Our abuse stories need to be taught, not hidden away
Survivor of cruel industrial school condemns plan to seal testimonies
AN INDUSTRIAL school survivor says the Government should put her story on the school curriculum, instead of locking away the victims’ testimonies for 75 years.
Carmel McDonnell Byrne, who was at Goldenbridge Industrial school, says planned legislation to ‘seal’ the testimonies of thousands of people incarcerated in such institutions, is only to protect Church and State.
She says that her experience – and that of thousands of other survivors – should be taught in schools so that ‘no one ever forgets’. The 64year-old, who says that while she was in Goldenbridge she regularly had to get drinking water from a toilet cistern, said the Government has a duty to learn from its mistakes.
‘The thing about being in a school like that is the shame. The shame that never goes away for some people, maybe most people,’ she told the Irish Mail on Sunday.
‘And here comes the Government saying: “You know what? We’re going to try silence you again.”
‘How do you think that makes us feel? What kind of message does it send out: that we’re still not worthy?
Ms McDonnell Byrne was speaking about the Retention of Records Bill, which proposes to seal records from the Ryan report into child abuse and the Residential Institution Redress Board.
The records and testimonies would be kept locked in the National Archives for 75 years.
The Bill was approved by Cabinet in February and is now before the Oireachtas Committee on Education, which heard submissions from survivors this week. All opposed the legislation.
The Government said the records will be sealed to ‘respect the original confidentiality provisions of the commission and the redress board’.
But Ms McDonnell Byrne says that’s a whitewash and the Bill is only being proposed to protect Church and State.
Speaking from the Christine Buckley Centre in Dublin, which provides support to people who suffered industrial school abuse, Ms McDonnell Byrne said survivors were ‘heartbroken’ by the idea there stories would be ‘banished to the back of closet’.
‘You should see the people in the centre today,’ she said. ‘They come here to attend classes but this week, nobody can do anything because all they want to do is talk about what’s happening.
‘These are our stories. They belong to us. They mustn’t be taken away from us. We have the right to be heard and a right for our stories to be heard.’
She was put in St Vincent’s Industrial school at Goldenbridge in 1965 after her mother walked out on a family of eight children, and she stayed there for seven years.
Because she was ‘a bed wetter’, she wasn’t allowed to drink water after a certain hour in the day and had to go to the toilet cistern when she was thirsty.
For seven years, she could never go to the toilet without permission. She was once so hungry that she swallowed rosary beads.
She says it took years of counselling to get over the shame. Now she and others like her are been made to feel shame again, she says.
‘Why are we being treated differently? This has never happened to any other group of people, that their stories were taken and locked up for 75 years.’
Ms McDonnell Byrne says that survivors deserve a right to copies of their testimony should they want them.
She also says that survivors’ records should be on display in a museum alongside items from industrial schools, such as pliers used for making rosary beads and samples of clothing.
Dr Mary Lodato, another survivor of institutional abuse who now works as a researcher, told the Oireachtas committee that survivors and their relatives should have immediate unrestricted access to their own files.
Access to them could have as much benefit as therapy, she said.
The Oireachtas committee has deferred a decision on the legislation until it gets a response from Education Minister Joe McHugh on the concerns raised by survivors and legal experts.
‘We have a right for our stories to be heard’