The State is still failing us

It was 1985 when Bruce Arnold first wrote about the child abuse scandal in Ireland. In a powerful new book on The Irish Gulag, he is hugely critical of the efforts of the State as well as the Church, accusing them of conspiracy.

Jason O'Toole, 08 Jun 2009

The Report of the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse – also known as the Ryan Report – is flawed and "will bring no closure for the victims".

This is the damning assessment of the renowned polemic writer Bruce Arnold, who spent over six years investigating the child abuse scandal. During this period in his Irish independent column, Arnold broke many of the key stories surrounding what is undoubtedly one of the most shameful episodes in the history of the State's existence.

Arnold's tireless research has resulted in a new book, which is an authoritative account of the abuse conducted by priests and nuns in the industrial schools. Entitled The Irish Gulag: How the State Betrayed Its Innocent Children, the book's title draws comparison with the notorious Russian Gulag regime, which was a network of prison camps for children that masqueraded as schools.

"In the Russian Gulag – so well described by Solzhenitsyn – life itself was cheap and millions died at the hands of the Soviet Union's monstrous leader, Joseph Stalin," Arnold explains. "One of the greatest ironies of the system was that a small but significant number of children were incarcerated, for their whole childhoods, for truancy. And then they were put to work, on miserable rations and in cold, unhygienic circumstances, working for the orders and not being educated. In Ireland, while few actually died, the indifference was the same. Unlike Russia, in Ireland, the children were worth money so long as they were kept alive."

He makes the point that comparisons with the treatment of prisoners in concentration camps is not entirely off the mark.

“In what was done to the children, there was a parallel with the Nazi concentration Camp system," he insists. "At the heart of this was the rule that anything could be done to those in the camps, more or less at the whim of the Commandant. But one bad parallel is probably enough."

CONSPIRACY BETWEEN CHURCH AND STATE

Arnold was inspired to write The Irish Gulag for two "very personal reasons". The first came from his own childhood experiences of growing up in a "dysfunctional family" in England.

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