RYAN REPORT ABUSE COMMISSION OLIVIA O’LEARY DRIVE TIME RTE
May 29, 2009
Today on Drivetime (27 may 09 ) , speaking of the Ryan Report on the Commission of Inquiry into Child Abuse , Olivia O’Leary gave the victims of abuse yet another kick in the face. Having been called liars and worse for years O’Leary has joined forces with those who now want to add insult to injury. If you don’t belive me just follow the the link to the Drivetime (RTE) site and listen to the podcast yourself.
What O’Leary tells us is that she was fortunate enough to have gone to a private boarding school where the nuns were “good’. They were good to her that is. She then makes the point that the same order of nuns were also looking after poor children but the poor children were treated ‘bad’. So far so good. Now she then repeats that the nuns who looked after her (in the boarding school) were ‘good’ ….and that they are still doing good in the community etc. …….
Now all this might seem harmless enough…..but consider this. Imagine the two were on the same road… Across the road from each other…now try and create a mental picture of all this. On one side are ‘good’ nuns looking after the rich girls , on the other side there are ‘bad’ nuns looking after the poor girls…..Now ask yourself this , “How did all the ‘bad’ nuns just happen to end up on one side of the road and all the ‘good’ nuns just happen to end up on the other side of the road”?
Now you could examine it from this point of view …..and then from that point of view. You could invert the whole thing , stand on you head and take the long view. You could look at the historical aspect of it all with particular reference to socioeconomic conditions in Ireland at the time. If your a Marxist/Leninist you could apply dialectical materialism…..You could wander down to the pub , order a drink and ask your fellow drinkers to help you with the problem. You could try to solve the riddle with the fingers of your hand – 2 schools , 2 groups of nuns from the same order ..separated by 1 road etc etc. You could post the question on Boads.ie or better still Twitter -it could end up like one of those online serial things that attract millions of people all over the world trying to solve the conundrum.
Let me repeat the question in a modified form. There are 2 schools , 2 lots of kids , 1 road , 1 lot of nuns. The nuns are split into 2 groups . 1/2 go to one school and 1/2 go to the other school. 50 years later a commission finds that all the nuns in one school l are ‘bad’ and all the nuns in the other school are ‘good’. How/why does this happen ? …. I know it’s not easy. Even privately educated people get ‘confused’ when faced with this. Why not get the whole family to try to solve the problem together. Or better still if your a member of a community group you could involve your neighbours. The more the merrier , many hand make light the work and all that. Don’t try to solve it in just one sitting. Take a break from time to time. Don’t be discouraged if you can’t work it out straight away…..if a girl like Olivia can get confused then anyone can.
June 12, 2009 at 7:09 am
It is simple. The bastardy law and the morality of the Poor Law introduced this concept of poor as being financially, socially and environmentally poor fed into the age of discipline enforced by this Poor Law on the bad girls. Good girls were those who did bad but were seen to be moral and of good breeding stock.
The good girls taught by the then discipliners and moral educators then made sure the stock was not polluted in the status of good and bad girls. Girls who were below the accepted norm for the country landowner of the time.
For this go to the work of Jean Carabine, on Unmarried motherhood 1830-1990 : A genealogical Analysis. Found in Discourse as Data in the MSc in Psychology strand of Discourse Analysis which I took. M Wetherell et al, 2001 in chapter 7 adds this to the other concepts as Foucauldian as
Discourse, power and knowledge.
‘a threat to marriage and the TRADITIONAL FAMILY, irresponsible, dependent and potential ‘beggars’ as welfare subjects, …. ‘bad’ mothers as homogenous as all the same, ….
Hansard, 1993.
‘proper backgrounds@? Do all we can to encourage Proper family stability, because it is the bedrock of the nation.
Quote of ‘loving relationships’ as the fostering of subservience and patriarchal and matriarchal guidelines in my view are what this debate is about.
Therefore, enforced actions of nuns then and perhaps now on the sublimation of feminism as to gender and those who are the ‘good’ prospects of the nation as breeders of good stock; socially acceptable in the arts and portrayal, and having a value.
A value of quality in the marriage market where stock as female stock is sought for those in socially middle class as having money and status of the breadwinner as payer of the fees to the convent, church or that social mix financial and social influencers who put the most watched by the poor on the silver plate where Jesus stands invisible to them. A poor girl is a bad girl then and now if she has no social standing of her benefactor.
That is why two sides of good and bad and one set of discipliners who use the cross as a whip for the immoral urchin in contrast to the funded and socially enchanting family unit of value.
December 13, 2010 at 10:09 am
Of course they knew.
And as for ‘good’ schools, that’s a load of shite.
I went to 4 elite Boarding Schools, and one elite Reformatory…
Killeshee Convent,Kildare 65/66
Willow Park prep,Black ROck 66/70
Colaiste Na Rinne, Dungarvan 70/71
Mount Mellary 72/72
Colastie na Iosgan, Bally Vourney 72/77
All were typified by overt violence, psychological abuse, public humiliation, I was seriously sexually abused in Willow Park nd beatnen regularily, phsyically assaulted in Rinne and Mount Mellary and Bally Vourney.
I had no real family, just rich dysfucntional aunts… they were nutters too…
I was bred for ‘leadership’…. and I refuse the yoke so got the ‘treatment’….
Unable to tell any family… they just weren’t there… I was on my own…. i supposed what saved me from truly horrendous abuse that others have survived, just, is the FEES my rich aunts were paying…
Point is : all the Government and Civil Service over the age of 50 either were abused or witnessed it… THEY KNEW before the ‘scandal’ inthe 90s…. NONE of the Irish Government talk about their childhoods….
They are all in willful denial, and that makes them VERY DANGEROUS INDEED… as we see…
I write lots about this, about Power Relationships and the poisoning of life that they are…
May 11, 2011 at 10:25 am
Still working on this problem so I am. What a conundrum! Let’s hope it never turns up on the Leaving Cert. Recently I was listening to the radio and two nuns were speaking. Needless to say the Ryan Report got a mention … one of the nuns may just have unwittingly solved the above conundrum; she actually said the Ryan Report was … unbelievable!