Washington: the 'blackest name' in America

George Washington AP – FILE - This undated picture shows Gilbert Stuart's portrait of George Washington.

By JESSE WASHINGTON, AP National Writer Jesse Washington, AP National Writer – Mon Feb 21, 8:58 am ET

George Washington's name is inseparable from America, and not only from the nation's history. It identifies countless streets, buildings, mountains, bridges, monuments, cities — and people.

In a puzzling twist, most of these people are black. The 2000 U.S. Census counted 163,036 people with the surname Washington. Ninety percent of them were African-American, a far higher black percentage than for any other common name.

The story of how Washington became the "blackest name" begins with slavery and takes a sharp turn after the Civil War, when all blacks were allowed the dignity of a surname.

Even before Emancipation, many enslaved black people chose their own surnames to establish their identities. Afterward, some historians theorize, large numbers of blacks chose the name Washington in the process of asserting their freedom.

Today there are black Washingtons, like this writer, who are often identified as African-American by people they have never met. There are white Washingtons who are sometimes misidentified and have felt discrimination. There are Washingtons of both races who view the name as a special — if complicated — gift.

And there remains the presence of George, born 279 years ago on Feb. 22, whose complex relationship with slavery echoes in the blackness of his name today.

___

George Washington's great-grandfather, John, arrived in Virginia from England in 1656. John married the daughter of a wealthy man and eventually owned more than 5,000 acres, according to the new biography "Washington: A Life," by Ron Chernow.

Along with land, George inherited 10 human beings from his father. He gained more through his marriage to a wealthy widow, and purchased still more enslaved blacks to work the lands he aggressively amassed. But over the decades, as he recognized slavery's contradiction with the freedoms of the new nation, Washington grew opposed to human bondage.

Yet "slaves were the basis of his fortune," and he would not part with them, Chernow said in an interview.

Washington was not a harsh slaveowner by the standards of the time. He provided good food and medical care. He recognized marriages and refused to sell off individual family members. Later in life he resolved not to purchase any more black people.

But he also worked his slaves quite hard, and under difficult conditions. As president, he shuttled them between his Philadelphia residence and Virginia estate to evade a law that freed any slave residing in Pennsylvania for six months.

While in Philadelphia, Oney Judge, Martha Washington's maid, moved about the city and met many free blacks. Upon learning Martha was planning one day to give her to an ill-tempered granddaughter, Judge disappeared.

According to Chernow's book, Washington abused his presidential powers and asked the Treasury Department to kidnap Judge from her new life in New Hampshire. The plot was unsuccessful.

"Washington was leading this schizoid life," Chernow said in the interview. "In theory and on paper he was opposed to slavery, but he was still zealously tracking and seeking to recover his slaves who escaped."

In his final years on his Mount Vernon plantation, Washington said that "nothing but the rooting out of slavery can perpetuate the existence of our union."

This led to extraordinary instructions in his will that all 124 of his slaves should be freed after the death of his wife. The only exception was the slave who was at his side for the entire Revolutionary War, who was freed immediately. Washington also ordered that the younger black people be educated or taught a trade, and he provided a fund to care for the sick or aged.

"This is a man who travels an immense distance," Chernow said.

In contrast with other Founding Fathers, Chernow said, Washington's will indicates "that he did have a vision of a future biracial society."

Twelve American presidents were slaveowners. Of the eight presidents who owned slaves while in office, Washington is the only one who set all of them free.___

It's a myth that most enslaved blacks bore the last name of their owner. Only a handful of George Washington's hundreds of slaves did, for example, and he recorded most as having just a first name, says Mary Thompson, the historian at Mount Vernon.

Still, historian Henry Wiencek says many enslaved blacks had surnames that went unrecorded or were kept secret. Some chose names as a mark of community identity, he says, and that community could be the plantation of a current or recent owner.

"Keep in mind that after the Civil War, many of the big planters continued to be extremely powerful figures in their regions, so there was an advantage for a freed person to keep a link to a leading white family," says Wiencek, author of "An Imperfect God: George Washington, His Slaves, and the Creation of America."

Sometimes blacks used the surname of the owner of their oldest known ancestor as a way to maintain their identity. Melvin Patrick Ely, a College of William and Mary professor who studies the history of blacks in the South, says some West African cultures placed high value on ancestral villages, and the American equivalent was the plantation where one's ancestors had toiled.

