CHILD AWARE

Ireland's Dead Children
Bethany Home Remembered
Who is Christine Buckley
Our Means to an End Part 1
Our Means to an End Part 2
Our Means to an End Part 3
Support Groups who only Support Themselves
List of Support Groups
Alternative Suggestion for Support Groups
Support Groups
It Will Start Like This

Shameful Headcount of State's Dead Children emerges

Letterfrack’s graveyard is tragic proof that we have destroyed many childhoods. And still we grapple to enumerate a mounting death toll.

THE SADDEST things in the graveyard of Letterfrack Industrial School are not the gravestones of the young boys commemorated there, but the toys. A bright-red toy car on the cement cross erected in 1969, on which about 60 names are inscribed. It is a miniature Audi coupe. And, at the other end of the graveyard, there is not only a large black marble plaque with a very yellow picture of the cartoon character Winnie-the-Pooh, but a model of an articulated lorry, with flames painted on its side, still in its box. “Hot Wheels” the model of the lorry is called. There is also a red-and-black football, placed between two angels.

In the bone-numbing sadness of Letterfrack Industrial School graveyard, these toys come as a shock reminder of what boys love. Of what interests them and beguiles them. Of what they enjoy. The contrast with the brief details written on the stones could hardly be starker. The walk to the graveyard, through a sun-filled wood, on the beautiful weekend of May 22nd and 23rd was carpeted with bluebells and wild garlic, and pierced – yes, it is really true – with shafts of sunlight and the cry of the cuckoo. After this sylvan beauty, the graveyard itself is perhaps appropriately institutional. The heart-shaped memorial stones lie on either side of a short path, in dull pools of grass punctuated with daisies and dandelion clocks.

The large stone cross simply lists the names of the boys who died – and not all of them either – and the dates of their deaths. The first boy listed, James Hastings, died on November 14th, 1891, according to the cross.

The last boy listed on the cross, John McDonnell, died on March 11th, 1956.

Standing in the graveyard of Letterfrack Industrial School,without the benefit of the historical research carried out there, you are trying to piece together some little stories from the stones in front of you. For example, was Patrick Hastings, who died on May 16th, 1893, the brother of James Hastings who had died two years before? Why did five boys die in 1918 alone, (perhaps the pandemic world flu?); whereas only one died in 1904 and one in 1905?

The Joseph Pyke Memorial Research Abuse Prevention Programme has erected the heart-shaped stones which now stud the grass, and give a little more detail on the boys. This extra detail seems to consist entirely of their ages. So, James Hastings, who died in 1891, was 15, his heart-shaped stone says. Bernard Kerrigan, who died on August 15th, 1935, was four years old. And the last boy listed on the cross, John McDonnell, has no age recorded. “Died as a young boy,” his heart-shaped stone reads.

Driving away from the Letterfrack Industrial School graveyard, there was a discussion on the radio about the Health Service Executive’s estimate that 20 Irish children had died while in the care of the State in the first 10 years of this century. Later in the week that number rose to 37. The number appears set to rise again.

It seems that we have become even worse at counting dead children and dead teenagers than we were before.

It is always interesting to look at the dead people who are not counted. The Iraqi civilians, for example, who died in the early days of the invasion of Iraq. They weren’t counted. Even in the chaos and suffering of war, casualties are usually counted; by somebody who cares.

Counting dead children and dead teenagers is a terrible task. Nobody wants to do it. Nobody wants to think about dead children and dead teenagers, thanks very much.

Nobody wants to leave the graveyard of Letterfrack Industrial School and think that the teenagers lying there – and the impression is that most of the dead were teenagers – are very like the teenagers slumped in front of our televisions and permanently plugged into their iPods. Nobody wants to think of the little children who died at Letterfrack being like the children in our own families, laughing at very old jokes and kicking their siblings on the bum – and that’s on a good day.

