TAOISEACH SIMON HARRIS has described the testimony given by people who were victims of violence in school in an RTÉ documentary that aired last night as “harrowing”.
Harris commended “all of those who told their stories” and said he is expecting an update on the establishment of a commission of investigation into historical clerical sex abuse.
As well as featuring interviews with victims, the documentary also addressed the lack of documented reports of abuse allegations kept by the Department of Education.
“The publication of the scoping report, and the painful stories that have been told since, have exposed a culture of violence, of calculated cruelty and the abuse of power that victimised and terrorised generations of Irish children who still bear the wounds and have for all of their lives,” the Taoiseach said.
“It is an unbearable burden which we must help lift,” he said.
Harris said he would also “reflect” on a request from survivors that the inquiry be expanded.
“Their voices cannot, and must not, be ignored or unheard,” he said, adding that “this process cannot be rushed because it has to be right, and it has to respect the wishes of the victims who came forward”.
“Their voices which were silenced as defenceless children, even those whose parents tried to stand up against the barrage of brutality, are being heard and their bravery in reliving such terrible memories is testament to a national trauma which must be acknowledged.”
During the documentary, one victim, Peter Kane, said that when he was 12, “every day, there was an element of fear going in.
“He could kick off for the simplest of reasons…on this particular morning, the Brother called me up, ‘get up here’ he says, and the first thing I got was a couple of clatters around the head, my face, I think maybe six or 12 slaps I got off him with a leather strap.”
Poet and author Theo Dorgan described his experience as a student in Cork.
“When the door closes, and you are in a confined environment, it’s predator and prey – if you looked at a teacher the wrong way, you would get a slap. We had a gradation of soft slaps, to vicious slaps…”
His lifelong friend and schoolmate, film festival co-director Mick Hannigan said: “It was not so much a daily occurrence, but an hourly occurrence, class after class. If you got a sum wrong, if you got some difficult Irish poem wrong, then you were punished.”
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