Dark Secrets of Childhood by Powell Fred Scanlon Margaret

Author:Powell, Fred, Scanlon, Margaret [Powell, Fred, Scanlon, Margaret]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, Social Work
ISBN: 9781447317883
Google: FZ_qCQAAQBAJ
Publisher: Policy Press
Published: 2015-05-06T04:29:28+00:00

Moral monopoly and institutional child abuse

The President of Ireland, Michael D. Higgins, observed in reference to the historic abuse of children in Irish industrial and reformatory schools: ‘There is evidence of institutional collusion that was deep, continuous and sinister in terms of its relations between church and state.1 Tom Inglis (1998: 45), in his influential book Moral Monopoly: the Catholic Church in Modern Irish State, asserts the church’s control of social services was crucial to the development of the church’s moral monopoly. This was the basis of its social power. In Suffer the Little Children, Mary Raftery and Eoin O’Sullivan convincingly argue that government capitation payments (based on a fee per child) and the ruthless exploitation of child labour was at the core of an essentially commercialised system of institutional child care (Raftery and O’Sullivan, 1999). Moral monopoly, in their view, produced economic rewards for the Catholic Church. The book graphically describes brutal work regimes on adjoining farms where starving boys competed with the animals for food. Young girls looked after infants, made rosary beads and sewed priest vestments on empty stomachs. There was virtually no education and training in the industrial and reformatory school system, which was essentially a labour camp regime (Raftery and O’Sullivan, 1999: 155). Yet it was legitimated by a charity myth that represented the clergy as the benevolent carers of deprived children. Myth and reality were sharply at odds as Raftery and O’Sullivan (1999: 15) forcefully point out: ‘the reality is that the Catholic Church and the state in partnership made certain choices, not so much out of ignorance but more for reasons of financial expediency. The institutional model for the processing of children into adulthood by religious orders was undoubtedly the cheapest option available’. For the state, there were clear financial gains.

One survivor described the system graphically: ‘We always saw it as a prison, never a school. I used to call it Little Auschwitz’ (Raftery and O’Sullivan, 1999: 46). Another survivor called Barney observed, in relation to Artane Industrial School, that ‘the thing that reminds me of it is a film like Schindler’s List. It really was like a concentration camp for children’. He concluded:

Children are a country’s most precious asset. But not in Ireland. WE were treated like we were unwanted, something to be hidden, to be ashamed of. There’s so much shame, not just shame of a person who was raped, but shame of a nation that allowed it to happen. It made Ireland into the child molestation capital of the world. Shame on us. (Raftery and O’Sullivan, 1999: 274)

Within the reformatory and industrial school system, exploitation of child labour, corporal punishment and sexual abuse created regimes based on terror.

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