Who Am I (2)
On the trail of his past.
The Wexford People - Wednesday March 22nd, 2000
Maria Pepper reports:
Author Paddy Doyle, who shocked the nation a decade ago with his childhood memories in "The God Squad", is now hoping to unlock the mystery of his identity in Wexford.
Ten years after the publication of his book "The God Squad", Paddy Doyle is back in Wexford, the place of his birth, searching for the mystery of his identity.
In an intriguing postscript to the earlier, shocking revelations about a childhood spent in Irish institutional care, Paddy Doyle has discovered that the man he believed was his father and whose suicide left him orphaned, wasn't his real father at all. When he wrote the book back in 1989, that author never imagined it had a sequel until he started receiving unsigned letters from Wexford telling him his information about his origins was wrong.
A few years ago, he answered the phone one day at his Dublin home in Inchicore and listened with astonishment as the anonymous caller claimed to know who his father was.
The name given was that of an elderly Killinick man, married with a family, who died a few years ago. For Paddy, who had waited 35 years of his life before discovering the circumstances surrounding his sentence to St. Michael's Industrial School, Cappoquin, in 1955, this new information as difficult to take in.
He had relied on legal documents during the course of his research - the court order for his detention following his conviction under the Children's Act (1908, 1941) for "being in possession of a guardian who did not exercise proper guardianship", and the inquest report into his 'father' Paddy Doyle's hanging.
The anonymous revelation was shattering - his identity was now relegated to the silent shadows again and a crucial kernel of his book, a best-seller which is still bought all over the world, was incorrect.
But apart from a few sporadic requests for information to the people in the Ballymore, Mayglass, Killinick and Ballycogley areas, he let the matter lie - not ready to face digging up old skeletons again.
One of those approaches, he says. Was to a local parish priest who, two years ago, under pressure of Paddy Doyle's persuasion, confirmed the name of his real father.
His subsequent enquiries about this man produced an unsubstantiated connection which convinced Paddy Doyle of a genetic link between him and the family.
Paddy, who is confined to a wheelchair, suffers from a rare condition called Idiopathic Torsion Dystonia and the type he has is hereditary, genetic and familial which means that in order to get it, one or other of your parents must have it.
It can present itself in various forms from mild to extreme and affect a leg, a hand, the eyes or the neck. To Paddy's Knowledge, the couple he lived with in Ballymore as a child - Paddy and Lil Doyle (nee Murphy) did not have any such affliction.
But a significant number of the other man's extended family over a few generations have presented with Dystonia symptoms.
