Barry Clifford

Dear Editor,

With regard to David’s shrill article on the european court ruling about religious relics and crosses on walls. His opinion never accounts for facts. This alone always keeps him a second rate writer rather than a first class journalist. A closer look at the truth overlooks a better understanding of what the ECHR are trying to do and the economic reporting of David laid bare. The ECHR are trying to make european policy all inclusive and not just for Christians. It is there for muslims, jews, atheists, and people of all sexual and cultural orientation as well. Give them time and they will be one policy in Europe and I believe that is a good thing.

As far as the oppression of Jehovah Witnesses goes and the “forced marching” of their children in a parade, I believe they are an ungrateful little lot for they might not have even got to be born if only for the heroism of their grandfathers fighting Hitler and Italy too. Their bravery even prompted Churchill to say ” we will not say that Greeks fight like heroes by that heroes fight like Greeks.” I say let the children march for they do not care or know this little fact, and lets not talk about the blood transfusions those same men would have needed just to stay alive defending their country. The comparison of the banning of religious imagery to Hitlerism is more than over the top and needs no reply due to its hysterical and shrieking overtones, and the Christmas cribs and rosary beads story still leaves me scratching my head and need more research. Due to time and consent constraints on this letter, this is for later. But not so pensioner and nurse story.

Pensioner wrote in her letter to her multi-cultural and sexually inclusive council that homosexuals were to blame for a wide variety of crimes which included being sodomites, the spreading of diseases, and the collapse of empires. They called the police who made the usual enquires by decided afterwards that she was just another homophobic pensioner. Then we come to Florence Nightingale. The nurse asked another pensioner,k probably an atheist, could she pray for her soul. alarmed that this was a hint of impending doom even though the nurse was just changing a band-aid on her foot, this pensioner declined and reported the matter while still wondering how many hours had she left in this world. Her now accelerating heart rate did not help matters. These are the facts not fiction. I look forward to the day when David can tell the difference too.

Yours sincerely,
Barry Clifford
bgclifford@iol.ie or phone 087 7511113

I dispair.

And for those who cannot distance themselves and break away from the men and women of this cruel Catholic Church and her rituals, they might take up the following prayer:

“Do Lawd, come down here and walk amongst yo people
And tek ‘em by the hand and telt ‘em
That yo ain’t hex wid ‘em
AND DO LAWD COME YOSELF,
DON’T SEND YO SON,
CAUSE DIS AIN’T NO PLACE FOR CHILDREN.”

–PRAYER FOLLOWING EARTHQUAKE OF 1866,
CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA, COMPOSED BY SLAVES

An Open Letter To David Quinn

Dear David,
I see you are at it again,damage control under the guise of reporting that is really just an opinion about the Ryan Report. Though sharing the same shadow as Ronan Mullen of the Irish Examiner, you get off to a good start citing Mary Laffoys resignation from the original investigation as disagreements with the department of education. Try the words ‘cover up’ Dave. Then you get to the numbers game while not being very good at it and by way of omission.
1090 victims would be heard and any institution with less than 20 abuse charges would not be heard at all. This was because of a time preference rather than preferred justice muting thousands of victims in its wake.
The defendants of course sang from the same hymn sheet and chorus: Lack of funds, resources, climate of the times and so on, and almost entirely dominated the hearings. Then David you list some of your favourite movies starting with Jane Eyre.
This Victorian fiction morphs into another movie called Les cheristes with its hero finding sainthood by finding a school choir that saves everybody’s soul. Abuse here was apparently no big deal anyway. You then contrast these movies with Irish movies of similar ilk and suggests they have an axe to grind. I can help you here Dave. Try ‘The Boys Of Saint Vincent’s', a Canadian and American offering along many more too numerous to mention. Come to think of it they might have an axe to grind as well. But let that not get in the way of a good story here as you rumbled on wheeling in our dear departed, Ann Mc Cabe.
Citing some of her reports as critical of some institutions with one report going as far to be call ‘damming’, you tell us that she came back later giving them a clean bill of health. Well, that’s alright then except just about here I think you need those words again called, ‘cover up’. Then you tell us about the religious expressed apology.
Their apology of course was quickly contradicted in the same breath when they stated that abuse allegations increased with the redress board platform even though this was the only platform victims ever got. Then Dave you give us your very own historical analysis of the industrial ‘prison’ system, and I do choose my words here very carefully.
You feed again the false belief that the children of these prisons were criminals or impoverished while underscoring again lack of funds, resources, and so forth. Even the dog on the street knows now that the opposite was true. Then you go back to the numbers again. Here are some of mine instead.
You start with the number 130,000 and go upward then form an arc and work outward. These are the victims that came through the Industrial prisons in Ireland followed by their dependants and loved ones. It is broken down something like this David: If you are a witness to abuse then you are abused, if you are torn from your mother and father you are abused as are they. If your children’s rights are stripped away then you are abused, if you are governed by laws that allows you to be stripped, beaten and locked in a cell on bread and water then you are abused. If you are denied a proper education or used as child labor then you are abused. Many of these victims found peace in the only place they could, in the cemetery. This is lost in your translation Dave and I do not wonder why any more. You dig deep to defend the indefensible as you pollute the waters even more. At this point I was not sure what report you were actually reviewing.
The real reason only a small number of people complained about your crunching of the numbers David is this: Intelligently aware people do not take you serious or that rag of a paper you used to opine for, The Irish Catholic. As far as the Irish Independent goes, I like it, it is just unfortunate that you happen to be in it now and again. You simply come with the print. But I digress and apologise for I had a flash of Dante’s inferno just now.
The Industrials prisons had one thing in common with the Gulags in that they too were never intended for the betterment of anyone. But then again the Gulags never imprisoned children as Ireland did, or on the scale and breath of time relative to it’s population. This was too much even for Stalin. Then Dave on your race to the bottom of the sewer you deliver your final homily.
Lumping the Industrial prisons with other institutions and even old folks homes is intended to diminish and mitigate the Ryan Report, but you do not stop there. You then try to mute other critical voices by their historical or geographic location while still telling us that these Industrial prisons at least intended to care for for children. Even the fish in the sea were on to this one Dave. The bottom line with these children’s prisons was greed, all the rest was a perverse sideshow in getting there. Then you finish with a flourish telling anyone that was left reading your rubbish how to honour the children of institutional abuse. That choice thankfully is not yours. It can only be decided by the victims themselves and how they see it. You end with some musings about the poor as if they were a species apart, and of course they will always be with us just as much as the corrupt. In that you can bet your very suspect journalistic credentials.
Finally, in my closing I wish to reveal perhaps a little bit of you to your self David. You too are complicit in the cover up of the catholic church by your tactful retreats and attacks of everything you write in defending the indefensible. Your poisonous deference to a corrupt church insults the good that many of them do and encourages the climate of corruption that still very much exists. A church long since bereft of truth is now cold in open sores of soiled ambition and greed and needs truth itself to heal. You are not helping them but in a perverse way helping to write their epitaph. This along with your own own perverted belief system that non- christians, atheists. agnostics, and others, are somehow tainted and less worthy of your respect evidenced in other articles that you have written will help seal their tomb.
In conclusion my own belief in life and people after spending ten years in the Industrial prison is simple: A good man has nothing to fear in this life or the next one and God has got nothing to do with it.
Strive to be better David for I know you are and time runs out for us all.