Last names also could have been plucked out of thin air. Booker T. Washington, one of the most famous blacks of the post-slavery period, apparently had two of those.

He was a boy when Emancipation freed him from a Virginia plantation. After enrolling in school, he noticed other children had last names, while the only thing he had ever been called was Booker.

"So, when the teacher asked me what my full name was, I calmly told him, `Booker Washington,'" he wrote in his autobiography, "Up from Slavery." Later in life, he found out that his mother had named him "Booker Taliaferro" at birth, so he added a middle name.

He gives no indication why the name Washington popped into his head. But George Washington, dead for only 60-odd years, had immense fame and respect at the time. His will had been widely published in pamphlet form, and it was well known that he had freed his slaves, Thompson says.

Did enslaved people feel inspired by Washington and take his name in tribute, or were they seeking some benefits from the association? Did newly freed people take the name as a mark of devotion to their country?

"We just don't know," Weincek says.

But the connection is too strong for some to ignore.

"There was a lot more consciousness and pride in American history among African-Americans and enslaved African-Americans than a lot of people give them credit for. They had a very strong sense of politics and history," says Adam Goodheart, a professor at Washington College and author of the forthcoming "1861: Civil War Awakening."

"They were thinking about how they could be Americans," Goodheart says. "That they would embrace the name of this person who was an imperfect hero shows there was a certain understanding of this country as an imperfect place, an imperfect experiment, and a willingness to embrace that tradition of liberty with all its contradictions."

Many black people took new names after the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, and the black power movement, says Ira Berlin, a University of Maryland history professor who has written books on the history of African-Americans.

"Names are this central way we think about ourselves," Berlin says. "Whenever we have these kinds of emancipatory moments, suddenly people can reinvent themselves, rethink themselves new, distinguish themselves from a past where they were denigrated and abused. New names are one of the ways they do it."

But for black people who chose the name Washington, it's rarely certain precisely why.

"It's an assumption that the surname is tied to George," says Tony Burroughs, an expert on black genealogy, who says 82 to 94 percent of all Washingtons listed in the 1880 to 1930 censuses were black.

"There is no direct evidence," he says. "As far as I'm concerned it's a coincidence."

___

Coincidence or not, today the numbers are equally stark. Washington was listed 138th when the Census Bureau published a list of the 1,000 most common American surnames from the 2000 survey, along with ethnic data. The project was not repeated in 2010.

Ninety percent of those Washingtons, numbering 146,520, were black. Only five percent, or 8,813, were white. Three percent were two or more races, 1 percent were Hispanic, and 1 percent were Asian or Pacific Islander.

Jefferson was the second-blackest name, at 75 percent African-American. There were only 16,070 Lincolns, and that number was only 14 percent black.

Jackson was 53 percent black. Williams was the 16th-blackest name, at 46 percent. But there were 1,534,042 total Williamses, including 716,704 black ones — so there were more blacks named Williams than anything else.

(The name Black was 68 percent white, meaning there were far more white Blacks than black Blacks. The name White, meanwhile, was 19 percent black.)

Many present-day Washingtons are surprised to learn their name is not 100 percent black.

"Growing up, I just knew that only black people had my last name," says Shannon Washington of New York City. Like many others, she has never met a white Washington.

She has no negative feelings about her name: "It's a reflection of how far we've come more than anything. I most likely come from a family of slaves who were given or chose this name."

As the creator of advertisements, events and http://www.parlourmagazine.com, she works with many Europeans, who often ask how she got her name. She plans on keeping it when she gets married, and likens her attachment to that of some black people for racist memorabilia like mammy dolls and Jim Crow signs.

"I don't exactly love it," she says of her name, "But I have to respect it."

Marcus Washington never thought much about his name as one of the few black people working in the overwhelmingly white William Morris talent agency. That changed after he filed a $25 million lawsuit in December accusing William Morris of racial discrimination.

"I'm sure that for some people there, my name triggered the thought that I was African-American, and automatically triggered biases that resulted in me not being given a fair shot," he says.

One 2004 study conducted by researchers at the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business found that job applicants with names that sound white receive 50 percent more callbacks than applicants with "black" names.

The study responded to real employment ads with more than 5,000 fictitious resumes. Half the resumes were assigned names like Emily Walsh; the other half got names like Lakisha Washington. After calculating for the difference in resume quality, the study concluded that "a white name yields as many more callbacks as an additional eight years of experience on a resume."