This is why the toy cars and the red-and-black football left at the graveyard of Letterfrack Industrial School are so powerful when you see them. Because they remind us that these numbers, these problems, these elusive statistics, were children.

John McDonnell who died in 1956 at the age of who knows what, and James Hastings who died in 1891 at the age of 15, are really the ancestors of Daniel McAnaspie, whose mortal remains were found in a ditch a few weeks ago. They are his older brothers.  This is Ireland's answer to caring for her children.

It might not be too fanciful to say that, even though they died before they could father their own children, John McDonnell and James Hastings are the father and grandfather of Daniel McAnaspie in some terrible Irish family made up of the children who never counted.

It was strange to think, as one left the carefully tended and well-defined perimeter of the graveyard at Letterfrack Industrial School, that we don’t even know yet how big the memorial garden to the children who have died in the care of the State during the 21st century is going to have to be.

BETHANY HOME REMEMBERED

Former residents of a Protestant children’s home gathered in a Dublin cemetery today as the names of 40 forgotten babies were read out at their unmarked graves.

Some 75 years after the infants were buried, former residents of the Bethany Home in Rathgar laid flowers, memorial cards and small toys at their final resting place.

The graves, in barren ground at the Mount Jerome Cemetery in Harold’s Cross, were discovered by Griffith College Dublin lecturer Niall Meehan after consulting documents from the institution.

The Bethany Home was run by evangelical members of the Church of Ireland but had no formal connection with that church. It operated at Blackhall Place in Dublin from 1921-34 and at Orwell Road, Rathgar, until it closed in 1972. It was also a place of detention for women convicted of petty theft, prostitution, infanticide and birth concealment.

Patrick Anderson-McQuoid, who was brought to Bethany shortly after he was born in 1947, recited a poem he had written for the occasion before reading out the children’s names.

“The whole purpose was to acknowledge their short time on earth and put their names out in the open,” he said. “It was very sombre standing on the spot but there was a sense of achievement that we had got to this point.”

The former residents of the combined children’s home, maternity home and detention centre for female convicts are now campaigning for a monument to remember the babies, who had an average age of three to six months.

Derek Leinster has also established a support group for fellow residents of the home, which closed in 1972.

“I’m getting contacts in America, Australia, Canada, Britain and Ireland,” Mr Leinster said. “There’s a lot of people affected by it and it’s all been hidden. Now it’s time to stop the hiding.”

The 68-year-old, who now lives in England, said many people suffered long-term health problems from the neglect they endured at the home.

Mr Leinster also called for the Government to help locate burial sites of other children from the home. “You can never block it out,” he added. “As a father with four children, to think these children were there without any love or care or attention - anyone who’s human couldn’t fail to be moved.”

Mr Meehan found the graves, most of which are situated in two adjoining plots, with the help of a cemetery employee after obtaining documents from the home.

Among those who attended the memorial event were independent Senator David Norris and Labour equality spokeswoman Kathleen Lynch.

Ms Lynch backed calls for Bethany survivors to have access to the State’s redress scheme for similar institutions.

“I believe that the Bethany Home should be included within the Irish Government’s redress scheme, as well as the Magdalene Laundry women, so that people who suffered the horrors of abuse in the institution, on the wink and nod of the state, can be afforded the reparations that they deserve,” she said. “I also believe that there should be a fitting and appropriate memorial to children who did not survive.”

IRISH TIMES      Wed 26 may 2010


WHO IS CHRISTINE BUCKLEY

On the road to self promoted sainthood, Christine Buckley  has the credentials of any martyr. Being a woman in an island of yesteryear was in itself a challenge as well as being reared in and surviving an industrial Gulag prison. Having being abandoned by her father and mother, she like all the other tens of thousands of children, boys and girls, in these prisons made do with what little they had left and tried to survive. The rest as they say is history.

