Survivors of Institutional Abuse in Ireland march on Dail

by please join us Wed Jun 17, 2009 19:54

Here is a movie that explains all.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=16nfJOWY0cA
How the jeugdzorg companie takes children and puts them in jails and gives them drugs to stop them from screaming,
how it is legal for staff to feel the inside cavities of these children at all times,
how no complaints can be made against staff to the police as they do not deal with any complaints in any way against staff.

When will you have the next rally?
What date?
We need to buy a ticket for the plane so we would like to know asap.
Thank you and see you soon!
bye for now good friends and co-fighters for justice.

by anti privatisation of childcare Tue Jun 16, 2009 22:46

here is a photo of the balloons from the Dutch rally in The Hague on the 23th of May.

souls to heaven in the Netherlands 23th of May

by anti privatisation of childcare Tue Jun 16, 2009 16:05

We have a bigger rally on the 4th of Juli 2009 in Groningen. Starting noon at BJZ in Groningen. Waterloolaan is the streetname.
BJZ is the jeugdzorg company. Would be nice if you could come too.

by archivist Tue Jun 16, 2009 12:10

http://www.paddydoyle.com
The Ryan Commission report in toto is available on the Righthand column.

by by please join us Tue Jun 16, 2009 10:30

This film shows all the blue spots and a death all done by jouthcare companies to children that happy lived with their parents but were taken and locked up and beaten also with leather belts on the back and in isolation chambers sometimes for even months. Nothing to do all day every day and not knowing when you get out of the cell. Beaten up.
Will you all be there on 5 september to join us in another big protest mars? We want our children back. You want your Irish children back from the Dutch. Please all join us.
Related Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QUGSLKxH_vg
It is proof of the ongoing beatings of children and we want you to see this as the governement tried to hide this.
Look at the bruises on the children and look at the mother grieving her dead son.
This all has been done in institution.
These children are malnutritioned and they give nice clothes for the visit only.
They look happy for they see their mother that they have not seen for weeks or months.
Look at their eyes!
Can you live with this? Please help us stop this.

by Erasmus Tue Jun 16, 2009 10:23

In the late 50s and early 60s I was sometimes caned in primary schools and a secondary school in Waterford and Kildare. Some of the primary staff, men and women, had families. A few of the dumb and scruffy kids got beaten harder and more often, partly I think because the individual teachers resented their poor dress sense. We middle class kids gave a better impression and made less mistakes in lessons. At the secondary school run by religious the caning system was organised by a senior teacher designated for that task. He did it impersonally and didn't seem to like it. I know that old cliche that it hurt him more than it hurt us.

I won't pretend that these canings made a man of me, though many parents, middle class and working class, at that time believed that corporal punishment in Irish schools performed such a purpose. Reading comics like The Beano and The Dandy and enjoying the Billy Bunter novels I borrowed from a local library, I knew that whacking kids was a general unquestioned educational tool in British as well as Irish schools at the time.

Not until after leaving school when I began to read novels by Burroughs, Henry Miller, Jean Genet and Hemingway did I realize that males could rape other, younger males. It never crossed my mind that male teachers, lay or religious, would do it to institutionalised vulnerable young boys. The horror, the horror...

My sympathies and apologies for my naive innocence go to the victims of Artane, Goldenbridge, Letterfrack and other houses of horror. During my teens and twenties I never gave thought to orphanages, reformatories or industrial schools. They were a world away from my experience.

by Michael Gallagher Tue Jun 16, 2009 09:33 libertypics at yahoo dot ie

I was a pupil in Central Model Boys NS, Marlborough Street, Dublin 1, less than one hundred yards from the Minister for Education's office. We had two 'masters' there after junior infants, the first one (the older) later became the headmaster and when he retired he became a priest. It was not a christian brother's school.

