On the eve of St. Patrick's Day, Ireland needs another Patrick.

What is the saddest, most tragic aspect of the Industrial School abuse of children is this--that it was done under the guise of Christianity. Children, often as young as a few months of age were taken from their parents by the Irish government in collusion with the Catholic Church. It was portrayed as a loving act of charity, but there was NO love at all, certainly nothing that would mirror the love of Christ.

From the mid-1880s until the early 1970s thousands of Irish children officially in the care of the state were subjected to a double regime of sexual abuse and wageless slavery. Ireland's notorious industrial schools and orphanages--all run by Catholic orders--were homes to boys and girls who had been officially declared criminals by the courts.

Some children were even sent to these institutions simply because their parents had split up: one-parent families, usually held together by abandoned wives, were regarded with suspicion in post-independence conservative Catholic Ireland.


In these Industrial Schools, you had priests and nuns representing  Christ to these children--and these adults would beat, torture and physically abuse to such an extent that some children sought suicide as their only means of escape. Others were beaten to death or allowed to become so sick without any medical treatment that they ultimately died.

The Ryan Commission has sought to investigate allegations of child abuse. But, following this lengthy inquiry, there have been NO criminal prosecutions brought against the abusers or against those in the hierarchy of the church … complicit in the brutal crimes against innocent children.


It is unlikely that officials from any government department will ever be held accountable having presided over an illegal, cruel and wicked system that led to untold suffering for tens of thousands of innocent Irish children and their families since the foundation of the state.

Here's what I want to know? How can the Catholic Church claim to be the representative of Jesus Christ here on earth when it endorses, fosters and is totally complicit in this kind of abuse and not just in Ireland, but Scotland, Wales, England, Canada, Australia and the United States. When the Catholic Church is confronted with its dirty laundry, instead of confessing its sins and asking the victims for forgiveness, the Catholic Church hides behind lawyers and legalese. When the clergy scandal was exposed by the Boston Globe, instead of coming clean, confessing its sins and humbly asking for the forgiveness of each of the victims abused by its priests, the Catholic Church brought out a battery of lawyers in an attempt to stonewall the issue and in effect treating the victims as "enemies" of the Church. There is nothing godly or holy about the Catholic Church in how it has responded to what the UK Guardian newspaper calls a "cruel and wicked system." 

Matthew 18:6 says, "But if anyone causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a large millstone hung around his neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea." How many children who were abused by the Catholic Church in Ireland, Scotland, Wales, England, Canada, Australia and the United States are now grown men and women who no longer believe in Christ. They no longer look to the Church. They have lost their faith and their hearts have become hardened towards God. Why? Because of the Catholic Church. I believe the Catholic Church  will stand in heavy judgment by God for the destruction of the faith of countless thousands upon thousands of men and women--all because they did not operate out of love and mercy.

Last of all, tomorrow is St. Patrick's Day and the irony is that Patrick brought the Gospel to Ireland in the early part of the 5th century. This is a shameless promotion for my wife's book, A Secret Hope, which you can get at Amazon.com. This is her first novel and it's historical fiction and very accurate in every detail. Go get a copy and if you like it, tell others about it as well. But my point in bringing up St. Patrick, as we honor him this coming Saturday at every pub and bar in America, Britain, Ireland and elsewhere is this: Ireland needs another St. Patrick. The Irish people are filled with shame (because so many were complicit or silent while this abuse took place), and the Irish people are filled with anger at the Catholic Church, and rightly so. They've turned their back on the Catholic Church, and rightly so, but at the same time, they've turned their backs on God. The people of Ireland need to hear about the love and mercy of God. They need to hear about his compassion and his goodness. They need to know from the Scriptures that Our Lord Jesus Christ is nothing like the Catholic Church in Ireland or the United States. They need to know that God hates the sin and wickedness that so many have experienced in these Industrial Schools or at the hands of priests here in the United States.

Pray for the people of Ireland. Pray for God to send evangelists to Ireland to proclaim his love and forgiveness to them. They need to be forgiven. They need to also forgive those who have perpetrated this evil against them and members of their families. They need healing and restoration from the pain and suffering that they've experienced or members of their family tree. They need to hear the Good News that Jesus suffered on the cross at Calvary and rose from the grave so that they could have a relationship with the Father. Pray that the people of Ireland will have open hearts to receive this message even as they did 1600 yrs ago when Patrick was guided by a God-given vision to return to Ireland proclaiming God's love and acceptance.                                     

Ireland's Industrial Schools: In many cases, the farm animals ate better than the children

The more you read about the Irish Industrial Schools, the more you realize that the state was complicit along with the Catholic Church in the torture and abuse of thousands of boys and girls. Also, even though some of what took place behind the walls of these institutions was known by the local citizens, there was a deafening silence. No one said or did anything. No one spoke up on behalf of these children. Many of the industrial schools were nothing more than forced labor camps. Here are some recollections from former students at these industrial schools, and what you read here is not even the most horrific of stories offered by survivors.

Here is Marion's story. She was at the Sisters of Mercy (St. Joseph's Industrial School) in Athlone from 1937-1954:

"I remember a girl who had to get her appendix out. When she came back from the hospital, she was supposed to rest. But the nuns made her get up to do work. This was before antibiotics or anything to keep the infection away. A few days after they forced her to get up, she died. She was a lovely girl, and she was only fifteen years old."