But what about those 8,813 white Washingtons? What is their experience?

For the family of 85-year-old Larry Washington, who traces his family tree back to England in the 1700s, the experience has changed over the years. (He says he is not related to George, who had no children.)

When he moved to New Jersey in 1962 to teach at a college there, Larry Washington's family tried to scout housing over the phone, but nothing was ever available. "When we showed up, there were plenty of houses," he recalls. After that, he taught his six children to always apply in person.

Over the years, his name made him sensitive to racism: "We just simply recognized these things, and had full sympathy with the people who were really black and getting the real treatment."

His son Paul, who in the 1970s worked for a temporary agency in Long Island, NY, says people in the offices where he was assigned always betrayed their relief when he turned out to be white. He experienced housing discrimination into the `80s, but says that no longer happens.

He is now a geology professor who has lived in ten states from Louisiana to Pennsylvania. Sometimes he wonders if his name helps him get interviews at colleges looking to recruit a rare black geologist, and if it hurts him when the college discovers that he is white.

Paul's children have had much different experiences — like his 25-year-old daughter, an English professor who teaches foreign students, whose new pupils are always amazed to meet someone with "the ultimate American name."

When Paul's brother Larry Jr. was recently traveling through customs in Japan, the inspector looked at his passport and said, "Oh, Mr. Washington!"

"His politeness and the number of times he bowed clearly indicated that he thought I was the member of a very important family," Larry Jr. recalls.

His sister Ida, a veterinarian who lives in Seattle, says she has never experienced discrimination due to her name as an adult. She is married, but uses Washington as her professional name.

"It's very distinctive. I use it with a certain amount of pride," she says.

Back in high school, she became fascinated with black history. "I think my name has made me much more aware of what African-American folks struggle with. I feel in tune with them."

Perhaps her sentiments bring the name full circle — from blacks making a connection to the greatest white Washington to a white person choosing a name associated with blackness.

"I find it touching that freed blacks wanted to identify with the American tradition and the American dream," says Chernow, the biographer. "It makes a powerful statement."

"I have to think," he says, "that George Washington would be very pleased that so many black people have adopted his name."

___

Jesse Washington covers race and ethnicity for The Associated Press. He is reachable at jwashington(at)ap.org or http://www.twitter.com/jessewashington.

___

On the Web:

Census surname study: http://www.census.gov/genealogy/www/data/2000surnames/index.html

Irish Catholic Church Sexual Abuse Reports of Children in Ireland--2009

Irish Catholic Church Sexual Abuse Reports of Children in Ireland--2009 [Neale Sourna: And yes this has happened with that church's sanctioning all over the world; including Canada, US, Africa, Mexico, Central and South America, everywhere it would seem. Go Inquisition, it lives on.]

Murphy Report
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Murphy Report is the result of the public inquiries conducted by the Republic of Ireland into the sexual abuse scandal in Dublin archdiocese. It was released a few months after the Ryan Report, the report of the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse chaired by Seán Ryan, a similar inquiry which dealt with abuses in industrial schools controlled by Catholic religious orders.

The report was publicly released on 26 November 2009.[1] As charted by the Murphy commission, the complaints of parents and their children were ignored and other families placed in immediate danger as prelates from John Charles McQuaid onwards suppressed scandals and took refuge in canon law to protect offenders at the expense of innocent children. The vast majority of uninvolved priests turned a blind eye.
Contents
[hide]

* 1 Status of the Garda investigation
* 2 Release of the report in November 2009
* 3 Public reactions
* 4 See also
* 5 References
* 6 External links

MORE Murphy Report


Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse (published 20 May 2009)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse (CICA) is one of a range of measures introduced by the Irish Government to investigate the extent and effects of abuse on children from 1936 onwards. It is commonly known in Ireland as the Ryan Commission (previously "the Laffoy Commission"), after its chair, Justice Seán Ryan. Judge Laffoy resigned on 2 September 2003 due to a departmental review on costs and resources. She felt that: "...the cumulative effect of those factors effectively negatived the guarantee of independence conferred on the Commission and militated against it being able to perform its statutory functions." The Commission's work started in 1999 and it published its public report, commonly referred to as the Ryan report, on 20 May 2009.

