Irish Minister for Children Roderick O'Gorman has sought legal advice from the Attorney General on the sealing of Mother and Baby Records. The Nazi did the same hiding their criminal files. So let me get this straight on Sunday, Bank-Holiday Weekend on the 25th. Of  October, 2020 at 10.45pm exactly The President of Ireland Michael D Higgins signed the controversial Mother and Baby Homes Bill which will Seal Records both the crimes of the Irish Catholic Church and the Irish State for 30 years. I ask what have they to hide, my reply, “LOTS” 

    Under this Bill, which has caused great stress and anguish with Survivors and others when it passed through both Irish Houses of Parliament. All Mother and Baby Records apart from a database being sent to the child and family Irish agency, Tusla, will be Sealed for three decades. 

    Unearthing the atrocities of the Religious run Institutions and what secrets are they trying to hide. We must as a matter of urgency uncover the remains and trace physical evidence to outline the true facts of the crimes of  The Religious run Institutions in Ireland. We know that the Religious Orders that ran these Gulags have planted false information through their useful idiots, both in the Irish Press and Irish Government circles, to hide evidence of their misdeeds. By Sealing the records for the next 30 years, it serves no purpose, except to save the criminal Church from its criminal actions, of rape, brutality, murder and torture of hundreds of thousands of women and children. 

    There is a feeling within the Survivor community that the Irish Government wants to erase the Religious Institutions of their crimes off the face of the earth. Still I suppose that it would suit both the Irish Government and the Irish Catholic Church if all Survivors just die, in 30 years time, yes we will all be dead, and nobody will care, it will be viewed as ancient history. I have no doubt that all the Religious Institutions will also be erased, our history sanitised and our rapists, and murderers turned into Saints. The Church fears any light that would illuminate a very dark past, we must continue to shine a lens on long-buried atrocities, in all the Religious run Institutions in Ireland. 

    The Worst-Kept Secret that the classified Files might confirm that many Survivors suspect that the Irish Government collaborated with the Catholic Church in Ireland. Or do the classified Files contain salacious information about the Church’s involvement in planning the final solution or special duties, a euphemism for exterminating babies and other undesirables, disable children in their pastoral care in the Religious run Institutions in Ireland. Maybe the classified Files contain a rogue’s gallery of Clerics who committed crimes against women and children in these same Institutions. Or better still vital information of the illegal drug experiments carried out on vulnerable Irish orphans of the Gulags. 

    The real winners of hiding the Files will be the criminal Catholic Church and their Clerics who are able to escape justice because the classified Files are to be hidden for the next 30 years. No members of the Irish Religious Leaders, the Bishops were ever held accountable for the atrocities carried out in their name in their slave Gulags. We know that the Irish Catholic Church got a wink and a nod from the Irish Government. Or is there an unexpected twist: the manipulative Catholic Church was bankrolled by the Irish Government. Maybe the Irish Government has finally discovered that It was a horrendous mistake, morally, politically, to have offered blind support to the triumphalism and arrogant Catholic Church in Ireland. The classified Files debacle should serve as a cautionary tale, If nothing else, it underscores the need for the Irish Government to confront some of its own demons by taking on and dismantling this diabolical Catholic Church once and for all, if just release the Files.

    The stark choice is an honest balance between honouring the dead and gathering knowledge for future historians and generations. That is why the Files must be released immediately, what have they to hide, it would appear their criminality. I struggle daily to deal with the immensity of the Catholic Church’s betrayal and crimes. Most Irish people can’t imagine the suffering of people as children in the Religious run Institutions in Ireland. Never finding closure as to what happened to their mothers, brothers and sisters, working as slaves, brutalised daily in the Industrial Gulags that the Irish Catholic Church ran. 


    When you try to break the silence, there is always resistance. The Catholic Church is trying to destroy their Files so that there would be no evidence of their atrocities. The Files and the terrible information it holds are disintegrating, and historians and Survivors are now faced with unprecedented questions about how to preserve the memory of their Irish Genocide. The Files are symbols of the brutalities that took place in the Religious run Gulags in Ireland. The Catholic Church did not just rape and murder women and children, they experimented on them using the drug companies who came to test out their new products on vulnerable babies and children. After some of the  babies and children died from the illegal drug vaccines, the Church and the Medical Schools in Ireland literally “harvested” their remains. There was a brisk trade which emerged between the Religious run Institutions and the Medical Schools of Ireland, and all for money. The sale of mutilated children’s bodies was very lucrative for both the Irish Catholic Church and the Drug Companies. The Files, themselves will shine a bright light into the inhuman conditions within the Religious run Institutions in Ireland. 

