Jun
23
Author Paddy Doyle has found a drug which relieves the symptoms of his incurable medical condition but his fight to use it has brought him into conflict with the law, reports Roisin Ingle.
Paddy Doyle is stretched on the floor in his Dublin office espousing the medicinal merits of the drug marijuana. The sleeve of his best-selling autobiography, The God Squad, is pinned to the wall.
Beside it hangs a droll Oscar Wilde quotation: “I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read on the train.” This week, Doyle found himself in the eye of a media storm that was sensational even by Wildean standards. His widely-publicised appeal to be allowed to use marijuana to ease his often violent spasms, one of the symptoms of his incurable medical condition, has added a dimension to what is an increasingly thorny debate.
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Jun
19
Child Abuse
Filed Under Child Abuse | Leave a Comment
For many years the issue of Child Abuse in Ireland was kept under wraps – something that just didn’t happen in this nation known throughout the world as the Island of Saints and Scholars.
In a country dominated by the Catholic Church many people were afraid to speak about the physical, sexual, psychological and emotional abuse inflicted on children put into the care of religious orders by order of the Irish courts.
Books about the horrors of abuse of children were written but often ignored as though they were the figment of someone’s imagination. As more and more people spoke out about their experiences of indignity, people did listen and believe.
While the Irish Government and the Catholic Church have apologised to the victims of abuse, the scars inflicted on the victims will remain with them forever.
Sex Crimes and the Vatican
Church State Secret Document
Jun
17
Tragic childhood of a native Wexford man.
Filed Under Who am I? | 3 Comments
Rare condition could hold proof to Paddy’s real identity.
Following his death, John Murphy left Paddy a number of photographs including one of him as a young boy in a pushchair with his mother.
Paddy Doyle is a native Wexford man born at the County Hospital in 1951 who lived for the first four years of his life in a small cottage in Ballymore, Killinick which still stands and is occupied by new owners.
A black and white photograph from the early 1950’s shows him being wheeled in a pushchair by his mother. It is the kind of picture you’ll see in every Irish family album.
The small Wexford boy’s life was to take a tragic turn less than two years later when his mother, Lil, died of breast cancer. Six weeks later, his ‘father’ Paddy, hung himself in the haggard at the back of the house.
It is likely that the boy witnessed the hanging and was found several hours after the estimated time of death, wandering around in a distressed state.
During his childhood, Paddy Doyle was haunted by dreams and images of a man hanging but didn’t know why. He was 35 years old and married with children himself when, through his own exhaustive research, he discovered who his parents were.
Now he believes his conclusions were incorrect and that Paddy Doyle, the man who committed suicide, was not, in fact, his biological father. He is appealing for anyone who may have information about his true origins to come forward and help him.
[click on picture to enlarge]When he was four years and three months old he was brought to court in Wexford following his father’s death and charged with ‘not being in possession of a proper guardian’.
He was sentenced to be detained for eleven years in an Industrial School, served four years, and spent the remaining time in hospital after developing an extreme form of a rare genetic condition which he now knows to be ‘Dystonia’ and which began with a painful twisting of his foot when he was about seven.
It was following his marriage to a paediatric nurse and some years after the birth of his third son, that he received a diagnosis, although, unknown to him there was a much earlier reference to the illness on his childhood medical records, most of which were destroyed.
By the age of ten he was permanently disabled. During his time in hospital, in the constant company of old and dying men, he underwent at least eight brain surgery operations as doctors attempted to diagnose and correct the condition.
No consent seemed to be required or sought since he was a ward of the State.
He and his wife, Eileen, have carried out their own research into ‘Dystonia’ over several years and in a fascinating twist of fate, it is this rare condition which may now hold the proof to Paddy Doyle’s true identity.
Author and disability activist, Paddy Doyle retains an affinity for Wexford despite the bad memories of his childhood.
He has visited the area many times over the years searching for information about his family and has not rule out the possibility off one day buying a property locally.
During holiday visits from the Industrial School to an ‘aunt’ in Spafield Avenue in Wexford town he served mass in all the local churches.
To his knowledge, he has no living relatives in the area, the last of his mother’s family, John Murphy, having died in St. John’s Hospital, Enniscorthy a few years ago.
He visited him in St. John’s in the 1980’s but was unable to get much information out of him about the circumstances surrounding his parents’ deaths or his own early life.
Paddy and his wife attended Mr. Murphy’s funeral and at the burial in Ballymore cemetery made further enquiries about the resting place of his ‘father’, Paddy Doyle, who is believed to be buried in the same graveyard.
Following his death, John Murphy left Paddy a number of photographs including one of him as a young boy in a pushchair with his mother.
