Comments on: Criminal responsibility

By: Richard

Richard — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 22:41:32 +0000

HI Kate Lacey. just seen your message first time to visit site.I was in st kyrans in rathdrum from 1964-1975 i would have being only around 5 at the time you mentioned but i do remember at least one death of a boy around that age. do you know if he had a nickname, i remember a boy nicknamed fish i think thats what it was anyway, the word in the place that time was he fell of a wall, but even as kids we had our suspitions, i,m not sure if it's the same boy

By: mark

mark — Thu, 25 Aug 2011 20:54:14 +0000

i was also in laurences 86-87 robbed by anthony dowling ………..

By: Patrick Rattigan

Patrick Rattigan — Tue, 02 Aug 2011 10:31:41 +0000

I was also an 8 year old who was in residential care at Termonbacca boys home. After my mum and dad split up, my mum couldn't cope on her own. As a result, I was taken into care of the nuns in Derry, Northern Ireland. My introduction to the kind nuns of Derry was to be given a hiding by one of the nuns after my mother had left, because I was crying for my mother. I have an aversion to bread and milk, which was called googy bread. During one breakfast morning, I was given a bowl of this disgusting mixture of bread and milk to eat for breakfast. Despite telling the nun that I didn't like it, I was forced to eat it. Consequently, I vomited back into the bowl. The nun then tried to force me to eat my own vomit. I was threatened with all sorts of violence if I didn't comply to her wishes. Any little misdemeanours were severely punished. When we were sent to bed, I was caught talking after the lights went out. I was taken out and locked in a little tool shed in the playground over night. On the way to school, I got my finger caught in a gate, causing me to recieve serious injury to my little finger i.e: the top of my finger was hanging off. Because I was sobbing in pain, I was threatened by the nun in charge of us, if I didn't stop crying, she would give me something to cry about. When I got to school, one of the teachers took me to the hospital to recieve treatment. Not only did I recieve my first holy communion, but I recieved my first introduction to sexual abuse by the ever so concerned priest, who was more concerned about my body than my soul.

By: Darren

Darren — Mon, 18 Jul 2011 13:16:04 +0000

hi everybody, i was in St Laurences from 84 to 85.
i hate the bastards there i was sent there like most people by the Health board,
i have being looking for anyone who suffered at the hands of Br Anthony Dowling.
One Evil Sadistic git.
i don't know if anyone can help me get more information on him, i need to know i am not the only
one to suffer at his hands
i hope someone in here can help,
PLEASE….
Thanks everyone

By: john kehoe

john kehoe — Tue, 21 Jun 2011 23:13:16 +0000

hi
i was head boy at ferryhouse from 1952-1956.i would like to hear from boys that was there then.the priest was father spellman and brother connolly.

By: r , nugent

r , nugent — Tue, 21 Jun 2011 14:44:20 +0000

Hi does any one out there know were the records for St Patricks Kilkenny are ,for 1905 to 1913 , ?
Thank you
Bob,

By: maria

maria — Mon, 16 May 2011 04:33:53 +0000

Wake up people ! The church have got away lightly, we lost lives, futures, hopes and dreams. My 4 sisters and I were sent to dundrum industrial school because our parents split up and our mum left so the church came to our house in rural ireland and took us away from our father. They took me and my 4 sisters, I was 6 years o. My sister who was 1 year older that me died 2 years later aged 8 in 1972 from a cancer that could have been cured from with early detection but the nuns ignored our pleas for a doctor. She would wake at nite in the dorm with massive nosebleeds and excruicating pains in her legs and the nuns (2 in particular) would make her walk and say its only growing pains. My parents would try to visit but they would keep them waiting and say we were at a retreat or on a day trip. My father went to court 5 times to try and get us out of there but to no avail. 2 of my sisters were raped by visiting priests and the day of the redress board hearing was a joke. The church had the best barristers in Ireland and it was the most traumatic day of our lives and for what ? 14000 euro !!! I wish I had been stronger to refuse it and go to the next stage but Im the one living with the nightmares and having to deal with the abuse and I wasnt strong enough but I would urge anyone in the same postion find the strength to stand up to these people, I wish I had.
Im posting this for "S" my angel, miss you loads your little sister xx

