What we are looking at there is the NEED for a profound change in the way Society operates.

The actions of The Catholic Church and State, and of many National Governments, Lawyers, Barristers, Experts and ‘well meaning people’ reveal an abiding concern for protecting their power, prestige and image that often exceeds their concern for the victims, for the survivors and their helpers..

The best way to assess a society is in how that society treats all it’s children, and all children………

This society is failing so many children, and because it’s caused by things people do, by human action, it can stop by human action.

Can we please stop the lies, the games, the prevarications, the marketing, the selling, the conditioning and indoctrination.

Are we strong enough to face the truth, to step into the light.

Do we care enough about ALL our children to act as their advocates, to listen to them?

I see that St. Luke’s has now been closed and the patients are to be transferred to our Psychiatric Unit at St. Luke’s here in Kilkenny. I can’t imagine what you went through in those particular ‘dark’ places but I’ve met quite a number of former detainees and could recommend a number who could do with a spell in the ‘horse box’ as an allusion to the padded cell! Yes, it still goes on Folks! Vulnerable people locked up and CCTV watching their every move! No human nor civil rights are accorded them. We’re merely emerging from the neanderthal cave in evolution terms and have a LONG LONG way to go! Hopefully, not to Tipperary!

One the one hand there is a criminal issue, and on the other reparations and healing….

The healing cannot happen until the facts are faced – this society is founded on abuse, sustains itself by abuse and is identifiable by it’s abuse more than by any other factor.

Without this, the ‘healing’ will be merely an adjustment to a sick society.

These are the people who ‘promised’ survivors they would receive 300,000 plus 64,000 aggravated damages all through last summer at meetings up and down this country. I’ve sent out a global email with the world and his wife copied in to our GREAT AND GOOD ONES to explain these figures. If you do the maths. we would be needing to ask for 6 billion if these sums are to be realizes. For some, it is only the money but plenty of us have the bigger picture in place and mind!

Hope you all have a good Valentines’ Day!

He has told others that the March on 24 March is nothing and to ignore it! I think Big John and Co. will have a rude awakening on the day.

I see from yesterday’s Irish Independent the Clonmel Bellows doesn’t want that €1b from the Pope after all – he just wants to glad hand him and perhaps kiss his feet – so does Christine Buckley. What do they expect from an encounter with the German Pope besides tons of photographs to hand to their friends? What can’t they say to the Bishops that can only be said to the Pope? I supposs this is what they call jiggery Popery up North.I hope its not catching.
There is a British Army expression “arse in cake” for all this sort of carry on. Mark my words, nothing good will come of it.

You suggest that the Irish child prison survivors forgive. I’m not sure what you mean by that.

Ireland illegally imprisoned me at the age of 13 back in the 1960s. I escaped from the abusive Dublin prison (Artane) and fled to England. The Irish authorities issued a warrant for my arrest and tried to drag me back to prison. I managed to avoid re-capture and I have lived as a child prison refugee ever since. I could never return to Ireland for fear of State persecution.

In 1999 the Irish State offered what it called a “sincere apology” to its former child prisoners. I asked the Irish government, pursuant to that apology, to issue me a piece of paper invalidating the illegal detention order and the illegal arrest warrant that still stood against my name. I explained that the State has a Constitutional duty to restore my good name and that I would accept the piece of paper as fulfilment of that duty.

For the past eleven years the Irish government has stubbornly refused to issue that piece of paper. So long as those illegal documents stand against my name I remain a second class Irish citizen and would be subject to discrimination by State and people alike were I ever to take up residence in Ireland or even visit the country.

By refusing to issue the piece of paper the Irish government has effectively condemned me to permanent exile from the country of my birth. There are thousands of Irish child prison refugees like me in the UK.

Does forgiveness in my case mean dropping my legitimate demand for justice and resigning myself to second class citizenship? You surely don’t think I should forgive the delinquent Irish State while it still has its jackboot on my neck, do you?

Jim Beresford, former Artane child prisoner 14262, Huddersfield, England
jim.beresford@btinternet.com