Funferal

Abuse was not a failure of the system. It was the system.

The Irish Times aren’t generally known for coherent or incisive editorials, but their reaction to the Ryan report makes for sobering reading:

We have to call this kind of abuse by its proper name – torture. We must also call the organised exploitation of unpaid child labour – young girls placed in charge of babies “on a 24-hour basis” or working under conditions of “great suffering” in the rosary bead industry; young boys doing work that gave them no training but made money for the religious orders – by its proper name: slavery. It demands a very painful adjustment of our notions of the nature of the State to accept that it helped to inflict torture and slavery on tens of thousands of children. In the light of the commission’s report, however, we can no longer take comfort in evasions.

I haven’t yet been able to bring myself to read the report itself.