    Given the scale of the brutalities in all the Religious run Gulags, material evidence is very important, such as official documents, photographs, internal memos, and directives. That is why the Files must be made available to Researchers and Survivors and their families. You can not erase our collective history or memories by hiding the Files. You can not further support and collaborate with the Church by hiding their crimes and sins for another 30 years. Something else, archaeology can also play an important role in humanising individual babies and children within the septic tank, that’s where archaeology has great power, it shows people a side of the history you can’t get just from reading the Files and other documents. That is the real secret of the Files, they expose the filth of the Irish Catholic Church. 


    The powerful Irish Catholic Church is one group of dissenters, predictably enough, is denying that the babies and children are in the septic tank, who seem affronted by the gathering of physical evidence to describe atrocities they insist never occurred. They of course do not want the septic tanks opened, the same goes for the Irish Government who are frightened at what the septic tanks might reveal, and also the Irish Government knows if it does open the septic tanks, then they will have to open every septic tank, cesspool, mass-pits in all the Religious run Gulags in Ireland, and that will and is a real horror show.  No matter what new evidence comes to light from the septic tanks, the Church and their useful idiots will always say it didn’t happen or they in the septic tanks are Famine Babies. 

    Another argument is from the criminal Irish Catholic religious leaders, who say that graves should not be opened, and the Bishops feel uneasy about researchers digging near any sites where human remains of children might be disturbed. Anytime an archaeologist excavates human remains, there is an ethical dimension, so say the fearful Bishops. They are clearly afraid, that their genocide death of babies and children in the septic tanks will be expose not just here in Ireland but around the entire world. Something else the Irish Catholic Church’s new/old refrain is -

    That there is also a time for forgiveness and time to let bygones be bygones and please forget past offences or causes of pain and be reconciled. Irish Catholic religious leaders find it as a sinful act to disturb the dead, and by and large it’s not a good thing to do, so they shamefully say. Babies and children do not deserve to end up in glass bottles on shelves against their will, so says the Irish Bishops. By their reckoning it’s ok by the Irish Bishops to flush the babies and children into septic tanks, this is why the Files need to be opened and their contents exposed. 


    Also there should be no memorials or acts of commemoration, however well-intentioned, still we Survivors and the Irish People have the full facts. The Files will add to our sum of knowledge, that is why they are important, and should not be hidden for the next 30 years. Building any kind of memorial would only be used to further camouflage the truth. The Church and their useful idiots will hijack the memorial with religious symbols and are blessed with latin bullshit, shrieking like banshees that we are all children of God. The babies and children couldn’t be children of God, they were rejected and flushed by the very servants of God into the dark crevices of the septic tanks.  Any memorial will not represent the relatives of the babies and children in the septic tank, the memorial’s design would never respect the dignity of the babies and children flushed into the Convent Sewage system by the Nuns and abandoned by both the Irish State and the Irish Catholic Church. 
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    Many people assume that we, Survivors  need to find human remains because it gives closure, no we don’t we just want the truth and the babies and children in all Religious run Institutions septic tanks, cesspools and mass-pits to be recovered, identified where possible and reburied with dignity.  Just take the religion out of it and we have plain mass murder, and the criminal disposal of vulnerable babies and children into the Convent’s sewage system, where the Holy Nuns took a shit on them, the vulnerable babies and children daily and that’s the facts, plain and simple. Just release the Files unconditionally and remove the babies and children immediately from their hell that is a septic tank. Owen Felix O’Neill 

    Jesus said “Suffer little children, and forbid them not, to come unto me: for of such is the kingdom of heaven” Matthew 19:14


    Babies and Children come into this world as innocents. Children are not irrelevant, babies are not to be discarded into septic tanks, they are to be valued, loved and shown compassion. Never to be sold or disposed of as commodities, but we know that the babies and children were. 