The bamboo cane was about three feet long, about an inch in girth and used to splinter easily, which caused it to draw blood sometimes, depending on the verocity of the lash.
We hated the cane with a vengence and we got ours of a sort. We hid a few canes and even burned a couple in the stove. It was costing him (the younger) money to replace them, -I think they were one shilling or 'one and six' at the time- he was very young and we gave him the run around.
He eventually got the message and turned to giving us 'the look' to get his point across. The atmosphere improved in the class and some of us started to enjoy schoolwork, which strangely, enabled us to see Mr. M. in a different light. Yes democracy was alive and well in our class and we were only there three or four years (aged 8-11/12) after junior infants.
The young Kerryman was killed in a car crash barely out of college himself and we paid our respects. The poor fucker, the slagging we used to give him over his 'banger' and it's orange boxes for seats.
Underneath it all, was he a good man caught up in a rotten education system? I don't know, but in our neighbourhood curriculum, we were thought to pick on your own size.

The older man Mr. L. -who died as a priest- was much harder on us, some boys weren't able to even make it to the top of the class to get their 'six of the best'. I remember one friend Christy S. got it on the bare legs, the neck, his back, head, arms and knuckles, because he couldn't/refused to hold his hand out. He was whipped with the cane. Myself, I got six on each hand (mild in comparison) for a little skirmish in the yard with an older boy (over the use of the bigger football pitch) and I can still feel the stings, (from the cane) even now, over forty years later.

I had some happy times there (the 60's) and got the basics, read, rite and rit. Only a handful (out of very big classes) made it to secondary school and some didn't last long there either. It was unheard of to go to third level in an area like ours. The poverty in the North Inner City, Dublin was generational and most of us left school (including me) in our early teens and either drifted to work (if you were lucky) or drifted to crime. There weren't many choices or opportunities.

There are people who feel left out of the picture regarding redress for corporal punishment in their schools (non christian brother) and want some recognition. Who can say how bad it was, but it should be recognised by the 'powers that be' of the damage that was done in that regime. Rutland Street primary school for instance, -also North Inner City- was nicknamed the 'slaughterhouse'. I have heard of sexual abuse in Marlborough Street, but I never heard or witnessed any of that in my class.

I am over whatever scars they left me with (if any) and speaking for myself, they can shove their money where the sun don't shine!

Great pics Richard, keep well and thanks.

by anti privatisation of childcare Mon Jun 15, 2009 22:34

On May 23, 2009 is the first silent march held in the heart of The Hague. A silent march for all victims of abuse / abuse in 'jeugdzorg' in the Netherlands.
The rise was despite the fact that fewer people were still satisfactory as expected. As one participant said: "All the great start small!"

In any event our ministers were absent at the time that the people should be represented they let it fail!
The reasons we all know and I will not again recount! It is certainly a new low in the Dutch parliament.

The station to station Holland Spoor was a full building excavations and virtually inaccessible after subsequently shown that many people have come late to the place. It is shown that 'jeugdzorg' has reached new levels by people before approaching when we would take part in the silent march this sometimes might affect the visiting arrangements and cooperation? with youthcare companies.
Another surprising fact was that people who time peculiar to his / her / their child (ren) should not have been seeing a sudden visit had been on the day of the tour and of course still choose you as a parent for your child (ren ).

After having walked the route, we ended at the square. A trip which was signed by the positive reactions of the people in The Hague were present but were not aware of the silent tochtDe congratulate or to the way the police fully support. Even employees of youthcare companies who are found among the audience responded positively and were fully committed to the goal of the silent march! They wanted to remain anonymous but could support that many children unjustly from home and that everything revolves around the retrieval of (grant) funds.

On the square, the end of the silent march, after they were first time nagepraat had the balloons, which symbolize the love for the children who now suffer from uncontrolled "Youthcare companies", released. A moment that was accompanied by the necessary emotions !!!!!

The silent march will now followed and June 27 there will be a silent march to be held in Groningen.
We hope you will be there from Ireland to acknowledge that childabuse is still ongoing in the Netherlands and that Irish children are kidnapped and brought to the Netherlands too and that the Netherlands enslaved these children and lets the Irish pay for the 'care'. That is wrong Irish should come and protest too!
We heard you have protested in Dublin with 5000 people and that this was also about the same thing.
please come to our protest as well and do not stop protesting in Ireland. When is your next protest in Dublin?

by former schoolboy Mon Jun 15, 2009 18:45

Excellent photos as always Richard.

Seeing "the leather" brought back unhappy memories for me too. I'm convinced that the use of objects like this in the Irish educational system has a lot to answer for. Messing with the way children learn undermines the way society organises itself. Tying education to physical abuse can only result in a messed up psyche.

