Return to Transcripts main page

CNN Sunday Morning

Exposing Abuse in an Ireland Catholic School System

Aired June 03, 2001 - 08:38   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
BRIAN NELSON, CNN ANCHOR: And some disturbing new evidence has come to light in Ireland about an abusive system of Catholic schools where hundreds of children were regularly mistreated in past decades. It was the subject of a TV documentary on Irish television. It is called "States of Fear."

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP, "STATES OF FEAR")

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I was absolutely a nervous wreck. I know it's hard to believe at the age of 13 I was a nervous wreck.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Her favorite punishment was pulling you by the hair and swirling you so that you actually lifted off the floor.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They were some of the cruelest, most sadistic, unbridled people I ever met.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

NELSON: The film was written and produced by our guest, Mary Raftery of Dublin. And a book version is now a follow-up to that film. And she joins us now from New York this morning.

Good morning, Ms. Raftery. Thank you for being with us.

MARY RAFTERY, "SUFFER THE LITTLE CHILDREN": Good morning, Brian.

NELSON: Well, first of all, let's ask you how many children were actually abused and who were they?

RAFTERY: Well, we're looking at a system which abused literally tens of thousands of Irish children. I mean the most shocking thing, I think, about this is how vast the system was. And these were essentially the children of the poor. But one of the things about looking into this system which we have now done in the book that we've produced, is that you discover that family values which were at the core of Irish society actually didn't mean that for huge sections of the society.

And if you had money, if you were reasonably well off then, yes, you had a right to a family. But if you didn't, what was happening was that thousands of children were being taken away from their families and being given by the state to religious orders, Catholic religious orders, to raise and the most shocking thing is that so many thousands of them were abused in these what are called industrial schools. They were residential schools. And the stories of abuse are absolutely appalling and it's these that we chart in the book.

I mean they're very often stories of a gnome's courage in the face of really shocking abuse, systematic abuse by, of course, the people that we in Ireland put on a pedestal, namely the Catholic priests, Catholic nuns, Catholic religious brothers.

NELSON: Ms. Raftery, can you describe some of the abuse in your own terms?

RAFTERY: Well, some...

NELSON: What did you hear? What did you learn?

RAFTERY: Some of it is stomach churning. I mean some of it is, it's really difficult to understand how such things could have been done to children. There was appalling physical abuse. Children were beaten. They were kicked. They were kicked on the floor. They were kicked around the place, bones broken. Then, of course, there was really desperate sexual abuse in many cases, mainly to do with the boys. And this often was aggravated. It involved violence as well.

And really what you had was a system of unchallenged authority, if you like, of the Catholic Church within Ireland. And so it's very interesting to analyze the system on what happens when you put people in authority and you don't challenge them. And I think...

NELSON: But it's important to note here that these were not isolated cases. This was systematic abuse in the system, right?

RAFTERY: Absolutely. The extraordinary thing is how systematic and how consistent the reports are, whether it's north, south, east, west of the country, whether it's girls or boys, they all seemed -- there was a pattern, if you like, a system and the most extraordinary thing when we were looking into this that we discovered was that the state knew about it, that you have these files in the department of education, the government department which regulated the schools, where there was an absolute knowledge of what was going on.

There was descriptions, for instance, of children starving, you know, under half their body weight and unable to stand up, because the money that was being given to the Catholic Church to look after these children was not being spent on them. So you have a system that's actually riddled with corruption of every kind being overlooked by the state but clearly the state did not do its job in this regard.

NELSON: Now, bring us up to date. Has there been any redress? Has there been any compensation for the victims and how are they doing today?

RAFTERY: Well, some of them are doing reasonably well. Many are not doing well at all because of the nature of their childhoods and the nature, the fact that our society is only now beginning to acknowledge that this even happened in the first place, because we had the greatest difficulty believing that our, you know, Catholic religious orders could do such a thing.

But what's happened now, what happened in the wake of our expose of this, if you like, is that the government apologized. So there was a public apology by the government on behalf of the state to all of the people abused within this system. And that was hugely important to them because it was an acknowledgement by the country that this had happened to them.

The system, of course, we must remember, began to shut down during the 1970s and so that, you know, it is something that is in the past, thankfully, even though we do have a long way to go in terms of making our system secure for children in care today.

But I think that there is redress for people. There is a commission to hear people's stories. There's a commission of investigation and there is now talk of compensation for people who, for the tens of thousands who went through this system.

NELSON: This is a shocking story. Thank you for taking time to be with us here on this Sunday morning. Mary Raftery, the producer of a TV documentary called "States of Fear" that was shown in Ireland and now the author of a book on the same subject, "Suffer the Little Children."

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com