Christine, despite these disadvantages, did not just survive, she was given a Secondary School education while most inmates did not. Because of it she would go on to become a nurse. That’s the nun’s for you. If they hate you enough they may just educate you for spite. Today, an Institutional and tragic background gains the currency of understandable sympathy. It is when  that sympathy is devalued by taking an advantage of the giver and fellow survivors  is where the lines become more than blurred.

It is when one voice mandates itself as the voice of thousands without being mandated by them is where it becomes blinded; It is when the fourteen thousand and five hundred survivors from those gulags, which is more than 99.9.9% of the survivors, suffer as a result of that devaluation is when it has been corrupted; It is when one voice uses the crutch of their background to forward only their aims and ambitions is where it is morally criminal to the survivors of institutional abuse in this country. This is what Christine Buckley has and is still doing. Let us look again at some of the actions and words of this woman and try to see a little deeper into her mind of how she has successfully manipulated two generations since with her own allegations of abuse:

At age 45 years old in 1992, Christine appeared on television for the first time to tell her story about abuse at the hand of nuns. Because of it she set about to launch her cottage industry out of the misery and suffering of others and her 'abuse'. It would in time to prove very lucrative. To bolster her position and victimization she claimed this: I had many beatings from the nuns with one beating in particular that left me with 100 stitches that ran the length of my thigh. I was treated in hospital but not hospitalized."

This is what the head doctor said about that time: "I cannot recall ever treating a Goldenbridge child with a lacerated thigh. An injury requiring such extensive stitching would not have been treated in casualty alone. Standard medical practice would have necessitated that such an injury would have required extensive surgery under a general anaesthetic, and a child would have been detained as a patient in hospital. As a specialist in soft tissue injuries and burns, such an injury would have been referred to me by medical staff”. This senior doctor has no record of this injury and neither does any of the other three doctors who were there at that time." 

A bit of fiction should not get in the way of a good story by Christine unless the doctors are lying and she is telling the truth. She then went on and set up the Alslinn Centre to ‘support victims’ with therapy and a few courses as the main meals on offer. Astonishingly, she claimed a few years ago that she did this without any help from the Government and that she has also helped over 8,500 victims since it opened. I was not one of them along with the other 8,499 survivors. (40% of the survivors that applied to the Redress Board reside in Britain so she must have spent an inordinate amount of time in Britain helping out this alleged 8,500 victims). It turns out the Government did help after all except they called themselves the HSE, the Health Service Executive.

So much in fact they gave her "centre" €1,475,985.00 over a four year period ending in 2008. The years before 2004 the auditors could not find or verify any accounts except for €110,420,00 advanced from the HSE. This was advanced to Christine and her fellow director and not the centre. No information or proof has been provided as to the nature or extent of services except for 2005. On this point Christine claimed "she was being discriminated against." On the grounds of race, colour, gender, or institutional victimization is not stated or made clear but one can predict by now that this would be her defence. Her accounts auditor went one step further against her on this point.

This is what he said:

“What is clear from the accounts is that for two years, and for part of a third year, money received could only be reported as having being advanced to directors. (Christine and her friend) It is possible that this money was channeled to previously existing organizations and used in their work. (it was not) Otherwise it is hard to see how the expenditure could have been justified, as the company had no other staff or premises. Whether a similar situation existed for the rest of the periods for accounts from 2003 to 2008, it is not possible to say from the information given in these accounts.”

In other words he was not shown receipts or proof of where all the money had gone. These monies do not include other donations that she may have received from different sources. Fast forward to the present:

Christine now wants the paltry offer of further compensation to be used for (you guessed it) more counseling, courses, tin whistles lessons and further education, even though these are a duplication of services on offer if you are unemployed. Of course she will be getting paid to provide these services even though she has no credentials in this area except for steely eyed bullying to get what she wants or else. If you dare to object to this singular world view of hers you will be considered an ungrateful survivor for daring to want to raise your impoverishment to an acceptable level of dignity. You will be reminded in no uncertain terms that "this is not about the money" and be lambasted a selfish and ungrateful person. You will be told again "be gone from this place for you have asked and got far too much already."

