This thesis
will look at the up-to-date response of church and state to the past mistreatment
of children in institutional care. It will consider the disparity between the
information contained in two key official reports, the Reformatory and Industrial
Schools Systems Report 1970 referred to as The Kennedy Report and the Task Force
on Child Care Services 1980; and the reality of life in these institutions for
the many children who finally found a voice in the last decade. Both Patrick
McCabe's novel The Butcher Boy and Paddy Doyle's autobiography The God Squad,
which approach the problem in different ways, will be considered in terms of
their portrayal of the role of victim and critic in the repressed society of
the 1950s and 60s; and also their circulation to a wider audience, thus bringing
an awareness of the mistreatment of children into the public arena. Both of
these books disrupt the standard meaning of the official reports, in that they
give human insight into the relationship between individuals and institutions.
They represent the voice of the child in a way that the official reports cannot.
In as much as novels and the writings of journalists are a representation of
social life, parallels will be drawn between the thematic concerns of both these
novels and the lived reality of the mistreatment of children, both in a specific
instance and in the general sense of the numerous cases of abuse of children
in institutional care. The historic
and thematic links between the novels, which depict institutional life in the
1950s and 60s, and the newspaper articles, which deal with the specific case
of a disturbed young man who grew up in rural Ireland in the 70s and 80s, suggest
that the problem of adequate care for vulnerable children has not been addressed.
This continuity is emphasised by a recent report in which a judge deplores the
lack of therapeutic places of detention for young offenders who do not have
family support or resources. The analytic
framework used includes the two government publications mentioned above, both
of which illustrate the tension between the official stories of institutional
care and the narratives of children who were, in every sense, victims of a system
which was not accountable to anyone. These reports stand as a sociological context
for the problem of children in care in Ireland; they seek to define the problem
and suggest a solution. A common limitation of reports is that they strive to
provide an exhaustive description of the subject they research, and present
their findings in a highly abstract manner. (Knights & Willmott 1999:1)
In doing this, reports rob the situation of its humanity. They are, in essence,
the top-down official stories of the limitations of a system. One of the more
obvious problems with official reports is that their readership is essentially
limited; they are distributed within the relevant government departments and
social services, and although available to the general public, are rarely read
by anyone who is not directly involved in the area they address. Methodology
involved a systematic interplay between ideas and evidence, encompassing a diversity
of sources, which link the thematic concerns of both the novels and the official
reports with current newspaper reporting, in terms of the way the story is told,
and the response of both church and state to the issue of the mistreatment of
children in institutional care. Although the potential to educate and entertain
is perhaps greatest in novels, the writings of journalists also inform our interpretation
of the lived experience of social realities, and newspaper coverage of dramatic
and tragic events is often the first draft of a story that has serious sociological
significance. Chapter
one will briefly outline the history of Industrial Schools and Reformatories
in Ireland, and look at some of the major recommendations of both the Kennedy
Report 1970 and The Task Force on Child Care Services 1980, with particular
reference to the The institutional
legacy of abuse will be considered in Chapter two, which will cover a recent
article which raises the issue of the present lack of secure and suitable therapeutic
places for children in need of care; and also the response of the government
to the issue of the past mistreatment of children in institutional care. The
challenges facing the Commission to Inquire into Childhood Abuse established
by the Government in May 1999 are complex. Although the Commission will be able
to draw on the experience of other countries such as Canada and Australia, which
have also dealt with the issue of institutional child abuse, it is evident that
as well as providing a catalyst for redress, unless handled sensitively such
inquiries have the potential to do actual harm to the survivors of child abuse.
(Raftery & O'Sullivan 1999:396) Behind the political rhetoric and the apparently
conditional apologies offered by both church and state lies the inescapable
fact that the dismantled institutions have not been replaced by an adequate
system of care for vulnerable children. The Butcher
Boy by Patrick McCabe is analysed in terms of the role of victim and critic,
both implicit and explicit, in Chapter three. In exploring how dissendent literary
voices can articulate key tensions and debates within a crucial social issue
such as the mistreatment of children, McCabe said in an interview in Hotpress
magazine in 1993: "There's no point in just painting beautiful little flowers.
That doesn't convince. Everybody knows there's other things there. There's always
a wasp in the flowers. There's always a wasp". (Hopper 1998:6.13) The Butcher
Boy in particular illustrates how deviance progresses from dysfunctional families,
lack of care and social structures. It demonstrates that it is part of a wider
malaise, a point which is frequently missed in reports and newspaper articles.
It could be argued that the novel is the humane imaginative version of the causes
of deviancy and often criminology in young people; and the connection between
inadequate care for children who need secure protection, and possible future
delinquency, has not been acknowledged by the state.
Chapter
four will examine Paddy Doyle's autobiographical account of his childhood in
The God Squad, first published in 1988. The God Squad is a testament to how
much the human spirit can endure, both physically and mentally, before cracking.
Whereas in Patrick McCabe's The Butcher Boy criticism of both Church and state
is largely implied, Paddy Doyle's narrative has sociological consequences in
that he opens the debate and invites discourse on the issues of child neglect
and child abuse, particularly in the institutions run by religious orders in
Ireland during the fifties and sixties. The God Squad is clearly an indictment
of unaccountable institutional power, and of the corrupting force such power
has on the lives of individuals and whole societies. Doyle's narrative style
is restrained, rich and firmly anchored in objectivity, and unearths a pain
almost elusive of language. Baudelaire said that the mark of the genius is that
he can summon up childhood at will; there is no doubt that in The God Squad
Doyle has succeeded in recreating the child he has left behind. His illustration
of his early years has the detail and clarity of a young sensitive mind endeavouring
to make sense of the grim reality of his life. Woven into the necessarily dour
fabric of this account are moments of extraordinary beauty or tenderness, as
when the altar-boy Paddy trips in church and the missal he carries slides across
the polished floor with "its ribbons trailing like the tail of some exotic bird".
(Doyle 1989:60). Through
newspapers and news bulletins, journalists construct representations that tell
about society, indeed virtually all aspects of social life fall within the purview
of journalism. A parallel is drawn between the fictional account of a young
boy growing up in a severely dysfunctional family in rural Ireland in the early
60s, and an outline of the true story of a disturbed young man who grew up during
the 1980s, told through the mediation of the press, in chapter five. When a
story is told through official reports or through the medium of newspapers,
there is an obvious deficit of information in relation to background details.
The story of Brendan O'Donnell - a young man who killed two adults and a child
in Cregg Woods, County Clare, in 1994 - is reconstructed from journalistic accounts,
court evidence and information on the internet. Although much was written about
the tragedy at the time, and conclusions can be inferred from interviews with
family members and neighbours, Brendan O'Donnell did not have a voice; his story
will never be fully known.
social situations outlined in the novels, e.g. the commitment of children into
care, the provision of after-care services, and the issue of mistreatment and
neglect. The terms of reference for the Kennedy Report 1970 was "to survey the
Reformatory and Industrial Schools systems and to make a report and recommendations
to the Minister for Education". ( Kennedy 1970:vii). Although the report was
wide-reaching and comprehensive and some of its recommendations were implemented
- most notably the closure of the Reformatory at Daingean and the Remand Home
in Marlborough Street - more recent reports indicate that the mistreatment of
children in some institutions continued into the 80's. (Raftery & O'Sullivan
1999:385)Victim and Critic
Preamble and Index
Table 1
Table 2
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Conclusion
Bibliography