The Commission's remit was to investigate all forms of child abuse in Irish institutions for children, the majority of allegations it investigated related to the system of sixty residential "Reformatory and Industrial Schools" operated by Catholic Church orders, funded and supervised by the Irish Department of Education. ,[1]

The Commission's report said testimony had demonstrated beyond a doubt that the entire system treated children more like prison inmates and slaves than people with legal rights and human potential, that some religious officials encouraged ritual beatings and consistently shielded their orders amid a "culture of self-serving secrecy", and that government inspectors failed to stop the abuses.[2]

Among the more extreme allegations of abuse were, beatings and rapes, subjected to naked beatings in public, forced into oral sex and even subjected to beatings after failed rape attempts by brothers[church monks].[3, The Irish Times] The abuse has been described by some as Ireland's Holocaust.[4][5] The abuse was said to be "endemic" in the institutions that dealt with boys.[6] The UK based Guardian newspaper, described the abuse as "the stuff of nightmares", citing the adjectives used in the report as being particularly chilling: "systemic, pervasive, chronic, excessive, arbitrary, endemic".[7]

The Report's conclusions section (Chapter 6) supports the overall tenor of the accusations without exception.[8] However, the Commission's recommendations were restricted in scope by two headings imposed by the Irish government, and therefore do not include calls for the prosecution or sanction of any of the parties involved.[9]

Contents

* 1 Background
* 2 Continuance by Irish Free State
* 3 Reform starts in the 1960s
* 4 The CICA legislation, 1999-2000
* 5 Establishment and functions
* 6 Public report
o 6.1 Conclusions
o 6.2 Limits of Scope
o 6.3 Allegations and their extent
* 7 Reactions to the report
o 7.1 Irish reaction
o 7.2 Westminster controversy
o 7.3 International reaction
* 8 2002 Compensation deal and the question of blame
* 9 See also
* 10 References
* 11 External links
* 12 Other published sources

MORE: Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse (published 20 May 2009)

The Irish Times - Saturday, May 23, 2009
The abused - in their own words
In this section »

* Brothers, priests and nuns were our siblings, uncles, aunts
* Shocking to think that nobody spoke out about abuse
* Government may need more up-to-date data
* Fianna Fáil hopes counter-attack can avert disaster
* European elections should focus on policies, not personalities
* This week they said

The voices of the abused emerge raw and bleak from pages 113 to 119 of Volume V of the Report of the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse . They told their stories to an interviewing team. In an introductory note to the section, the team acknowledged their courage: “We were deeply moved, inspired and humbled by our contact with you. Although we spent only a few hours with you, meeting you and listening to your stories was a moving and enriching experience for all of us. We felt privileged and honoured that you trusted us with such intensely personal and private experiences. . .” Here are sample extracts – unedited – of what the team heard.

Statements of “worst thing” that happened to participants while living in an institution

– Severe physical and sexual abuse.

– Stripped naked by a nun and beaten with a stick and given no supper and humiliated.

– After running away having my hair cut off to a very short length and was made to stand naked to be beaten by nun in front of other people.

– At 6 I was raped by nun and at 10 I was hit with a poker on head by nun.

– When I told nuns about being molested by ambulance driver, I was stripped naked and whipped by four nuns to “get the devil out of you”.

– Sexual and physical abuse, no education, and not enough food.

– Forced oral sex and beatings.

– A brother tried to rape me but did not succeed, so I was beaten instead.

– Taken from bed and made to walk around naked with other boys whilst brothers used their canes and flicked at their penis.

– Tied to a cross and raped whilst others masturbated at the side.

Severe physical abuse

– I was polishing the floor and a nun placed her foot on my back so I was pushed to the floor. I was locked in a dark room.

– Having to empty the toilets and being lifted off the ground by my sideburns.

– Put in bath of Jeyes fluid with three others.

– They used to make my sisters beat me.

– Having my head submerged in dirty water in the laundry repeatedly by a nun.

Being beaten regularly

– Physical abuse and segregation from other children for no reason.

– A severe beating by two nuns for a trivial misdemeanour until I was bleeding.

– Being beaten for wetting the bed and allocated to do worst work like cleaning potties and minding children

– Tied to a bed and physically abused by three carers.

– I was beaten and hospitalised by the head brother and not allowed to go to my father’s funeral in case my bruises were seen; also the head brother threatened to kill me.

