Marchers talk of abuse horror

Wed, Jun 10, 2009

Thousands of victims of abuse were joined in solidarity by friends, family, shocked mothers and city centre workers sickened by the devastating accounts in the Ryan report. Many demanded justice, others simply wanted to explain in detail their suffering.

James Byrne, 48, of Navan Road, Dublin, read a poem he penned describing how he
and other victims were neglected and abused. As a youngster he spent 12 years as a border in the St Augustine's Christian Brothers institute in Blackrock.

"It was my job to be in charge of the school instruments in church," he said. "One afternoon a Brother raped me on the altar," he said. "When I was younger if I wet the bed I was made to change the sheets and shower, where I was molested. I tried to commit suicide a number of times. It was just horrific growing up. It confused me sexually. It's something that I will never get over."

James said counselling was now helping him but the Ryan report had opened up raw wounds.

"One of the Brothers who molested me is still walking the streets," he added. "He should be locked away. If I did that to a kid I'd be locked away."

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Four sisters of an 11-month-old baby girl who died in Goldenbridge are battling to have her body exhumed to determine how she died.

On May 17, 1955 Marion Howe was put in care for two weeks while her mother was
ill and her father was working in England. Her sister Mary, then six, remembers being told her baby sister was dead just four days later.

"We never found out what happened to her," said Ms Howe, 60, from Walkinstown. "My father was told there was an accident. Her head and two legs were bandaged up. When our father unwrapped them she saw two identical holes on the inside of her knees. When the Ryan report came out we weren't surprised. Over the years we had heard stories about the abuse. We want justice."

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Gerry Dempsey, 46, from the Liberties in Dublin, said he was out in support of neighbours he knew who suffered at the hands of nuns and brothers. "It was horrific," he said. "They never got over it. It killed them in the end. A lot of stuff happened they held on to, horrific things. I'm here because I'm sickened for them and to make a stand against the State."

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Anna Harvey, from Dublin, said she gave birth in an institution and was told her baby had died when she was just four hours old -- but found out 18 years later her daughter was alive "There's hundreds of people out there who think their baby is dead and they are walking around," she added.

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Liam Fitzpatrick, a Bus Eireann worker from, Ballybrack, Co Dublin, attended the march in memory of his late mother. "She was in one of the sweatshops. I had a sister I didn't know about and she was taken away by the religious when she was five years-old. It was the late
1940s. She was about to go to school and the religious said it wasn't right, it
didn't look good. She was put in a convent until she was 18." It would be nearly 50 years before he saw his sister again.

"It was 1999 when my uncle told me a woman was looking for me and I had a sister. My mother died in 1985 and she never spoke of any of it," Mr Fitzpatrick said. "Today is very emotional and very sad. These people brought the Lord's name into disrepute. My sister had a full family in Cork and she died in 2000.

"My mother died of cancer but she really died of a broken heart. The same thing happened with my sister. She spent her whole life looking for her mother and the closest she ever got was a headstone in a grave yard."

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Edward Parsons, from Sandycove, Co Dublin, came to the march in memory of a neighbour.
"He was convicted of stealing vegetables from a garden were he lived, he was brought before the court and was given seven years in one of these institutions," Mr Parsons said. "His parents went to see him but they were refused access but they stayed until they did. It turned out he had suffered a very serious assault and he lost an eye. He did marry and had two daughters but he died young. I'm here to represent him."
 


101645 JUN 09

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