Gene slur on victims of Church child abuse
Sunday, February 15, 2004
Henry McDonald, Ireland editor Sunday February 15, 2004
The Observer
Survivors of clerical child abuse have reported a pro-Catholic Church pressure group to the Republic's Equality Authority over its claims that children held in industrial schools were genetically defective.
Men and women who were abused in the church-run schools are furious that an organisation which denies that there was widespread and systematic abuse at these institutions has referred to them as pre-programmed to become alcoholics, drug addicts and mental depressives.
Let Our Voices Emerge, the group set up to promote a more positive image of religious orders in their orphanages and industrial schools, maintain that many children were 'affected' before they ever went into these institutions.
Love's founder Florence Horsman Hogan, raised the possibility in a press statement last month that victims of abuse whose lives were later blighted by drink, drug and mental problems would have developed them anyway.
'Our own parents couldn't, wouldn't take care of us. The usual cause was that they themselves suffered from mental illness/addictions.
'While environment is a factor in these conditions they are also genetic. So, had we never been in care, we were programmed to go on to develop these conditions.'
The Irish Survivors of Child Abuse group has now made a formal complaint to the Republic's Equality Authority. It has also written to Bertie Ahern demanding that he distance the Irish government from what they called 'these odious views'. Irish Soca claims that the Love founder's remarks are a breach of the Republic's tough equality legislation.
Patrick Walsh, a spokesman for Irish Soca, who spent six years in the notorious Artane Industrial School, said the complaint has reached the chief legal officer of the Equality Authority.
'Arguments based on genetic programming smack of the discredited theories of eugenics or social Darwinism. The implication of her argument is that we were programmed from birth to be social failures. For that reason she claims we should not be entertained at the Republic's Redress Board on issues of damages arising from the abuse suffered in industrial schools,' he said.
Christine Buckley spent 18 years in care including 14 in Goldenbridge where she was beaten by nuns and suffered constant humiliations. Her story was the subject of Dear Daughter, a harrowing documentary on RTE. She runs the Aislinn centre for education and counselling referral service for victims of clerical abuse.
On the genetic argument of Love, she said: 'It has been historically proven that we went into these places not because of genetics but rather due to parents dying, poverty, separation and rejection. Are children who are adopted genetically flawed because they were given up by their parents? It is ludicrous.'
Horsman Hogan was unavailable for comment yesterday.