    The targeting of babies and children, was not a unique phenomenon in Ireland’s Mother and Baby Homes. The systematic disposal of both sick and disabled children was the means for realising a religious Catholic utopia. Children’s euthanasia” program was long a desire of the Irish Catholic Church. Ireland’s Mother and Baby Homes were nothing more than killing and disposal abattoirs. The ferocious Nuns that ran all the Ireland’s Mother and Baby Homes deliberately mislead the mothers, by stealing their babies, to sell on the illegal trafficking North American markets, like some fancy dolls. And the babies with disabilities were allowed to die because the rapacious Nuns wouldn’t buy medicines to sustain the babies, these rejected babies were also denied basic food for survival. The mercenary Nuns as perpetrators destroyed life they considered “unworthy” of existence. 


    Many babies and children with disabilities, like congenital illnesses, and malformations were to be disposed of as damaged goods, something the evil Nuns couldn’t sell. A few of the babies were used in clinical trials by the drug companies that provided financial incentives to the avaricious Nuns their thirty pieces of silver  which was the price the Nuns accepted for the betrayal of the vulnerable babies and children in their care. If a baby or child died the child’s mother might be informed of the “sudden unexpected” death of her child. But because the child was born out of wedlock the death was viewed as God’s punishment by the Nuns. In most cases the mother didn’t know if her child was dead or alive. More likely the mother was lied to by the Nuns, the child might be dead, more likely sold abroad if healthy, and allowed to die if the baby had disabilities. 
    Some babies and children died of neglect, others of starvation, exposure to unsanitary conditions and cold temperatures, or the withholding of medical treatment, which we now know was very common in all the Mother and Baby Homes in Ireland. As we know also the Nuns never felt any remorse for their betrayal, of both the mothers and their children. Why else would they dispose of the babies and children into their septic tank, the same septic tank in which they disposed of their other human waste. 
    ‘There must be no squeamish sentimentalism about our duty to preserve the purity of Irish motherhood through the sanctity of holy matrimony, according to the rites and traditions of the Irish Catholic Church, this was said at the time in the late 1940s.’


The Irish Bishops also said this;-


     “We must hasten this process with cold ruthlessness.” in eliminating this scourge from our pure Irish society, these unwed women, and their filth, their offsprings.’  


    The Nuns now claim in innocence, that they had no awareness of the illegality of their actions, and are hiding behind both their faith and church. According to the Sea Monkey Files the Religious Order of Nuns in Ireland were in effect running a children’s euthanasia programme in all their Mother and Baby Homes. We here in Ireland must deal with the trauma of the discarded Babies and Children in the many septic tanks in all the Mother and Baby Homes in Ireland. We Survivors do not deal with this trauma with the placement of commemorative objects, exhibits, or guided tours to an ex Magdalene Laundry in Dublin Ireland.
    But still something evil lurked near the newly built children’s playground in the town of Tuam in the West of Ireland. The final dark secret was this, the Sisters of Bon Secours, kept to themselves, praying that nobody would ever discover their deplorable deceit. In a closed off area at the north end of the children’s playground is a small bit of overgrown land, 50 feet by about 70 feet long, enclosed by grey stone walls. Its entrance is gained by a small rusty lime- green wrought iron gate, with a motif of a white cross symbol to the centre panel of this wrought iron gate. 
    This bit of land the devious Bon Secours Sisters refused to sell for any amount of money. Over the years they had successfully sold off all their other lands to property developers, around it, they even demolished their Convent, with their Victorian Mother and Baby Home. Soon a spanking new modern housing estate was built on the sold Convent lands and populated with new families from near and afar. 
    But the odd thing was that the little bit of overgrown land, enclosed by the stone grey walls, was never for sale, it didn’t make sense. It was an oddity in the new, growing housing estate.This parcel of land sat like a white elephant while the new housing estate formed a crescent around both the new children’s playing ground and this enclosed private plot of land. The new residences of the new housing estate didn’t know what lurked, hidden beneath this hidden garden, while the ruthless killers, the beneficiaries, the old conniving Nuns still lurked in broad daylight. Sure the local kids played football nearby and occasionally climbed over the grey walls or gate to retrieve their football, not knowing that grim death was concealed but a few inches beneath the surface.
    The years flew by, families came and went, the kids, now adults, married and had kids of their own to repeat the cycle of life. The enclosed land had an eerie feel about it, the frightened local kids said- the land was lifeless, some other kids whispered haunted, intractable weeds, never lived for long, refusing to root, or supping from any passing underground stream. There was no nourishment to be obtained within the gravel ground and any nourishment was tainted with the poisonous flesh of the unaccountable dead.  
    No wildlife dare roam or crawl along the borders of the grey stone walls. Invasiveness bugleweed, chameleon plant, bishop's weed, and yellow archangel ran or crept and rooted into the surrounding green patches or better still to safer climes a few gardens away. Distress cats and yapping dogs by natural instinct avoided the hidden garden. Yet the pallor air is always rancid within this barren garden, the stench is ominous, once you realise something profoundly immoral and evil was committed there. The odour smells wicked as does the heavy air of sadness. 


