Will Knott

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.

A wise woman pointed out that it is perfectly reasonable to talk predictions for the year ahead up to and including 31 January! Well I’m going to type about resolutions.

Yes its a bit late to talk about new year resolutions, but here goes.

Get in to fights again

I ended up dropping out of Capoeira in 2008. A mixture of class clashes and commuting.  Now I can start again, probably from scratch. Of course, if that fails I may be asking for a different kind of trouble. In short, I need to do something which involves a bit of movement.

In camera

I got caught up in an interesting discussion about “what makes a photoblog” om Twitter, well lots. I play with photography, but I think its time I moved up to a better camera. I’m not going D-SLR this year, but I have my eye on something and I want my wallet to match. On a related note, I need to go to more events. Since I’m sort of bi-locational at the moment, when the weather gets brighter things might get interesting.

More sleep

An idea stolen off Phil IcedCoffee; I just need to get to bed earlier. As if that all.

Re: cycling

It’s usually better to keep old resolutions than to make new ones. — Chloe Sevigny. I’ve copied this quote off Tim Ferris‘ resolutions.  And I’ve copied this resolution from last year. This year I think I’m a commutable distance to work, but without showering facilities things could get sticky. Still given the Mad Cow traffic holdups, cycling to the office may not be a bad idea. The only reason I’m delaying this one is making sure I can do it, and timing a weekend run first.

Change the decor

Now that I’m the master of my own domain, it almost been a year since I moved in. Its time to redecorate a little. I had planned to use the Carrington theme with pallet swaps and image swaps (its the one Joe Scanlon is using) but I recently stumbled across a theme on Smashing Magazine which is almost perfect. Things may look a little odd here over the next few weeks.

I had also planned on trying out the Google Friend Connect here too, but I’m not so sure now.

Write more fiction. Read more fiction.

I more or less stopped reading fiction when my studies restarted. With the exception of one Cory Doctorow (which I inhaled in one weekend), the Pseudopod short story horror podcast and the NSFW Tales fomthe MU novel experiment in blog form,  I’ve not read anything for a while. To that end I’ve finally started reading “The Idiot” by Fyodor Dostoyevsky (for historical reasons) and a few others thanks to the DailyLit. I’ll take suggested reads from their list please.

The spippets feel too small for me, but I’ll live.

As for writing. When I took part in the Blogmas Christmas Carol, I liked it.

it had been years since I last wrote fiction, and I’d like to start again. A few short stories may appear here. I also have an idea for a very free form group fiction blog. Ask if you’re interested.

Well, thats it. I can see the cycling waning again this year, and I don’t know if I can find an accessable Capoeira group, but the others are managable.

What do you think?

Will Knott

I wanted to do more. I wanted to use the Pink For October meme to generate funds for Cancer Research.

Image via Wikipedia

Maybe next year.

And I set up the Pink for October Ireland with the intention of using it as a hub, to allow the photos to be registered with the models and to display some of the finest shots.

Maybe next year.

But as I said, I registered the site, and I want to use it. Join me.

This year.

The Pink for October Ireland site is now an aggregator site. Register with the site and when you post about Pink For October  using the category p4oi (that’s a letter, a number and two letters) the software will pick it up. I know its working for Wordpress blogs, and I just know I’m going to have fun with Blogger, Typepad, pix.ie, flickr etc. but I’m going to give this a shot. The registration is moderated (by humans too), but the posts are not.

Come on over and register.

Pass it on. If you know someone in Ireland (or from Ireland) who is going to do something for Pink for October on their blog, let them know.

Join in,
Will Knott

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Well 2007 is on the way out. And as usual in Ireland, all things come to a halt for a while. Christmas is a scary time of the year because, usually, everything gets changed this week. This is probably the reason why resolutions are saved for this time of the year in this part of the world. You’ve just survived one week of changes intact. Why not make more…

For some people, this is a time of the year when they are handed responsibilities that they normally don’t look after. (Some even learned new skills this way). These people (of which I’m one) have their lives thrown a little off kilter for a while. And they have to consider what’s important and what needs to change.

For others everything comes to a stop. Work stops. The life of the office stops (and some people try to hide the evidence of what happened at the office party… ah flickr and facebook) and the news cycle slows. For them this comes as a chance to think. And they have to consider what’s important and what needs to change.

So the adverts change from “buy this” to “stop smoking” or “start a new hobby with this magazine” and of course “sale now on…” since the Christmas stock costs too much to store.

And so the resolutions begin. The “I’ll never rush in to a sale again” is heartfelt but unheeded within a week. So I’ll ignore that one.

Yup… resolutions.

What do I want to do or change? Trust me I’ve had a while to think about these things so…

1) Be master of my own domain…
I don’t mean tidy the house (but now that you mention it, the bathroom mirror does need to b put in the bathroom. I mean it’s time that WillKnott.net and WillKnott.ie actually got used as something more than a redirect. Part of this is to do with changes that seem to be afoot. The “cork” in “cork-host” may need to change.
All advice gratefully accepted.

2) On your bike…
Personally, I need to get out more. I’ve used every excuse not to cycle this year. 2008 will see a saddle put under strain. Regularly. That and go back to Capoeira again. Things sort of stopped over December.

3) Learn (or relearn) a language…
I’ve always been more a OnLamppp man than an AJAX man. So I’m going to refresh and perfect my Perl, python and PHP. I do intend to get Ruby (and maybe rails) in my head. Sort of useful with a domain eh? Somehow I just know that Java will need something more formal than a commitment by me. Any pointer to classes or tutorials would be appreciated.

What, you assumed French? (Actually Portuguese would be useful for Capoeira but that’s another story.)

4) Take time to smell the roses…
Or actually plant them. Simply put, my garden is a mess. Actually that not true. I was careful. My garden is black. Black weed-proof plastic. I need to do some things. Lay a patio. Do “something” with a terrace. I genuinely don’t know what should happen out there. I do know I need the hardscaping finished. Help?

5) Give voice…
This is neither a resolution nor a commitment. But my attendance at PodCamp Ireland and the forthcoming Creative Camp gave me an idea… which I’ll post later.

I think that is enough. You can’t make yourself too many resolutions simply because putting too much pressure on yourself almost guarantees that you won’t do any.

Any resolutions or advice?

take care,
Will Knott

tags : 2007, 2008, change, resolution, domain, WillKnott.net, WillKnott.ie, cycle, capoeira, onlamp, garden, PodCamp, PodCamp Ireland, Creative Camp, podcasting