SOME 147 pairs of children’s shoes were tied to the railings outside St Mary’s Pro-Cathedral in Dublin yesterday, a pair for every child known to have died in St Joseph’s Industrial School, Letterfrack, Co Galway.
The demonstration was organised by Fire and Ice, an abuse victims’ support group which aims to empower survivors of industrial schools through achieving compensation and justice for all who experienced abuse.
They have called for the Residential Institutions Redress Act, 2002, to be deemed unconstitutional, adversarial and unjust. And they have called for all victims to have a say in how trust funds or compensation funds are dispersed. They have also called for pensions to be provided to all victims and emergency funding for extreme cases.
Demonstrators, numbering fewer than 100, marched from the Pro-Cathedral to the Dáil, where they also tied pairs of children’s shoes to the railings. They had travelled from many parts of the country and from Britain.
Some spoke of the treatment they experienced when they attended the redress board. They complained of the adversarial nature of the hearings and the confidentiality agreement they had to accept to get compensation.
Others talked about their reactions to the pope’s pastoral letter on sexual abuse in the Catholic Church in Ireland, issued at the weekend. Organiser Barry Clifford, who spent 10 years in an industrial school, said the Act on which the board was founded was unconstitutional. He also called for a permanent register of sex offenders, greater penalties for convicted paedophiles and education around child abuse to be included in the school curriculum.
Mary King, from London, said the Government had not been listening to victims. Abandoned in Dublin aged two, she was given a detention order and put in an industrial school in Newtownforbes, Co Longford.
She was sent to work at the Mater hospital in the 1950s aged 16, but ran away to London. When she sought work in London, a Jewish woman took her in and looked after her, she said. “We are here to fight for justice. The redress board needs to pay proper redress,” she said.
Rosemary Henry travelled with a group of six women from Banada, Co Sligo. She said the pope’s letter would do little good.
“You can’t undo what’s been done to the majority of people standing here at this point in time,” she said.
Michael Kennedy, who was “14 years and two months” in institutions, said it was sad that victims had broken into so many groups. He said they should all just be given a lump sum “so they can enjoy the rest of their lives”.
Gerry Carey said the 147 children who died in Letterfrack were not alone. “That’s just one school; other children died in other schools like Artane and Tralee,” he said. “The Government and the religious orders would like to see us disappear. But we are not going away.”
Robert Gosnell travelled with his wife Mary, an abuse victim, from Cobh, Co Cork. “She still wakes sometimes in the night screaming,” he said. The pope’s pastoral letter meant nothing to him, he added.
Anne Brosnan travelled from Limerick to meet her friend Dolores Rooney from Offaly and take part in the demonstration. Both women had been in an industrial school in Wexford.
Reacting to the pope’s pastoral letter, she said she was “sick, tired and sore of listening to all the talk. What did Jesus say in the gospel? ‘By your actions shall you be known.’ Well they are known now,” she said.