Margaret's story from the same school run by Sisters of Mercy:

"From the time we were four or five, we had to work on the farm. During the summer, they took our shoes off us and we went barefoot...we had to go into fields, walking on the stubble in our bare feet, to turn hay with our hands. And our feet used to get cut to ribbons. When we got back to the convent, the floor would be covered in blood from our feet. The nun would pick out some of us to beat, saying it was our fault. I remember the hunger. We were always starved. When we were out for walks, we'd eat weeds...we'd fight over these weeds, we were so hungry."

Several survivors recall that Christmas and Easter were the only times that anything was different. The children were given presents, but they had to give them back the next day.

If an orphanage had a farm, the priests and nuns would have eggs and bacon for breakfast while the children were forced to eat out of the pig's bucket. One survivor noted that the pigs and farm animals ate better than the children.

A common theme is that these industrial schools would take in brothers and sisters and separate them so that they may go for the next twelve years or longer and never have any contact with their family members. It was forbidden. If they passed one another in the hall, they would receive a beating if they even tried to communicate with one another. Often, they were given numbers and in many cases, didn't even remember their birth name because all they knew was a number. Most didn't even know when their birthday was because it was never celebrated.

Martin McMahon (St. Joseph's Industrial School) in Ferryhouse, Clonmel from 1955-1966 recalls:

"They beat me for wetting the bed (a common theme)--They'd hit me with a stick or a strap and force me under cold showers, every single morning for six years. They'd never let me see the film (movies) on Saturdays as punishment--I'd get a cold shower and be sent to bed. At least fifty of us wet the bed. If your clothes were torn or dirty, you'd be beaten. In the dormitories, if one lad did something, like if they found a book under a mattress, they'd beat every boy in the dormitory. It was just endless--beating, beating, all the time."

When boys or girls would age out at 16 or 18 yrs of age, they often had little or no education, in many cases could not even read or write and did not know anything about their rights. Very often, under an arrangement between the school and local farmers, many were under-fed and had to work from dawn to dusk and then were forced to sleep in the barn at nights. In many situations, they received no pay at all. What many of them experienced was virtual slavery in some cases, working from 6am until midnight.

Some girls who were fortunate enough to be sent to a school for secondary education, were forced at the end of the day to clean all the classrooms, required to mop all the floors, clean all the toilets, every day, and for no pay, along with trying to study for classes and get homework done.

I'll finish up this series on Friday with a few closing thoughts.

The 5 Myths Surrounding the Industrial School Movement

What you need to know about the Industrial School Movement in Ireland is that it was fueled by an intense competition between several Catholic religious orders and the Protestant Church. The Catholic Church used their influence with police and judges to "enslave" as many children as possible in their Industrial Schools so their "souls could be saved" and they could be raised as good Catholics. But what has happened instead is that many in Ireland today are no longer "good" Catholics and there is a deep-seated bitterness and anger against the Catholic Church of Ireland. Most Irish know or have relatives who were incarcerated into the Industrial Schools where they were treated as "free" slave labor and in most instances, treated worse than farm animals.

In an attempt to rewrite Irish history, the Irish Catholic Church has stated that if it were not for their Industrial Schools, thousands of Irish children would've starved and gone without any education. In reality, most of those in the Catholic Industrial Schools were subjected to real starvation and most received little if any education.

Here are some myths that have been perpetuated by the religious orders which ran these Industrial Schools (from the book: "Suffer the Little Children: The Inside Story of Ireland's Industrial Schools by Mary Raftery"):

1. The first and most pervasive myth was that the children within the system were objects of charity, cared for by the Catholic Church of Ireland when no one else would do so. The children themselves were repeatedly told by their religious keepers that were it not for the charity of the Catholic Church, they would have been left on the side of the road, abandoned and starving

The Artane Industrial School

However, it was a fallacy. Even though these Industrial Schools received funding from State-funding to clothe and feed and educate each child, most children suffered material deprivation. The charity myth was useful because it served to explain away the thin and ragged appearance of the children in industrial schools.

2. The second myth is that these institutions were orphanages. The reality is that thousands of children were detained in a State-funded system, essentially because their parents were poor. In Ireland, it was the state policy to remove children from their families under the guise of providing a more loving, caring environment. The reality is that these children provided free slave labor and in most cases were starved, beaten, even to the point of death by nuns and priests.

3. The third myth is that these schools were populated mostly with children who were on the path to becoming criminals. In reality, only a small proportion of these children had any criminal conviction, and even then, in most cases, their criminal conviction consisted of stealing a couple of apples because of hunger. The vast number of boys and girls in these Catholic schools were there because their parents were poor.

4. Another myth that persists even to this day is that nobody knew about the suffering of the children in these institutions. There is evidence that there was clear popular knowledge of the existence of a punitive and incarceral system for children. In every part of Ireland, people remember how as children, they were threatened with specific industrial schools. The threat was made in the knowledge that these were highly unpleasant places to be. Many Irish people knew that Irish children could be and often were locked up and punished.

5. The final myth is the "bad apple" theory. This holds that in every group of people, there will always be one or two who behave reprehensibly, and that this should in no way detract from the good works undertaken by others. Furthermore, it is argued that the Catholic Church is no different than any other area of life.

While this is true, most of the religious orders in Ireland which were supposed to represent Christ and his tender love and compassion--you had men and women who represented Jesus in caring for these children, and it was under their religious care that these children were savagely beaten with extraordinary levels of cruelty. Very large numbers of the boys in particular were sexually abused and raped by male members of these Catholic orders.

It is undoubtedly the case that by no means all nuns or Brothers within these Catholic institutions were cruel to the child detainees. However, it is also true that those who did not either beat or abuse children did not stand in the way of the often sadistic excesses of their fellow religious.

In my next post, some stories of survivors from the Industrial Schools. I'll warn you ahead of time, this post will be R-rated.