    The early morning shimmering mist that occasionally hangs over this plot of land, were thousands of tears of dew, suspended a few feet above the bedevilled ground. The murmuring sound of flowing tears can be heard, carried by passing birds, and insects avoiding the sullen air. In the surrounding gardens of the nearby housing estate some of the better behaved but durable plants include spring bulbs such as daffodils and crocuses, summer-blooming bulbs such as lilies, and durable perennials such as salvia, iris, refuse to surface. Instead lay dormant in the cracked gravel ground, hardy succulents such as creeping sedum and hens and chicks, creep away to die. In the nearby gardens, when the moon hides behind broken clouds, many flowers fold their cups, as they bow their heads to sigh. Yet roses for years planted by the deceitful Nuns would never grow upon an earth filled with sorrow and tears.
    Every year, alone, a guilt ridden depraved, elderly lady of the Bon Secours Sisters, the last few of her breed, but not dressed as a nun of the Bon Secours Sisters tries to plant new seeds and plants into this secret garden. She prays to herself for atonement for she knows the garden’s dark secret, her crimes as of the others is buried mixed within the tormented soil. The old remorseful Nun had a fondness for the bleeding heart flowers, but the seeds, they never took to the contaminated gravel ground, despite her feverish prayers, and her pleadings to higher powers. The bleeding heart flower doesn't ever appear in season in the secret plot of land, instead adorns the neighbourhood gardens with attention-getting, heart-shaped flowers borne on arching stems. Their attractive bluish-green foliage emerges first as the plant wakes from dormancy. Flowers of the bleeding heart, though generally red, can be seen in blushing pink, and solid ivory white. Much to her dismay, the solitaire Sister seeks penance in the secret garden but like all things there, she and they mix with the already dead. She refuses to speak or acknowledge any passing, gossiping neighbours as she has done the last twenty or more years. Her inner secret is safe, from prying eyes and open mouths, or so she believes. No amount of perfumed flowers or evil deceit can hide the secret of the septic tank, but a few inches beneath her feet. 


    Some local residences living but a few feet away in their houses, spoke of hearing at midnight, rustlings amid the bleak darkness and gloom, muffled cries of abandoned babies. Other residences spoke of occasionally seen ghostly figures of shrouded desperate women searching eternity with unlit lamps, looking for a connection, a spark of any human life. The shrouded ghostly weeping women return day after day, year in year out, time doesn’t exist in their restless world.  
    There were no flowers to memorialise or flourish in the shaded sun, instinctively birds avoided overflying this hidden plot of land. Still the secret lay but a few inches beneath any passing trespasser, mainly children retrieving a ball, scarpering back across the stone grey walls immediately. The wretched, necromancer  Sisters of Bon Secours, who ran the Tuam’s Mother and Baby Home, now rehouse in elegant housing miles away, are slowly dying off, of guilty old age, ailments their worthless prayers couldn’t help. All were interned with their dark secrets embedded with their bitter hearts, and into their worthless graves. Still a few were spooked by the burden of their wickedness and crimes, dark secrets, a fear that lay like a smothering blanket that stalked their dead eyes, and hauntings of confusing sins sitting on their lying faces. 
    Their despicable lives and reprehensible souls were and are empty of any human empathy. Since they assume that a place is assigned for their censured souls in keeping with their rewards or punishment, as soon as their denigrated soul is set free from their decrepit  bodies. It is either plunged straight into hell or soars to heaven, poor babbling Sisters, it would only be hell in which they can never be cleansed. Their numerous crimes are not mere venial sins, but the gravest of mortal sins known to humanity, the murder and disposal of babies and children into septic tanks. The venomous Sisters injected their toxins of hate into the unwed mothers, vulnerable babies and children. No amount of candle burning will save them, their paschal candles symbolises darkness, their ambiance of death, no amount of candles will ever illuminate their horrors. 