– Being accused of sexually interfering with other boys and being beaten until made to write down the names of boys I had touched. In the end I wrote down two names to stop the torture.

– They made me change my surname and beat me until I accepted it. They took my identity from me. The put me through mental torture which is still with me now. They separated me from my sister and sent her to another institution.

– Being physically beaten by nuns and referred to as a number. My head was pushed under water in the bath. The nuns threw food into a group of children and I would have to struggle to get some food.

– Being told at 6.30pm on way to bed that I would be beaten next morning at 6.30am. It was torture waiting for it.

– Being stripped and thrown into nettles and sleeping with pigs for a week.

– I was left hanging out of a window for hours with finger stuck in it, and was guaranteed to be beaten every day.

– Having my hair cut off in spite and being beaten on the floor.

– Being locked in a furnace room and left, bitten by rats, found by coal delivery man, removed, washed in cold water, bites cleaned and then put back there.

– Being punished when tired and no one listening to me about the abuse.

– Starving and beatings like a concentration camp. There were so many worst things. Every day was a nightmare.

– My hair was cut short as punishment and I was beaten very badly in front of everyone when I came home late.

– We were all lined up naked and slapped in the face a lot. We all had to drink water from toilets and were all washed in same dirty bath water.

– Receiving a severe beatings and witnessing my younger brother returning from a severe beating.

– Lashing; name calling (the name “good for nothing” is still with me today); starving while watching pets being fed.

– Being beaten until knocked out and my head split. Having my finger placed in boiling water until all feeling was lost; the finger swelled up, skin wore away, and the nail fell off.

– Being thrown and ducked in scalding hot baths; being taken to hospital and anaesthetised with ether when getting my tonsils out. I have awful memories of feeling like being smothered with ether, similar to being ducked in the bath; I came as near death as you can imagine.

– Being whipped and humiliated in front of the other children.

– Being abused; once my tongue was almost cut out.

– Constant beatings; I was forced to sit on potty until my rectal muscle popped out.

– Beaten by nuns with cat-o-nine-tails that left deep cuts.

– Beaten and scarred with hurley.

– Kicked down the stairs.

– Being hit on my back by a brother and sustaining a lifelong injury.

– I was beaten in the shower naked, and not allowed to say goodbye when leaving.

– Whipping.

– Beaten until I had bones broken.

– Being stripped and flogged and locked in room for 2-3 weeks.

– Beaten.

Severe sexual abuse

– Sexual abuse – molested at night.

– Oral and anal sexual abuse on one occasion.

– Molested and masturbation.

– Rape.

– Sexual abuse and made to feel so insecure.

– Sexual abuse, starvation and secrecy in an institution that wasn’t fit for habitation.

– Gang rape.

– Sexually molested by a priest visiting the institution on 6-8 occasions.

– Sexual abuse perpetrated by gardeners, a social worker and other male convent employees.

– Being left out in the cold one winter and staying out near the boiler where older boys who had been sent by the courts tried to molest him and I had to fight them off.

– A Brother sexually abused me.

– Child sexual abuse by older boys (not the brothers).

– Sexually abused in a toilet twice, and mental abuse, shown horror movies.

– Sexual abuse and witnessing violence. I had a rubber hose stuck up me and I had to watch my carers beating the youngest most vulnerable children.

– Being raped by the director of the school.

Severe emotional abuse

– When my mother first came to visit after six months, she cried lots at how much weight I and all the kids had lost. She cried lots saying “I didn’t put ye here.”

– Watching other boys who had just been beaten for wetting the bed coming out of the office in pain, hearing the crying and seeing other boys trying to help.

– Father prevented from seeing me.

– They told my brothers I had died. I was hit for crying in response and told to stop.

– Not being loved.

– Neglect. Craving love but getting none.

– After a disagreement with a nun, my long hair was cut off in my sleep as they knew I loved it.

– Living in fear.

– Being painted with a paint brush.

– The night I entered the institution, my clothes and teddy thrown away.

– Getting chilblains, frostbite, and sores so deep I could see my bones on my hand from working in the fields was worse than the beatings.

– The fear, starvation and hard labour.

– Deprived of chance to go to my grandmother’s funeral.

– The first day I was told my mother didn’t want me.

– Seeing a young boy die. He was 12 years old, beaten by brothers on landing and fell over bannister.