Christine knows the game is up and like a person fleeing the scene of any immoral crime for her self preservation, she decided to pick on a man she hardly knew about his own sexual abuse. This man she rarely spoke to, and claimed or implied he probably made the whole story up about his experiences. This is an old trick. You do this to deflect but yet draw attention to yourself. It is the quality and nature of that attention that will matter for it is a desperate shot in the dark for one that has a lot to answer for. Everyone  reveals themselves in the end for reason itself will force the truth to come forward.

She blamed a man who is 77 years old, named Michael O Brien, who just like Christine waited until the right time, even if it was later than her, before he could tell his story. This man received no Secondary School Education from his jailers and left that prison without being able to read or write. She attacked this man on the eve of the Ryan report to gain maximum publicity for herself by trying to destroy him. Her attack was about his denial of abuse. I was married for twenty years before I told my wife. My denials to her were my lies, my truths to her in the end was that denied reality. It was one of the factors that killed the marriage. Many survivors still today continue to deny the worst horrors of their abuse because of the shame they feel. The facts, unlike Christine, vindicated me. In fact Christine is very short on facts and long on fiction. She sat on so called ‘proof’ about Michael O Brien that was in the public domain anyway, and waited like a predator for eight months to deliver her "killer blow." It may yet prove to be her waterloo instead.  

Be that as it may, for now Christine is getting well paid for hectoring and guilt laden bullying even though she keeps reminding us "it is not about the money." It always wryly felt by me that this is more often used as a byline for those who have money, a good pension, or at least a job, and who utter these patronizing jaded phrases as nuggets of moral wisdom. This is in fact survivors money rerouted to her before it ‘never’ gets to us and will be added to her own compensation for having been ‘abused.’ She wants and intends to continue in the lifestyle that she has become accustomed and the fame that goes with it. That fame may yet turn to infamy. Christine still steadfastly clings and adds to her carefully crafted persona and even desperately going great lengths to add to it. She is a media junkie. One time, she went as far to phone me out of the blue to solicit my vote to name her as European Volunteer Of The year this past winter. She forgot to tell them them that she was a paid volunteer. Apparently  I could vote for her 32 times with 32 clicks of a button on my computer she gleefully informed me.  I had never met her before nor asked her for favour, and only spoke to her on the phone seven years earlier as she tried to hijack the publicity surrounding my brother’s terminal illness. My brother and I had become media interest because the Redress Board would not come to England to take his testimony. They did for I made them change their mind. My brother died a few weeks later. I knew what she was up then and avoided her like the plague. She, like Noel Barry and other common viruses, was now back years later and  looking for votes. Like any virus too it must be treated before it infects everything. Her bullying, her ego, her megalomania must go with her as surely as she has to. Christine's behaviour may well at last unite the rest of the disenfranchised groups except for Noel Barry and his cronies.

I will leave you with some final words from Christine Buckly about compensation for survivors:

"How can we have people [survivors] stating that they are entitled to this money when the same people do not see the importance of education and counselling."

Forgive their impertinence and mine for all along I thought it was about how survivors felt and not Christine.
Their therapy will be  the financial compensation that they were promised but never got. It is called 'survival therapy' because of the reality and circumstances of their lives.  Considering that most survivors are aged between 50 and eighty years old, impoverished, and will unlikely have or be able to find a job, what good is counseling or education.

On the 20 may 2010 Christine will be remembering the exoneration of victims at her centre using your money to do so. There will be poetry reading, music, drama, art and culinary delights to name but a few. I was not invited but Barry Andrews was.

On that day instead I will be trying to raise money for survivors for food, books to read, fuel for winter but no music for art or drama. Christine provides more than enough in that department.   

"They who shout the loudest will be heard," the question is how loud are you shouting and what are you going to do about it

P.S:  "If it does not make sense reason itself dictates that it is not true."       

Barry Clifford                                     May 18 2010       

INSTITUTIONAL