It should be remembered that its use and abuse wasn't confined to religious orders- there was one particularly brutal lay teacher who delighted in group punishments- that is, hitting every child in the class six times on each hand.

He later stood (unsuccessfully) for election to the Dáil. Guess which party?

I found a reference to the strap on a rather strange website, The Corporal Punishment Archive, http://www.archivist.f2s.com/cpa/

They describe it thus:
"Irish school punishment strap. In contrast to the other straps, this is made from two layers of leather, stitched together, with a lead weight inserted in the tip for added impetus. One and a half inches wide; eighteen inches long; three-eighths of an inch thick. Weight seven ounces."

by emotionally moved Mon Jun 15, 2009 16:54

Thank you!

The last time I saw that instrument of torture which has so many names and seemed to have been standard issue to RC religious orders in Ireland along with rosary beads and greasy black clothing, my generation knew it as the strap . But I seem to remember every school kid had a different name for it. the leather etc. I was a kid then not a grown individual capable of clicking on an "18 or over" internet button and perusing BDSM toy catalogues. The statue of Jim Larkin hadn't even been erected then. I remember that the parents association at the primary school I was going to where that yoke was used had collectively allowed the priests to continue using it, it was a private school and corporal punishment was beginning to be frowned upon in national schools. They debated whether or not the man who they were allowing to hit their kids for not doing homework, talking in class etc should be allowed to raise it over his shoulder or not. He had flared nostrils and would break into a little sweat of excitement if there were a few kids standing outside his office awaiting the strap. He would decide which one of us he wanted to go into his office first never seeming to punish us in the order we had been sent out of the classrooms into the corridor. I suppose so he could get into it, work himself up and have his little climax. In the context of the torturous abuse these people in the photos above are marking - his little pleasures and our little discomforts are trivial, formative, inconsequential. But that memory is one which is surely shared by many readers over a certain age. I can only remember that man, probably sad and bitter and unhappy as one of the archetypal priests of my youth. It doesn't matter if he never buggered me or even invited me to sit on his knee, I can't remember him without thinking that's exactly what he and his kind were and are capable of.

Thus recognising that instrument and putting it in its mnemonic context - religious authority and discipline raises questions; Who made those things and do they still make them for BDSM catalogues or did they go out of business? If we could as a society enact laws to stop the men in greasy black clothes going sweaty using them, why could we not admit the endemic nature of abuse in our society? The kids in the industrial schools, orphanages, institutions of care got the vilest end of a very substantial wedge driven into the psychology of the Irish nation. If I hadn't seen that photo on this site today - I wouldn't have remembered that the strip of leather is an object central to Irish culture whose resonance has stayed with me all my life. Don't we see? They didn't even have to bugger people. Those poor kids were extra bonuses for them and they -the church & its natural political parties of governance still don't have the moral courage to make amends. Good catholic men and women all.

by SecularHumanist Mon Jun 15, 2009 16:32

The church perverts abuse our children
then the Fianna Fail government make the taxpayer pay for his / her own abuse. Nice

In mayo the protesters / taxpayers pay for the overtime given to gardai to beat them up for protesting against shell stealing their future, while lawless estates remain unprotected. Also nice. Governments never care because they can always get their citizens to pay for their own mistreatment.

Meanwhile these Amoral religious organisations are putting their vast property portfolios in trusts to prevent access
Just like they did in canada

All nuns and priests involved directly in abuse should have criminal prosecutions. So what if they are old. They happily ruined lots of young lives. They should lose a bit of their own. Seems "love thy neighbour" doesn't work very well so maybe we should try "an eye for an eye"

Get all schools out of church hands. They have proven themselves unfit to be around our children. They should hand over full control of national and secondary schools to the state.

How could anyone have voted for Fianna fail in the local elections. Do people ever learn??

by Richard Whelan Mon Jun 15, 2009 15:44

Tears and fury as institutional abuse survivors march on Dáil
Images copyright 2009

Politician look on

Payment for childs internment 1952

shoes of the victim child

Sorrow for victims

Souls into heaven

by Richard Whelan Mon Jun 15, 2009 15:30

more images from protest
Images copyright 2009

Tears of sorrow for victims

Sorrow for victims

Remember the victims

Protester