– Told to say I was the devil and had to wear a “devil’s tongue” hat.

– I had my identity taken away. I was known by a number only.

– Having pubic hair shaved off and a nun telling people about it at dinner. She said “I shaved the monkey”.

– I can take any abuse, but the worst thing was having no one. Seeing other kids going out with their families and not knowing why I had no one. I was lied to: told that my parents were dead. I only found out in my 50s that they were alive.

– I could stand the beating. The worst thing was the mental abuse: being put in there in the first place and not understanding why.

– At age nine I was sent to pluck turkeys in a coal shed in the cold and had freezing fingers.

– The worst thing was the emotional removal of self: it still has a huge effect on my life.

– Lack of education: not being taught how to read or write. That’s the most hurtful thing.

– It was threatened that my father would lock me in a mental institution if I didn’t stop causing trouble.

– Punishment was meted out repeatedly for the same misdemeanour. Constantly being threatened with punishment.

– Listening to them talking badly about my mother and being taunted about my physical appearance. I was called “four eyes”.

– Loneliness at Christmas time.

– Public humiliation about my mother being unmarried.

– Loss of finger through gangrene due to lack of medical attention. She loved to play the piano and this meant loss of hope to become a music teacher.

– We were children and we did so much hard work. We were up at six o’clock in the morning. We have no childhood memories. We knew no better.

– The worst thing was the overall effect of breaking my spirit; the violence; and the constant blanket of terror.

– The constant fear. I was called into the office and told my mother had died. I actually felt relief that it wasn’t a punishment.

– Feeling alone and unloved.

– Witnessed my sister being whipped until she bled, then made to kneel in refectory for three months.

– The worst thing was the sense of being an orphan and being incarcerated and criminalised: the monotony; the ball-aching mind-aching hopelessness.

– Feeling like a “nobody” and that everyone was better. Always feeling insecure.

– Constantly being told I was worthless and shouldn’t have been born.

– Seeing my brother being beaten.

– Being taken into the office and told my foster mother had died and then immediately sent away again.

– I overheard someone say that my mother had died the night before. When I asked about it I was ignored and dismissed. My friend was beaten so badly for wetting the bed that I watched her die. I was constantly starving. I had to bribe my carers with bread so I wasn’t beaten.

– I was put naked into a coffin as punishment.

– Fear of everything. Fear of God. Fear of the Christian Brothers. Fear that I would go to hell.

– It was all bad.

* Comments Feed

43 Comments »

Anthony B
All this and no one gets named or charged with an crime?????

Only in Ireland, huh?
Friday, May 22, 2009, 9:31:45 PM

Anon
The report begins a process of healing that can only end when justice is provided. Obviously, none has been. The fact that none has been proivded proves that the country is still obsessed with organised religion. It needs to get over it and prosecute, name, jail, close iinstitutes, etc., whatever it takes. Otherwise, victims will remain trapped in psychological prisons and the country will go into shock.
Saturday, May 23, 2009, 3:43:17 AM

Christine Daly
I feel ill. This concentration camp was set up by the State and the Church...it is beyond depravity, beyond grotesque...there are no words to describe what this is...perhaps evil is the most suitable word. As a mother I feel repelled, frightened, disgusted, traumatised...and I feel as though my own sexuality has been assaulted. I was a child of the Fifties and this could have been me.

This abuse was not reserved for just to these institutions alone, it went on in boarding schools and day schools and it was exported to Africa on the "Missions".

From the bottom of my heart I would like to express my sincere, deep, deep anger at the appalling treatment of our most vulnerable children, children who were often forcibly removed from their famiiles...slavery. This has a long way yet to go...the story is only beginning.

This State was founded on corruption...it set up a concentration camp with small children used in hard labour camps to fund schools and hospitals through the revolting method of capitation grants. Everyone in power colluded, the judges, the senior civil servants, government ministers, the Dept of Health, the Dept of Justice, the Dept of Social Welfare, the gardai, the nuns, the priests and the "Christian" Brothers.

The Irish State has a vested interest in not providing justice to these victims... their mealy mouthed apologies to the victims and protection for the perpetrators is evidence of that.

The case needs to be taken to the Hague on a case by case basis if that's what it takes. And everyone associated with it should be brought before the courts and compelled to give evidence. My heart and soul goes out to these poor, poor children...they have nothing to be ashamed of...they should be proud that they had the courage to speak up and tell it like it was...and to hell with looking for approval from society.