    The incomprehensible Sisters cannot be united with their God, ever.  They cannot love God if they have sinned gravely against him, against their neighbour or against ourselves: He who does not love remains in death. The Bon Secours Sister didn’t know or understand love, they couldn’t love the babies and children, because if they did love them, they wouldn’t have flushed the 800 into their septic tank. Anyone who hates a child is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him or her. Their Jesus warns us that we shall be separated from him if we fail to meet the serious needs of the poor and the little ones, children who are his brethren. The unquenchable fire of hate that laid in their collective hearts drove the Bon Secours Sisters to madness by disembowelled and disrespecting the children. The barbaric cruel act of flushing the babies and children into the Convent’s septic tanks, was an act of pure evil. Where both the child’s soul and body were lost, into the cesspool of the Nuns hate. 
    Where was God's merciful love, I ask? Jesus solemnly proclaims that he will send his angels, and they will gather, all evil doers, and throw them into the furnace of fire. The arrogant Nuns, threw the vulnerable babies and children into the Convent’s furnace of contempt and into eternal punishment. The truly wicked Nuns actions were disgusting and shameful. In their arrogance they think that both the Irish people and Survivors will never do anything. The Bon Secours Sisters have nothing but contempt for the Mothers, their Babies and the Children. They clearly laugh at any idea of judgment, in fact, they do not worship any God, the Nuns worship only themselves.
    “For the wicked boasts of the desires of his soul,
and the one greedy for gain curses and renounces the Lord.
In the pride of his face the wicked does not seek him;
all his thoughts are, “There is no God.” (10:3, 4)

    The Irish Catholic Church turned on the poor long ago and the helpless because they first turned against God. The Irish Catholic Church was only for raw power and wealth. The Clerics are proud of their desires, their cravings for rape, murder and other exotic mortal sins are a real virtue. After all, didn’t they succeed because of their will to win against the downtrodden? Their filthy greed got them where they are, climbing on the dead bodies of women and children. 


    The Irish Catholic Church  preached for years that greed, for lack of a better word, is good. Greed is right. Greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures, the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Greed, in all of its forms; greed for life, for money, for love, knowledge, has marked the upward surge of mankind endowed with greed. Contentious lies will not only destroy the Irish Catholic Church but that other malfunctioning Institution the whore of Babylon, the mother of prostitutes and abominations of the earth as mentioned in the  Book of Revelations - Rome. 


    The Irish Catholic Church War on Women continues to this day, they, the modern woman, they care about abortion and gay marriage. Many clerics including Bishops lament the fact that they can no longer call unwed women or other women “sluts.” The Irish Catholic Church has a long and well documented history of misogyny, often expressing a callous contempt for women in general in Irish society. An Irish Bishop once said he doesn’t see slavery, as a problem. If you don’t like slavery, don’t own slaves, but please don’t tell others, like us, they shouldn’t own people as slaves. Our Bible supports slavery, you only have to read up on - 


    Ephesians 6:5-8 Paul states, “Slaves, be obedient to your human masters with fear and trembling, in sincerity of heart, as to Christ” which is Paul instructing Slaves to obey their master. Similar statements regarding obedient Slaves can be found in Colossians 3:22-24, 1 Timothy 6:1-2, and Titus 2:9-10. 


    And my friends that’s the problem, the Bible, or the Good Book of distorted lies, all dressed up in Latin. Owen Felix O’Neill 

    In the little world in which children have their existence, whosoever brings them up, there is nothing so finely perceived and so finely felt as INJUSTICE. Charles Dickens. - Great Expectations

    Something I soon discovered in St. Joseph’s  Industrial School, Tralee, for 6 years I was there.  That there were a very small group of boys who were known as Travellers, who were always singled out for further punishment and other abuses by the Christian Brothers. At that time at least in my eyes we were all the same, friends, playmates, brothers, enemies, children. I didn’t know the difference, Oh sure, all the boys were different, some with red hair, blond hair, brown hair, curly hair.  Many had also different eye colourings, blue, grey, brown, pain as a colour, sadness, and for many, oceans of tears and fears. There was a smorgasbord of boys, who came in all shapes and sizes, tall boys, small boys, fat boys, thin boys, all with a variety of different Irish accents. 

