THE IRONY OF watching the achievements of our brilliant Paralympians while also trying to digest the contents of the O’Toole scooping document is overwhelming.
We take pride in our elite Paralympians. The medals, the emotions, the commitment and the pure joy in celebrating their success are breathtaking. We recognise the beauty of the disability aesthetic in all its guises.
The Irish media must be credited with its excellent coverage of this event. In contemporary Ireland, it’s a given that the commentators are all people with impairments. This adds not only to the expert commentary but it makes people with impairment part of the fabric of Irish media and sport. The atmosphere captures a sense of participation and progress. The stereotyping and the questioning of capacity become redundant for at least 12 days.
Sport doesn’t hold my attention. Paralympics does because seeing people like me on television is such a rarity. As a nation, we recognise the athletes’ value and worth. Their contribution to Irish sport is part of the overall infrastructure and architecture of a collective sense of achievement. The euphoric moments are catapulted back into the reality of the history that until recently was ignored.
The report of the Scoping Inquiry into Historical Sexual Abuse in Day and Boarding Schools Run by Religious Orders by Mary O’Toole, SC, 2024, distracted me last night from the closing ceremony of the Paralympics Games 2024. My stomach is turning. As a survivor of institutional abuse myself, it is difficult to sleep, concentrate, eat and find a sense of safety and security. A sadness and a rage are bubbling in my belly.
Trying to manage both sets of emotions is a struggle. In my everyday life, the mundane rituals of enjoying a cup of tea or trying to finish a deadline have strayed. Attempting to focus or concentrate on ordinary tasks is impossible. The psychological triggering makes these few days more difficult.
Living with this kind of trauma is a battle within yourself. Debris is scattered in every aspect of my life. The aftermath of abuse is like a stain that can never be removed from your body or mind. Watching and bearing witness, remembering what happened to others. The shouting, the targeting, the coercion, the guilt at not being able to protect younger deaf and disabled children. The anxiety, depression and the knowing that casual forms of ableism lie on the continuum of discrimination and eventually to all forms of abuse.
My shame, coupled with my ineptness at not being unable to respond when friends and family ask what is wrong with me. That sense of hopelessness, powerlessness and weariness is all-engulfing, even after so many years. The righteous indigent commentators, their empathy, well-meaning at times feel misguided and egotistic.
The silence in the early days from the church is cold and cruel and demonstrates the art of avoidance. Money from redress will not alleviate my pain. It is the admission of guilt and act of contrition that is important. Loss of opportunity, loss of educational possibilities and being able to buy small things that make your life more comfortable are only one part of any redress scheme. The more important aspects are about being seen, being heard, being believed and somebody, somewhere, saying sorry for hurting you.
Details have flooded our media and airwaves during the last few days. Various high-profile ministers and commentators have issued words of condemnation and disgust. For me, there is a Déjà vu feeling. We have been in this boxing ring that often masquerades as a circus too many times. Phrases like “safeguarding” and redress get spun in a vacuous vista.
Chapter 13 of the Ryan report, May 2009, resonates. The Abuse of Deaf and Disabled Children and Adults is a chapter that doesn’t seem to have a conclusion.
The O’Toole scoping document is broader than residential schools and services for Disabled people. There is no hierarchy of status in relation to victims or survivors of what seems to be ubiquitous violence and abuse. My rationale self tells me abuse towards people with impairment is universal. Still, my Traveller ethnicity tells me there is something particularly Irish in how we diminish, disregard, humiliate, hurt and harm people.
The O’Toole scoping document is a painful reading. Two hundred- and twenty-three pages of disturbing aspects of how children, including children with learning impairments, were groomed, targeted and subjected to various forms of violence and sexual abuse.
The footnote on page six made me cry. This sentence acknowledges the reality of so many lives. For many years, Deaf and Disabled testimonies were not always believed. (6. This is reflective of a broader pattern of rates of abuse of disabled people tending to be higher than rates of abuse in the general population.). The learning from the Ryan Report 2009 is that any redress scheme should not be accusatory shaming or victim blaming. We need to be guided by a Human Rights framework and principles where respect, recognition and rights are the ethos of how we hear and respond to people’s truths.
After the weekend, the media will pull our focus to a different news story. A few of us, while we enjoyed the closing ceremony of the Paralympics, have been speculating whether religious institutions will contribute to the proposed redress scheme. This would be the proper action. It’s been a while since they showed any decency; breaths are not being held. Legacy and history tell a very shameful narrative about the relationship between church and state.
While there are some calls to remove religious orders from schools, service providers still carry the weight of religious ideologies and practices.
In this contemporary Ireland, we are bound to honour the articles of United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD). Notably, Article 16 of the UNCRPD states that States Parties shall take all appropriate legislative, administrative, social, educational and other measures to protect persons with disabilities, both within and outside the home, from all forms of exploitation, violence and abuse, including their gender-based aspects. The question of ratifying the optional protocol also needs to be acted on.
Rosaleen McDonagh is a playwright from the Traveller Community.
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