By: John O'Driscoll

John O'Driscoll — Wed, 20 Apr 2011 17:29:09 +0000

Of course there were good people in the religious orders. Of course religious/clergy were responsible for 'only' 3% of all child abuse (the figure we are constantly reminded about). Of course many's and many's a priest and nun gave their lives to helping the most wretched and most poor. That's not the issue. The fact is that the RCC, an institution that for damn near 1500 years has held Herself forth as being the ONLY way to 'salvation' for Mankind; as being the ONLY moral framework in which Man may find for Himself the approval of God; as being the ONLY way, truth and light; (and has made countless billions and trillions of whatever currency unit you like out of it mar dhea) has been comprehensively exposed as covering up, facilitating, and acquiescing in the ongoing rape and torture of little children for decades if not centuries. You need hardly read Daniel to know that no matter whether they be made of gold or bronze or silver, when 'gods' or figures of seeming irresistible might (which is the same thing) are shown to have feet of clay, they must fall and be shattered. If I was the RCC I reckon what I'd do would be this: strip away every ounce every jot and tittle of pomp and circumstance of finery, of grandeur, of arrogance, of eminence, of high and mightiness from the Catholic ritual and from the churches and from the Vatican and from the robes of the bishops the prelates the cardinals and the popes; from the altars, from the choirs, from the sanctum sanctorums. And I would get back to the Upper Room, where the apostles and disciples cowered in fear and penury; afraid to go out for terror of death and worse. I would go back to the Desert Fathers. I would go back to the humble carpenter nailed to a tree, and I would say MEA CULPA MEA MAXIMA CULPA and I would pour ashes on my head and rend my poor garments and beat my breast and prostrate myself before the World Profane and the Heavens above and I would roll in the dirt like the madmen of Gadarene and I would not so much as put a single spangle or bit of colour or note of music on my robes or in my churches until I felt that somehow I had made restitution. And I would focus simply and solely upon the Eucharist and the simple words of the Last Supper…Do This In Memory Of Me. Rice in the bowl, water in the pail, as a great Zen master, Sekida, once advised his students to consider, and nothing else. Rice in the bowl, water in the pail. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. All else should be cast aside, all the papal bullshit all the canon law all of it, OUT. Until such time as by some sign or other the RCC might know that She had somehow, miraculously, earned that which She has arrogated to Herself the sole and exclusive franchise for distribution on this earth: Forgiveness. That's what I'd do. But sure I nearly never get to mass so what the fuck am I saying all this for anyway.

By: John O'Driscoll

John O'Driscoll — Wed, 20 Apr 2011 16:39:25 +0000

Notice how many kids were sent to Omelas because of the reason ''Father convicted for sexual offences against daughter''. 0 males and 5 girls. Was it those girls who were raped/abused? And were they sentenced to these Irish Sachsenhausens as a ''punishment'' for being raped/abused? Remember this was at a time when even the Commissioner of the Guards, Eoin O'Duffy, remarked that the number of children being raped in Ireland was ''alarming''. And yet we see only FIVE girls whose families included a known rapist, apparently. And no boys. And yet Vincent Browne estimates (can't remember how but his sources were good) that 150,000 Irish people alive today or rather existing today were abused. My dad's experience as a young guard of the power of the preeshteens to protect the child rapist is obviously not an isolated incident. How many of them saints were martyred btw? I know Saint Vincent was, in the usual graphic and bloodthirsty fashion (did some early Christian Tarantino compile these so-called ''Lives'' of Saints?) and Saint Conleth was reputed to have been torn to bits by wolves. St. Joseph wasn't, to my knowledge. Nor was St. Patrick altho' he had to go through kidnapping imprisonment enslavement and suckling on some big smelly hairy pagan's nipples or maybe he refused to but sounds like a scene from 'Jackass' anyway. Point I'm making is that all these Christian saints or most of them met appalling ends allegedly and the more grisly tortured and disgusting their ends the more they were venerated. So does that have a tie-in with the way we were abused so appallingly as kids, physically emotionally sexually many of us, by the Murder Machine, the spectacular failure of Christ and Caesar and their mailed fist in a not-so velvet glove? I wonder. Perhaps we should let the Buddhists or some more civilised religion take over our schools given this ''State'' is no longer worthy of the name nor yet capable of paying for a tuppenny ride on a wet Saturday nite never mind paying for the education of Irish childer?

By: Francis Sweeney

Francis Sweeney — Wed, 20 Apr 2011 13:40:25 +0000

I talked with Jim Vallery.He called me . He is everything that he says he is.He is the real deal. UNlike myself and I dare say,many others.Jim is a very spiritual person.He credits God and his wife for his sucessful journey through life.There is no need to bash him.He is what he is.He clearly did not suffer as others did and he bases hiw views on his own life experience.
For me,there is no backing down.Jim thought Fr Spellman was a wonderful guy. I thought that he was a monster. I know that because I was badly beaten by him.He was showing off in front of our very promiscious school nurse.If you were at Upton betwen 1960-1966 you will know her and if you ever get to Bandon Police station look up Sgt Crowley and tell him a guy from California said to say hello and tell him I said it is ok to let you look up the police report I filed with him long before there was compensation.
Bock,thanks for the forum and the best of everything to all of the "past pupils" I heard that lovely turn of phrase at Passage West a few years back.