Personal Stories/Opinions
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Dear Mr. Rory Connor.
Your latest offering to the personal stories section is both offensive and a clear indication of where you stand in relation to articles penned on the issue of institutional childhood abuse in Ireland.
You start from the premise each victim of institutional abuse which does not concur with your held view "is lying" and as if to prove this point you infer you are privy to information denied to each and every ex-detainee of this system for the last seven decades.
How wonderful to be granted immediate and unrestricted access to files, "WHICH ARE CONSTANTLY DENIED" to the Gardai, Solicitors for Survivors, State Ministers and indeed the people at the very heart of this matter. The individuals who on a daily basis suffered the indignities and abuses within the four walls of the institutions. Institutions to which a visit by Ministers of the Government of the day found to be a reprehensible experience. You indeed must be someone of non-understandable importance considering there is no acknowledgeable reference to any item penned by you on this issue for the last eight years or more.
References to issues of which you have no personal knowledge, usually require detailed understanding of what occurred during the time in question. Might I suggest you are ignorant of any detail of the abuses which occurred within the institutions.
You express surprise when you stumble across an informative site where information is not sifted prior to publication. We should be so grateful to find there are items acceptable to your point of view. Yet each and every individual who accesses this site does so because we can totally rely on the information provided. The integrity of the person responsible for this site is beyond question and he has proven himself to be a source of information and realistic advice for those less fortunate than you or I, Mr Connor.
Your obnoxious attitude and statement "When I am speaking to individuals (I assume they are speaking the truth) clearly indicates an opinionated approach to any conversation you have with any individual. (My opinion is the only one which is correct). A more enlightened attitude would be to accept the content of conversation, debate it openly and if both sides are unable to reach mutual agreement, agree to differ.
You inform us of discussions you have had with Survivors protesting at the injustices which are enacted on a daily basis by the Composed Government Sponsored Redress Board, The Minister of Education, The Minister of Health, and other constituted bodies of the Irish Government. You readily deny the fact Justice Mary Laffoy in her interim report has indicated gross abuses did occur. You readily dismiss the fact, Justice Kennedy in her 1970 report referred to as (The Kennedy Report) found children living in conditions within the institutions, which were akin to the deprivations, the very same Jewish People you readily contrast you arguments with endured. Notable was her exhortation these places should be closed down immediately.
Contrast this with the fact you make no mention in regards to the determined efforts being made to stifle all open discussion on this and other relevant matters by this very same Government. Contrast this with the fact the Religious daily deny abuses happened even though they accepted the facts some years ago and their efforts to deny compensation to those they admitted were abused some years ago are disgusting to say the least.
For your information, even the National Press and other Media services refuse to publish details of actions aggrieved survivors take in attempts to publicise the continued abuse. How many references have been made to the Hunger Strike now taking place outside the Dail. Many of those you were privileged to speak with, suffered in reality and in many cases were never able to construct a reasonable existence as a result of the abuses they endured as children. I find it incomprehensible that you would expect to have your arguments taken on board when you deny the fact some fifty years after the events these people confront the issues you so willingly deny happened. Remember there are those who deny the holocaust ever happened.
Finally for the present. Your cries of disbelief when you find those in authority dismiss your existence and comments brings to mind similar experiences most of those who suffered in the revolting Gulags otherwise known as Industrial and Reformatory Schools have endured for generations. I was in Artane from 1956 to 1962 Two children died in my time. I don't need to go to the Police. They were already informed.
Ronald Leslie Mc Cartan
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