This is essentially a war book - it is about the war between adults and children and sometimes between children and children. Some of the horrors related in it took place in the 1940s and 1950s and others in the 1960s. That, it is both dreary and necessary to realise, does not mean the war is over. It has always gone on and it will always gone on. Iseult O'Doherty's book is by way of being a report from an ever-present battlefield.

The book has its origins in a piece of research for an RTE programme, Would You Believe, in 1996. O'Doherty wrote to the newspapers inviting people who had experienced abuse to contact the programme. The letter was published in The Irish Times on a Saturday. On the Monday, the programme telephoned the Irish Independent and the Irish Press to ask them not to publish the letter. "We simply could not cope with the volume of calls we were receiving." The flood of calls continued for almost three weeks. In this book she tells the stories of some of those who were included in the programme and of some of those who were not.

The book leaves the impression of despatches from a sinister, war-torn landscape. In this landscape children are beaten, raped and sexually assaulted in institutions, in their homes, out of doors, indoors by parents, siblings, members of religious orders, priests and teachers.

By and large, the experiences related here come from that era when the country puffed itself up with pride at it superiority to the rest of the world in matters of morality. Behind that facade, terrible things were done.

There were good guys and bad guys. Pat, raped by a Christian Brother in Artane, realised that what had happened must be wrong "because he didn't hit me". When Pat told about this in confession, the priest brought him to a room and raped him. ["]I came out of this room crying and that's when I met Brother Joe (another Brother) walking down the hall. I never told him what happened, I didn't have to say a word. He put his arm around me and he gave me an apple and he said `it will never happen to you again'. And it didn't." In that sense Brother Joe was a good guy. On the other hand, he was "the most violent man I ever met in my life".

Before Artane, Pat had spent years in the Rathdrum orphanage of the Sisters of Mercy were, under Sister Xaveria, he saw little children left sitting on potties so long the older children had to push their prostate glands back into them (the same allegation has been made, separately, concerning Goldenbridge during Sister Xaveria's time there).

But there were good guys in the nuns too. Before Sister Xaveria arrived, Rathdrum was run by a nun whom the children knew as Sister Doloreese. "This nun, she was brilliant," he says. "She was beautiful, the picture of loveliness in manner and in looks." His years with her "are just happy memories".

The abusers in this book include a head master in a boarding school - it was not only the religious who were at it - older brothers in families and other adults including a mother.

The abused very commonly saw themselves as to blame and suffered great psychological stress in later life. Many have fought their way through the nightmare, often with the help of an understanding partner.

It is impossible to believe that the things described in the book are not happening in some form or other to some children today. But there is this much that is better about today - the society is more open and what goes on is more visible. There is some protection in that.

Meanwhile, Iseult O'Doherty's book is a frightening reminder of some of the nightmares which helped to shape today's society and many of the people in it.

Padraig O Morain is social affairs correspondent of The Irish Times.