After Publication of The God Squad
Writing a book involves a lot of research. The author has to be certain that all of the materials he or she intends to include in their work is accurate and true in so far as that is possible. Once all the research work is done, particularly on legal documentation, it is relatively easy to transcribe. All of the transcribed information involved carries the signature of solicitors/lawyers and the Gardai (Irish Police force) as well as the names and stamp of the local clergyman. These people are regarded as “pillars of society”. Surely they wouldn’t put their names to anything they knew to be less than true – would they?
Jun
16
Letters to the Editor, Irish Times 17th April 2008
Filed Under Newspaper Articles on Child Abuse | Leave a Comment
Last updated: Sunday, April 20, 2008
Letters to the Editor, Irish Times 17th April 2008
Madam,
Christine Buckley (April 11th) lavishes praise on Bertie Ahern for his management of the economy, for his role in the Northern peace process and his apology to those of us who were institutionalised and abused by various organisations of the State and by members of religious orders, all in the name of childcare.
Ms Buckley seems to forget that the apology given by Bertie Ahern was not something he gave willingly. It was brought about by the revulsion of people who watched the States of Fear programmes on RTÉ.
His apology came about just before the screening of the third programme in the series, when the government and the religious orders were being shown to have covered up the most horrendous abuse of innocent children.
As Taoiseach, Mr Ahern and various members of his Government were aware before the screening of States of Fear that institutional abuse of children in the care of the State was widespread.
My own book, The God Squad, highlighted this issue 20 years ago, yet not one single member of any government or religious order ever apologised to me, or indeed to the many thousands of children who were served with “Orders of Detention”, rendering them criminals.
Perhaps before he leaves office and fades into the background of Irish politics, the Taoiseach will rescind those orders of detention served on children as young as one year and who today are in effect branded as criminals under the 1908-1941 Children’s Act.
According to Ms Buckley, Mr. Ahern’s apology “lifted the veil of secrecy, stigma and injustice which had dogged our lives and impeded our futures. His apology touched our hearts profoundly, because it was clear that he had listened to survivors with a depth of commitment unequalled by any other politician, apart from the then minister of education, Micheál Martin”.
Mr Ahern’s apology did not touch my heart. It didn’t touch the hearts of many thousands of people who were abused while in the care of the State. The “veil of secrecy” to which Ms Buckley refers was lifted long before Mr Ahern uttered a word of apology. There is no evidence I know of that Mr Ahern listened to survivors? I hold the view that, were it not for the sterling work of journalists such as Bruce Arnold and Mary Raftery, no apology would ever have been forthcoming from Mr Ahern.
I can only surmise that the “swiftness with which he followed up his words with actions that supported the healing process for all of us” is a reference to the Redress Board, set up to “compensate” people who had been detained in industrial schools around the country and treated brutally in every sense of the word.
As one who appeared before the Redress Board, I’d like to elaborate on its secret proceedings; but to do so would see me being fined €2,000 in the first instance. Were I or anyone else who appeared before the board to speak about what went on behind its closed doors a second time, we would face a fine of €25,000 and/or two years in prison.
Surely Ms Buckley can’t regard what I view as a perversion of natural justice as being in any way a “healing process for all of us”.
Yours, etc,
PADDY DOYLE, Ardagh, Co Longford.
Jun
16
Compassion is still hard to find
Wednesday April 16 2008
I wish to respond to the letters by Ms Christine Buckley and Mr Paddy Doyle, Apology doesn’t wash with regards to the survivors of institutional abuse in Ireland and the formal apology given by the Bertie Ahern.
After reading Mr Doyle’s book, ‘The God Squad’, I believe that the formal apology given by Mr Ahern to the survivors of institutional abuse is more than warranted and deserved.
I consider myself to be fortunate enough to have been born in the United States. In 1955, when I was three years old, my father took his life.
In the United States, the surviving children of the parent who committed suicide are not charged with a crime.
We may hold public office, perform jury duty, and partake in all of the rights that Mr Doyle and other Irish “criminals” cannot, due to their convictions under the 1908 — 1941 Children’s Act.
After reading Mr Doyle’s book, it is my understanding that children whose parent committed suicide (and if by that act, the child was rendered an orphan) were deemed to be guilty of a crime.
I grew up in 1950s America and was confused by my family’s half truths regarding my father’s death. My family felt a strong need to keep my father’s “shameful” act a secret.
Fortunately, I was not orphaned by my father’s suicide, his death left my mother to raise three children. I believe that my mother handled my father’s suicide in the best way that she knew at the time.
The only “crime” committed by Mr Doyle, and the other children served with Orders of Detention, was that a parent took their own life, or that the child was born in Ireland.
I believe that the T aoiseach should grant pardons to these innocent children. They did not commit a crime, but they carry the stigma of “criminals” due to the Irish courts, with the apparent approval of the Irish Government.
ROXANNE FISCHER CLAREMONT, MINNESOTA, United States of America
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