Now times change. There was a time when the pillars of society were untouchable, secure behind a web of society and power. Misdemeanours and peccadilloes were quietly swept away. So too were perpetrators, often to start right up again somewhere else.
Although we now know that myriad horrors were visited on innocent people, especially children, it as not necessarily the worst of times. A veil is not always a mask.
Ignorance isn’t bliss and ignorance there was aplenty. People didn’t know what was going on. Even if they’d been told, they wouldn’t have believed it. This applies especially to clerical sex abuse.
Until 15 years ago, give or take, priests were dominant figures in Ireland. Like modern-day mullahs in Iran, to question them required great personal courage or, as in the case of socialists and republicans, a movement to back one up. And even then, not in a small town or rural area.
It’s difficult for anyone born after 1980 to appreciate just how powerful priests actually were, how dominant and just how trusted. They placed themselves at the heart of all activity. This was often to everyone’s benefit and there is a rich history waiting to be written about the good priests and the many things they achieved in areas like community development and sport.
But many amongst them perverted this position of trust, and not only those who abused children. And when allegations were made, they were ignored. The clergy felt safe in the certainty of their power base and the inability of investigators to crack it. Nowhere is this more evident than in the report of 40 years of abuse in the Ferns diocese.
It’s also difficult for anyone born after 1980 to understand how nobody cracked this shell of complacency and corruption. But lay fellow travellers of the Catholic Church had high positions in both the police and the media and it simply wasn’t possible to ferret out the horrible things that were happening, much less name them.
And when they were revealed within the church, the response was entirely inadequate.
This ignorance is also found in many other parts of Irish life of a generation ago, like planning corruption. People knew it was happening, but there was no way to nail it.
The high point of the hypocrisy was the Pope’s visit of 25 years ago. It’s amazing that the stench of corruption didn’t drive the crowds away, but it didn’t. There they were, Eamon Casey and Michael Cleary the papal cheerleaders, soon to be revealed as fathers in more ways than one. Well, at least they had been engaging in adult sex.
Those old enough will remember how hard it was for the Magdalen women to establish the truth of their case, or for those in Goldenbridge or Letterfrack, or for Annie Murphy, or dozens of others. Partly it was because people didn’t want it to be true. Partly it was because they couldn’t believe it to be true.
How different things are now! Smear and spin have replaced silence and fear and priests have been replaced by the press. People now assume the worst of everyone. Take the death of Liam Lawlor. To make it even worse, the source of the story about Lawlor was the Moscow police force and it can’t be sued (nor, of course, is it possible to libel the dead). There was an obscene rush to publish the most lurid speculation. With all due respects, an apology isn’t really sufficient, is it?
It’s part of a pattern. The press may have gone through a golden age of investigation (which still lingers in places) but now it’s often a tool of cops, cynics and spin doctors.
Time and again, we hear the newshounds make suggestions about cases, we hear informed rumours. And in myriad cases it seems that the relationship between press and police is way too cosy.
Sometimes it’s just cheap and ugly. Who, for instance, told the press about Niall Quinn being stopped for drink driving? Peccadilloes and drunken mistakes are all fair game now. People are think they know what’s going on and even when they don’t they believe it anyway.
But sometimes it becomes downright dangerous. In some murder cases the Gardaí appear to find a likely suspect and then organise the evidence around this person.
Like Dean Lyons, wrongly convinced by someone that he had committed the murder of two old women in Grangegorman. Similar doubts exist about dozens of cases.
This is the opposite of ignorance. This is injustice. And it’s comparable to the horrible things done to innocent and vulnerable children in institutions in the past. And what makes it worse is that people are now so willing to believe these spun yarns. Nowadays, the punters refuse to believe protestations of innocence just as once they refused to believe accusations of guilt.
Somebody, somewhere may think this is progress. To me it’s just swapping one brutal exploitation for another. Power and arrogance led to the downfall of the priests. The press should beware.