    But Two boys stood out because they were black in colour, it was to us white boys, exotic, they had more friends because of this. They too endured their share of personal pain because they were different. We didn’t really discriminate against them, yes we may have if we had a fight with them like most boys do, calling them N….s, but only because we heard others do so, or the Christian Brothers using the word, often. We did the same with the Traveller boys, but in most cases they could take care of themselves. I have to admit I didn’t see anything different about them, the Travellers boys. They too were the same as me, in colour, hair, size, and with different accents, but then I came from Dublin, I was called a Jackeen and they were Culchies as I learned. I didn’t fully understand what it meant, except I knew it was bad if thrown at me, the same I though, as me shouting  “N….r,” or monkey at a black boy or me shouting “Pavee” at the top of my lungs at a boy I thought was a Traveller, in most cases the boy I shouted “Pavee” at, was just a common Culchie. How stupid was I, I couldn’t tell the difference. 


    Shouting “Pavee” at a boy, whether he was a Traveller or not,  would more likely get you a swift smack across the mouth, if you called them, “Pavee” or any mean names. We learned to avoid entanglements if possible, to avoid a black eye, or a cut lip. We didn’t of course know that name calling was hurtful, yes we could see the reaction, the tears in the eye, the doleful look but we were stupid boys. One day in the play yard one of the Christian Brother’s, pulled me aside, inviting me to walk with him as he wanted to have a quiet word with me. I looked puzzled, and fearful, I expected a beating from this particular cruel Brother. I fell in beside him, my eyes darting, here and there, like a spooked rabbit.  I walked around the busy yard of boys with him. He leaned over to me and asked me why I was a friend with that boy, pointed to Patsy, the boy I was playing with. 

    I blundered out to this sadistic Brother, I like him, we are friends. The Brother stopped and I stopped, he looked me over from head to foot, as if I had taken leave of my senses. Honestly I was expecting a smack across my face from him, he was known as a brutal Brother among the boys with a very short fuse. Do you know who that boy is, he thundered at me. I replied yes I do, his name is Patsy, no he whispered to me like a conspirator, his yellow teeth, and decaying breath is all I saw and smelled, I pulled slightly away, but his whispers was dripping with spit, contempt and hatred, he is a filthy, filthy tinker, I looked again puzzled. I never heard of the word “tinker” I asked him ``Sir what is a “tinker”.. with a raised voice he roared at me, (Carthy) a “tinker” is him, and him and him over there, and a few more around the schoolyard. I looked very confused, I saw boys the same as me, playing in the yard, but all with different colour hair, and boys in all shapes and sizes. I thought to myself, filthy, as I’m dirty too, but so is Patsy as are all the other boys. He looked at me, wiping his cruel, snarling mouth with the back of his hand, get away from me, (Carthy), he sneered at me, kicking me in the gut,  you’re probably one of them yourself he shouted, in anger and disgust, I painfully ran as I saw his changing red face. 


    But I ran away frightened and confused back to Patsy to play, Patsy asked- what did he want;- I said .. he said you are a “tinker”, black haired Patsy, stopped to think, knitted his eyebrows together for split second, roaring with laughter, turning away, shouting at me —your a “tinker” your a “tinker” he sang, shouting at me as he further moved away, doing a little jig around me, laughing. His open face was flushed with happiness as I watched him dancing away, laughing. I ran after him laughing and shouting at him, No!! No!! ….your the “tinker”, We both ran and danced around the yard full of other boys, a few times shouting out to each other “tinker” Of course we both didn’t know what the word meant nor understood its true meaning, after all we were both 9 years of age. Patsy was one of my oldest friend in the Industrial school for 6 years, I called him  “tinker” Patsy and he called me “tinker” Carthy, we both said it with great affection. If Pasty wanted to be called a “tinker” so did I. We backed each other up in many a fight over the years against all comers, with ridiculous arguments, fist fights, imaginary fights amid floods of tears.  

