some peace and not to continue hurting us.

That woman will tell you how many times I jump out of the bed at night with the sweat pumping out of me. Because I see these fellas at the end of the bed with their fingers doing that (gestures) to me. And pulling me in to the room, to rape me, to bugger me and bate the shite out of me. That’s the way it is.

And you know what?

You know what, sometimes I listen to the leader of Fianna Fáil. I even listened to the apology. T’was mealy mouthed, but at least t’was an apology.

At least t’was an apology.

The Rosminians said in the report, they said they were easy on us. The first day I went to them. The first day to Rosminians in my home which is Ferryhouse in Clonmel, ’cause its the only home I know. He said “you’re in it for the money”.

We didn’t want money.

We didn’t want money. We wanted the pr…  someone to stand up and say “yes, these fellas were buggered, these people were ra…”

Little girls. My daughter, oh sorry, my sister. A month old when she was put in to an institution. Eight of us from the one family, dragged by the ISPCC cruelty man. Put in to two cars, brought to the court in Clonmel. Left standing there without food or anything, and the fella in the long black frock and the white collar came along and he put us in to a van.

Not a van, a scut truck, I don’t know what you call it now. And landed us below with two hundred other boys. Two night later I was raped.

How can anyone…

You’re talking about constitution. These people would gladly say “yes” to a constitution to freeze the funds of the religous orders.

This state, this country of ours, would say “yes” to that constitition if you have to change it.

Don’t say you can’t change it.

You’re the governement of this state. You run this state. So for God’s sake stop mealy mouthing. ‘Cause I’m sick of it.

I’m sick of it.

You’re turning me away from voting Fianna Fáil which I have done from the first day that I could vote. Because. And you know me. You know me Mister Minister. You’ve met me on a number of ocassions. So you know what I’m like.

— End of transcript

Related articles by Zemanta

• The shameful 800 (willknott.ie)
• Row over archbishop’s abuse remarks (guardian.co.uk)

The words “Counselling services available” (closely followed by counseling services swamped, contact telephone numbers below) barely cover the horror of the “endemic” abuse suffered by children in Irish Catholic institutions over 60 years. The report details 800 abusers (both men and women) who were given approval by Irish society in their abuse. This is not the complete figure. A separate report about abuse in the Dublin region only is also due.

The full report, all five volumes of it, took nine years nine years to compile and while covering a period of six decades and finding thousands of boys and girls that were terrorized by priests and nuns, it dosen’t show the full picture. Public opinion at the time refused to believe the victims. The victims were vilified while the abusers took their lauded place in society. The victims left, be it through suicide, or through emigration.

The 800 figure is also wrong. Many others knew, and turned a blind eye. Refused to believe that those given the task to watch their morality could be the depraved ones.

To cap off the offense, the victims and the families were not allowed in to the press conference, which gave very little detail in the prepared speech, and permitted no questions.

It took a long time for the stories to emerge, and while the church is still respected by some, others find its protection if the abusers unforgivable (including those to “admire the bravery of the abusers“). I suspect that its the truth coming out behind these tales which have helped the numbers of regular church goers to dwindle.

Its also a national, and international news story now.

RTÉ News – Sexual abuse was ‘endemic’ in institutions

Irish Times – Audio analysis and summary of abuse report

Irish Times – Children exposed to ‘daily terror’ in institutions – Includes audio of Patsy McGarry outlining the report’s main findings

Irish Times – Anger over exclusion from briefing

Irish Times – Systematic abuse in State institutions laid bare

Channel 4 – UK – As a damning report is published into “endemic” abuse suffered by children in Irish Catholic institutions over 60 years, Carl Dinnen accompanies a former resident as he returns to a” reformatory school”. (Includes video embedded above)

Channel 4 – UK – Jon Snow talks to Colm O’Gorman, the Executive Director of Amnesty International in Ireland, who was a victim of sexual abuse perpetrated by a Catholic priest as a teenager. Includes video embedded here. Some RSS readers may need to click through to see the video.

Twenty Major – So what happens now?

Twenty Major – Institutional Abuse report

Granddad – Suffer little children

A growing list of other takes on the subject from Irish Blogs

BBC News – UK – Irish abused ‘cheated of justice – Victims of child abuse at Catholic institutions in the Irish Republic have expressed anger that a damning report will not bring about prosecutions.
Includes video of Victims spokesman John Kelly giving his reaction to the report

BBC News – UK – In quotes: Irish media have been giving their first reactions to the damning inquiry into child abuse at Catholic institutions in Ireland.

The full Comission Report

Volume three includes the witness statements, and chapter 14, about lay teacher abusing and being defended by the Department of Education,  got extensive reviews on today’s Morning Ireland.