Yours Sincerely,
Barry Clifford

e mail: bgclifford@iol.ie

Outside the US there are only three international chapters of Legatus; Ireland, Poland and Canada.

They must smirk when they see victims of their child raping, priests,nuns and christian brothers fighting among themselves.

He must have missed the Ferryhouse sittings where the Rosminians actually admitted that the clergy lived high off the hog while the children went hungy – also the Rosminians admitted that there were 100 children to every adult. And in Ferryhouse the the Dept. of Health became involved when one of their charges – a Michael Bowes – died from meningitis due to the overcrowding in Ferryhouse – particularly the dormitories:

In 1967, a local health inspector visited the School, following the death of a boy from cerebro-spinal meningitis. His report to the Department of Health was thorough, beginning with an examination of the living conditions that might have caused the disease. He wrote: Now this disease can be due to overcrowding, so I accordingly caused accurate measurements to be made of the dormitories, school, etc. and what emerged is what we expected: The school holds twice the number of children – there are 192 boys. The floor area and the cubic space available to every bed is 25 sq. ft. instead of 55 sq. ft. which is the normal and 200 cubic ft. instead of 400 c. ft. We introduced every protection for the pupils by way of prophylactics. However we run a serious risk of recurrence. The matter is grave, in fact more than grave, it is unjust, and a hazard to the health of the child … You will note by the detailed report attached that the school structure where the children are taught is also doubly overcrowded. Again a serious hazard is the level of overcrowding. Having found that ‘the dormitory sleeps exactly twice the number of boys recommended’, the two officials drew the Department of Health’s attention to a number of serious matters, namely: Social malaise. There is clear evidence of social malaise in the institution among the younger “denizens”. 43 out of a total of 192 boys are bed-wetters. This matter I have taken up with the M.O. to the institution and also with the Assistant Co. M.O., and will deal with it as well as possible

The Department of Health Boarding-Out Inspector, Ms Fidelma Clandillon, seized on this report and wrote: This shocking report confirms some unofficial information I have had over the years concerning Ferryhouse – yet two smaller and better schools were closed for economic reasons. From what I have heard the ill-treatment of the boys could do with investigation also. One person who spoke with me about this matter was an inspector of the I.S.P.C.C. It is scandalous that only the death of one of the boys has led to the conditions there coming to light … [The Secretary, Tipperary (S.R.)] … informed me that the report had not been sent to the Department of Education but had been sent here as a health matter. I would urge the necessity of this Department’s informing the Department of Education of the findings of this report.

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On the radio this weekend were two nuns from the Sisters of Charity and one of them said that the Ryan Report was UNBELIEVABLE and the other nun, affectionately know as “Sister Ollie” said she did not witness any abuse in St. Joseph’s in Kilkenny and she was there most of the time !!!

Seems we have now a two-pronged attack on the Ryan Report. One of the attacks is coming from a person who believes the Church can do no wrong and the other attack is coming from those who say the Church did no wrong !!