    You see to me Travellers as children, like every other boy or boys, also shared pain, shared clothing, shared towels, shared food, tears, fights, laughter, more importantly shared friendships. Some I got along with, some I didn’t, but that also applied to all the boys, not just the Traveller boys. We all knew with instinct that it was about our individual survival. Dehumanisation and dehumanised perception did occur as a result of the language used to describe groups of boys, it was something the Religious Orders knew how to use and did. In the Religious run Institutions all the women and children suffered violence on a daily basis.  The Nuns and the Clerics that ran Religious Institutions, dehumanised the women and children as either animals or objects of desire to be raped, sexually harassed and beaten, daily. Dehumanisation was viewed as a central component by all the Religious Orders that ran the Religious Institutions in Ireland. It was a way of brutal control. What now is shocking for me and many other Survivors, is that the Nuns, the Christian Brothers and other Religious Orders, -
“it’s that they were very, very ordinary human beings”-


    The Religious Orders that ran the Religious Institutions began an orgy of rape, torture and death. They were encouraged by the Irish Catholic Church itself and to a lesser extent the Irish Government and State. Gratuitous violence was used for example in the Magdalene Asylum/Laundries, Mother and Baby Homes, Industrial Schools, and Orphanages as a ploy to extend the Religious Orders sense of power over another human being, the hapless women and vulnerable children. The Nuns and Christian Brothers used to roar, “ These aren’t human, these are animals”  Dehumanisation is on the list of the “Ten Stages of Genocide” 

    “When the Nuns or other religious Orders  dehumanise others, they actually conceive of them as subhuman creatures, thus allowing them to inflict humiliation on them. The Catholic Church as Slave owners throughout history considered their slaves, the unwed women and children as subhuman creatures. Thus allowed then the Religious Orders to opens the door for cruelty and genocide, in the Religious run Institutions, like the Magdalene Asylums/Laundries. 

    To the Religious way of thinking, and especially the Religious Order of Nuns these wretched women and their offsprings were not individuals at all. They came in wholesale lots and were to be treated worse than animals. The Nuns were explicit about the status of their victims. They were subhumans — and as such were excluded from the system of moral rights and obligations that bind humankind together. The Nuns and other Religious Orders know it was wrong to kill a person, just like the Nazis did, but to their way of thinking it was permissible to exterminate a rat. To the Religious Orders, all the unwed women and their children, specially Travellers, were degraded as Pavees or Mincéirí, in most case theses Travellers, the women and their children were singled out for worse treatment, nothing short of vermin or parasites, according to all the Religious Orders and the Irish Catholic Church. In fact the Nuns, the Christian Brothers, in fact all Religious Orders treated the Travelling Community in their Gulags as less than human. 


    You only have to ask any Traveller who was in any of these Religious Institutions. It was truly the marginalisation of a group of Irish people known as Travellers Community by the Irish Catholic Church itself, The Irish Government and the wider Irish Society. I know as a Survivor of 18 years in these Religious run Institutions how badly the Travellers Community of boys and girls were treated. By stigmatising Traveller children, as "less human" and more like animals, within the Religious run Institutions, the brutality  by the Religious orders was far worse for them, purely because they came from the Travellers Community.  One cannot do serious injury to another without first dehumanising him or her in one's mind, this I heard from a few Nuns and Christian Brothers as a child when talking about the Travellers Community, it was ingrained to everybody in the Religious run Institutions in Ireland. 

    Humiliation is something that is brought upon us by others. Ritual humiliation was a common form of punishment, abuse, and oppression, used in all the Religious run Institutions, in Ireland. The great German Philosopher, Immanuel Kant famously argued that, by virtue of their free will, human beings are not means-to-an-end but ends-in- themselves, with a moral dimension that invests them with dignity and the right to ethical treatment. To humiliate people, that is, to treat them as anything less than ends-in-themselves, is therefore to deny them their very humanity.
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    Many Survivors never recovered from their humiliations at the hands of the Religious Orders, their overburdened hearts shrivelled. For many years, the Survivors were and are preoccupied and obsessed by their humiliation and its real or imagined perpetrators, myself included. Many reacted with anger, with fantasies of revenge, sadism, delinquency. Survivors couldn’t  internalise their trauma, leading many to fear and constant anxiety, flashbacks, nightmares, sleeplessness, suspicion and paranoia, solidly isolation, apathy, depression, and suicidal thoughts. For many Survivors, their humiliation is a fate worse even than death. Owen Felix O’Neill