Shocked but sadly not surprised,
Will

The HSE offers a free National Counselling Service for anyone who has suffered childhood abuse on 1800 235 234.

The related Connect service, for out of hours contact, is on1800 235 235 from the Republic of Ireland (freephone)  00800 235 235 55 from Britain and Northern Ireland (free from landlines).
www.connectcounselling.ie

Dublin Rape Crisis Centre operates a 24-hour helpline on 1800 77 88 88.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Critical report due on child abuse in Irish Catholic schools (guardian.co.uk)
• Thousands abused in Catholic schools in Ireland (guardian.co.uk)
• Ireland’s Church Abuse Scandal (madhavgopalkrish.wordpress.com)
• The Church and child-rape (timesonline.typepad.com)
• Wall of silence about 60 years of child abuse still not entirely broken down (sluggerotoole.com)
• Child abuse: the full story at last? (sluggerotoole.com)
• Some wounds never heal (osocio.org)

Update: 1pm May 21 2009
Irish Times Opinion piece  – Mr Justice Ryan’s report does not suggest that this abuse was as bad as most of us suspected. It shows that it was worse. It may indeed have been even worse than the report actually finds – there are indications that “the level of sexual abuse in boys’ institutions was much higher than was revealed by the records or could be discovered by this investigation”.

The Catholic League reaction – The Irish report suffers from conflating minor instances of abuse with serious ones, thus demeaning the latter. When most people hear of the term abuse, they do not think about being slapped, being chilly, being ignored or, for that matter, having someone stare at you in the shower.

When a books comes out with 27 pages of source references, you know someone is trying to prove that he is correct.

Image via Wikipedia

And when the 532-page ebook is free, I suspect that the author is trying to be very correct and get his point across. Partly to stop himself being sued by George Lucas no doubt. The book is question is The Secret History of Star Wars which skews from the Lucasfilm version of history.

According to the “Frequently Asked Questions” part of the book’s site, Michael Kaminski wrote the book to fill the perceived knowledge gap (or at least lore gap) between the observed history from the fan’s perspective, and the official history according the Lucasfilm.

To be honest, I don’t care enough about the politics of the Star Wars movies (or the Jedi religion) to be worried, about the book’s content. But the existence of the book is interesting.

Essentially this book is a compiled collection of sources to create a history of the creation of six highly influential movies; a series which continues to generate controversy. And is of course unauthorised.

When an unauthorised biography is compiled, the person at the heart of it can sue for liable, as long as the accusations (if any) in the book are false). This book is not about George Lucas, but about the creation of a series of products. Which means that is possible to sue for copyright violations in much the same way that a lawsuit was perused against the creators of a printed Harry Potter Lexicon (which was settled out of court). Its not just reputation at stake here, but a multimillion empire. By being a free download, the author manages to avoid at least part of the consequences (financial gain) and given that this 3rd edition of the book came after the above settlement, it is possible that a few discrete alternations may have been made to prevent the “too much of my work” arguments.

There are of course two reasons as to why Lucasfilm has not sued.

1) Suing your fans is not a good idea; you need them

2) Lucas has a Pirates Dilemma problem. Yes its is a derived work, but its taken the history of the series in a direction which LucasFilm never would. While they are unlikely to support it, it would be a bad idea for them to try to destroy it. Because its something they can build on (or at least with).

Could someone who cares about the series and can confirm the truth of any of the books details contact me? Also in the unlikely possibility that someone from LucasFilm is reading this, is there an official response to the book? I can confirm that the author cares enough about copyright to disable copying and pasting from the PDF file.

Still behind the scenes shenanigans are always interesting.

take care,
Will Knott

p.s. I’m waiting for The Secret History of the Babylon 5 series (or at least the collected Hyperion archives). Have I missed them?

I’ve been waiting a week to post this because I’ve been waiting for RTE to update their podcast but it’s too late.

Today, Sunday June 3rd 2007, Ireland gets a new saint (and a Dublin based one to boot).
The 19th century Passionist priest Father Charles of Mount Argus will be canonised today by Pope Benedict XVI. I first heard about this on Sunday Miscellany, hence my little RTE rant. This guy was a living saint (dead for some time I know) who James Joyce mentioned in a way that Mother Teresa would be mentioned now.

I had never heard about him before the programme, and I don’t think there is going to be much press about it (unless it’s been a really slow news week, which it hasn’t been). Of course if you live near Mount Argus I’m sure you know about it, but still. It seems a bit quite.

Do many actually care now?

(and no argos jokes please…)

Will

tags: saint, Dublin, Charles of Mount Argus, canonised, Pope Benedict XVI, Sunday Miscellany, James Joyce, Mount Argus