Sir, - One gets sick and tired of reading day after day of alleged abuses of children brought up in orphanages, abuses that happened many years ago according to the reports. There is another side to be told that readers ought to know, if you will print it.
Many years ago I approached the local orphanage to see if I could have a few boys spend the few days of Christmas with us. Out of that simple incident, the day soon arrived when every boy in the place was invited to someone's home for the Christmas festivities. I got to know the Brother in charge, a truly dedicated religious, who once said to me: "Do you think I like counting the sausages I give out on a Sunday morning, but what can we do with just £3.50 a week to feed, clothe and educate a boy'?"
He sent the boys to the local technical school and then tried to get jobs for them. He told me his problem was to get them some place to stay until they found their feet and were able to pay their way. I offered to help, and thereby a number of boys passed through my hands, staying perhaps three or four months. Like the rest of the population, many were forced to emigrate. Many keep in touch and come to visit the only home they ever knew.
Hundreds and hundreds of boys passed through that particular orphanage, and in all the years - never heard any mention the kind of abuse I read about almost daily in the papers. Yes, discipline, they would say, was strict; yet I never heard any of them carry on about it. Can one rear an ordinary family without discipline? Those boys seemed to take it in their stride.
One thing I have noticed in the newspaper reports of alleged abuses; those who make the charge all appear to come from broken families, very often following the death of the mother, and where brothers and sisters were torn apart, separated for life. Such a shattering experience can hardly be imagined by any outsider. Here I know what I am talking about, as I lost my own mother when I was eight years old and with her went my childhood forever, though blessed with a good father and stable family.
When those families were being broken up, little, if anything, was heard of counselling or psychology. Where then were all our busy little social workers? Did not the State then shut its eyes to the plight of those children, to their need for love, affection, understanding, of the vital need to keep the family together, and to find a way to do it? While I deplore abuses that are genuine, are not the Brothers and Sisters often made scapegoats in order to let the State and the community at large off the hook? Yours, etc.,
Dalysfori Road,
Galway.