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Child abuse
May. 21st, 2009 08:45 pmAs many of you know, the big news in Ireland today is the publication of a long-awaited report by the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse.
Thousands of children were tortured, raped, and otherwise abused in Irish institutions (reformatories, orphanages, industrial schools, institutions for children with disabilities, ordinary schools) during much of the twentieth century, mostly by members of the Catholic clergy. If you can stomach more detail, this Irish Times article gives a summary of the report's findings, together with links to two opinion pieces.
The whole thing is sickening, of course, but the message that really stands out for me is that the abuse was absolutely endemic in the system - not aberrational, but an artifact of the scornful contempt in which the Irish Catholic Church and the officials of the Irish State apparently held the public (in general) and their children (in particular) during that period. These unimaginative, self-congratulatory patriarchs cared nothing for children, whose fate was of no consequence as long as the desired social hierarchy could be maintained.
Meanwhile, another report appeared this week, published by the Irish College of Psychiatry, which illuminates the shameful state of mental health services in this country. It's called A Gloomy View, and I can find very little coverage of it online. (It gets a mention three paragraphs from the end of this Irish Examiner article.) I bring it up because I heard an interview about it on Newstalk the other day, which highlighted (among other issues) the fact that we have, it seems, nowhere to accommodate children with severe mental health problems. They are STILL, in the twenty-first century, routinely placed in adult psychiatric wards. This fact has been haunting me since I heard it - it's such a jaw-droppingly inappropriate thing to do, and there's so little excuse for a society that has enjoyed the prosperity we have in the past decade not to have FIXED IT, already.
I never suspected Ireland of having a huge amount of genuine respect for children as people, but it's sobering to encounter two such stark illustrations of the problem in the space of a few days.
All of this has made me go back and reread Ursula K. Le Guin's disturbing short story "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas" (PDF here; be warned, it's not an easy read). I've always understood it as a fable about social privilege on a global scale, but in modern Ireland, this week in particular, a literal reading is horrifyingly close to the bone.
Thousands of children were tortured, raped, and otherwise abused in Irish institutions (reformatories, orphanages, industrial schools, institutions for children with disabilities, ordinary schools) during much of the twentieth century, mostly by members of the Catholic clergy. If you can stomach more detail, this Irish Times article gives a summary of the report's findings, together with links to two opinion pieces.
The whole thing is sickening, of course, but the message that really stands out for me is that the abuse was absolutely endemic in the system - not aberrational, but an artifact of the scornful contempt in which the Irish Catholic Church and the officials of the Irish State apparently held the public (in general) and their children (in particular) during that period. These unimaginative, self-congratulatory patriarchs cared nothing for children, whose fate was of no consequence as long as the desired social hierarchy could be maintained.
Meanwhile, another report appeared this week, published by the Irish College of Psychiatry, which illuminates the shameful state of mental health services in this country. It's called A Gloomy View, and I can find very little coverage of it online. (It gets a mention three paragraphs from the end of this Irish Examiner article.) I bring it up because I heard an interview about it on Newstalk the other day, which highlighted (among other issues) the fact that we have, it seems, nowhere to accommodate children with severe mental health problems. They are STILL, in the twenty-first century, routinely placed in adult psychiatric wards. This fact has been haunting me since I heard it - it's such a jaw-droppingly inappropriate thing to do, and there's so little excuse for a society that has enjoyed the prosperity we have in the past decade not to have FIXED IT, already.
I never suspected Ireland of having a huge amount of genuine respect for children as people, but it's sobering to encounter two such stark illustrations of the problem in the space of a few days.
All of this has made me go back and reread Ursula K. Le Guin's disturbing short story "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas" (PDF here; be warned, it's not an easy read). I've always understood it as a fable about social privilege on a global scale, but in modern Ireland, this week in particular, a literal reading is horrifyingly close to the bone.