Society too must take its share of the burden because of its collusion, silence and denial. The Religous Orders are barely able to contain their rage at having lost control of this. There are still those who deny this happened...perhaps they have something to hide!
Saturday, May 23, 2009, 5:12:38 AM

Anon
We must hit the Catholic church where it hurts.... Stop putting money in the collection basket at mass, the leadership will get the message soon enough.
Saturday, May 23, 2009, 7:06:25 AM

RB
Although I believe most of the claims listed, there are a couple statements too lurid for immediate acceptance without the thorough investigation of qualified psychiatrists. In this regard, I hold an open mind.

Luckily, I cannot claim orphan-hood, but I do know what it was like to be repeatedly beaten and humiliated before my classmates. I experienced a year of physical and psychological abuse at the hands of a certain Sister of Mercy, the worst aspect of which was the dismissal at home by my staunch Irish and Catholic mother.

In her view the clergy could "do no wrong". It wasn't until she finally saw the pattern of black knuckle bruises on my back that she finally realized the truth and confronted the offending nun. To their credit, the Order severely reprimanded that sister and she finally left the "religious life".

My experience is mild by comparison, but as we all know, these past years' revelations for the American RCC have been a nightmare, costly in both money and faith.

In hindsight, I don't know who suffered more. Was it me for the obvious reasons? Or was it my mother for her blind belief in the all-goodness of the clergy?
Saturday, May 23, 2009, 9:25:24 AM

Rick Mueller
I can't imagine the mental gymnastics that a Catholic, ordained or laity, will have to perform in order to go to church tomorrow after reading this.
Saturday, May 23, 2009, 10:45:14 AM

Portia
Tomorrow will tell the world whether we Irish condone this abuse of OUR CHILDREN or not.

If the churches are full as usual, then we know the answer.

I have the whole world watching- every continent is on witness alert.

I leave to each Irish adult to decide.

Your actions tomorrow will answer my question.
Saturday, May 23, 2009, 11:00:23 AM

Portia
There is lots more to surface, believe me.

Anyone who thinks this era of abuse of children is over is living in a cloud.

HSE workers use the very same tactics today- mental and psychological torture etc to break the spirit of children in their care.

Children are deprived of seeing their parents unless they submit to control through brainwashing.

Children disappear from HSE care too today.

The cruelty is still alive and well and used by care workers who project their own unresolved issues onto service users.

The eugenics concept is alive and well- the poor and ill are " disposable children " .

Beware, now the Snatchers are in the business of removing children with high IQ for various research projects.

Time to end the secret family courts which collude with the HSE and others- for the sake of the next generation- OUR CHILDREN.

These TDs HSE, etc are our servants- so let them serve not control.
Saturday, May 23, 2009, 11:09:34 AM

Portia
If people knew the real reason for the abuse was, they would be shocked speachless.

All a big experiment on humans using trauma, abuse, soul fragmentation etc while they all sit back and enjoy in a sadistic fashion.

Most humans have no idea how these people think, operate and function.

The Roman Church has been brainwashing us all with lies for thousands of years, and most have no idea that we are all inside a big cult.

Without the trauma and abuse of children they are dead men and women.

Starve them of the energy of our children and us.
Saturday, May 23, 2009, 11:15:21 AM

Middle-aged emigrant woman
My heart goes out to all who have had to endure these horrors, and my deepest contempt goes to all those in authority who allowed it to happen.

However, it seems that some people think that everybody has been getting this out of proportion: see http://www.catholicleague.org/release.php?id=1616

It's disgusting enough that so many people had to go through such horrors, without some eejit suggesting that these institutions weren't so bad after all because only 12% of those imprisoned there were raped ... and apparently claiming that starvation, beatings, broken bones, head shaving and forced labour weren't abuse at all. Can some Irish Times journalist please track down this Bill Donohue of the "Catholic League" and ask him to explain himself?
Saturday, May 23, 2009, 11:55:48 AM

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Films, Books:
The Magdalene Sisters (2002) -- watch "The Magdalene Sisters at Hulu at IMDB;
Sinners (2002, UK), also as "The Magdalen Laundry", an indepth TV miniseries;
Ireland's Magdalen Laundries and the Nation's Architecture of Containment (Paperback)