The God Squad

On 2004-11-18, in The God Squad, by Paddy

The God Squad is the first and only book I have written. It was first published in 1989 by Raven Arts Press and then sold on to Transworld publishers in London.

The God Squad is an autobiography and covers the first ten years in the life of a child. The fact that the child is me is somewhat irrelevant, the reality is that were “thousands of mes”.

I have often been asked why I wrote the book. There is no simple answer to this question. I had felt for a long time that what went on in the name of the care of children should be exposed. There are many people who believed that because a child was put into the care of a religious order, priests, brothers or nuns that he or she was safe and that they would be “taken care of”.

The truth was very different. I have little doubt that there were many people in Ireland who knew of the abuses being carried out on children but who decided that it was best to say nothing. Would anyone believe that a child placed in the care of nuns, priests or Christian brothers by the courts of this land would ever speak out?

More importantly, would they have been believed? The chances are they wouldn’t. Ten years since the publication of “The God Squad” hundreds of cases of abuse of children in care have come to light. The silence is shattered. The fierce grip that the church once had on Irish society is nothing more than a tenuous link.

Trust has been broken and lives have been damaged – in some cases – beyond repair. I have taken some criticism for writing “The God Squad”. I was accused of “bringing about the “collapse of the Church in Ireland”.

It was never my intention to “wreck” the church. The Church by its own hand brought about its own demise. Writing “The God Squad” was at times painful for me. I relived the horrors of abuse. My motivation in writing it was to bring the truth to people.