Sir, - One might think, from all the shock and horror that has greeted the RTE documentary series "States of Fear", that no one had ever before spoken out on the question of industrial schools and other places of forcible child detention in this country. Not so.
Almost 40 years ago, Austin Clarke, one of Ireland's most under-rated poets, condemned these horrors, for example in the poem "Corporal Punishment" from his 1963 collection Flight to Africa. Was he listened to? - Yours, etc., Eddie Lenihan,
Crusheen, Co Clare.