Nothing About Us Without Us
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I hold fast to the view that there must be no more deals, secret or otherwise done between Religious orders and the Government of Ireland without indepth consultation with people who were abused while in the care of religious orders or the state.
Paddy.
These so called representatives of survivors have a government given mandate with government funding to represent survivors the way that government dictates.
There is a new group that will be mandated by its members, drawn from survivors their partners, children and grand children.
If you join you can share that mandate, as we speak with one voice; with Democracy, Transparency and Inclusion as core values.
ShameOfIreland@yahoogroups.com
We currently have a mandate of 3 but if you spread the word we will have a mandate of thousands.
When you write to the Government with a mandate of thousands of survivors you have a real voice.
All members are equal and have the right to use the group name; as correspondence will be voted on prior to sending.
You can vote on the new Statutory Trust Fund before it becomes Law in September at ShameOfIreland@yahoogroups.com
Most of the so called Group Leaders have been in situ now for 10 years and it’s now time to call a halt to their autocratic, undemocratic abuse of survivors. Meetings I have attended lately in Cork resulted in a fist fight outside the meeting place and all the Group Leader was concerned about was how they would appear to the cops rather than concern for another survivor. None so abusive .. etc.
Dear Ms.Wilson
NOTHING ABOUT US WITHOUT US
I have heard through the grapevine that you are organizing a day of Celebrations for former “Survivors” of the Irish Industrial schools
I would really love to know Ms.Wilson what are you celebrating? Will there be prizes for instance for the “Best dancer”, “Best Singer”
Will there be judging. Who are the judges? Is it Judge Ryan or another Judge perhaps from the media? You know like Reality TV
Maybe you could call your day
“Survivors on Broadway”
“Survivors at the Abbey”
You really cannot be serious about this event if one can call it that.
Do you want to expose these people to ridicule? if this is the case perhaps I may suggest Ms.Wilson that you call together all the so called “Group leaders”
John Kelly
Ms.Buckley
and the like who have no authority to speak on behalf of any so called “Survivor”
and have them do an Irish reel or two on behalf of all the so called “Survivors” of Irish Child abuse.
Go on, I dare you
Transparent Leadership…
There are now at least nine groups claiming to represent survivors of childhood abuse in the nation’s residential institutions: Aislinn, Alliance Victim Support Group, SOCA-Ireland, Irish Women Survivors Support Group, Justice and Healing for Institutional Abuse, Right of Peace Group, Right of Place and SOCA-UK. And in the aftermath of the Ryan Report more groups are cropping up almost every week.
Could someone please advise who elected these groups to represent my siblings or me? None of these groups approached us to complete a leadership ballot. I checked with various government departments and no one could explain precisely the nature of their mandate. Fellow survivors, at least those I speak with from High Park Convent, Drumcondra, are looking for answers too.
I have a serious point to make. The people of Ireland now demand transparency from the Religious Congregations and the State in light of the Ryan Commission report. It is time, I suggest, that the leadership of survivor groups provide us with the same transparency. To do anything else is to reproduce the conditions of secrecy and silence that so many of us are still struggling to recover from.
Christine Buckley and John Kelly deserve to be acknowledged for the media work they have done over the past decade. But, in the years since the Taoiseach’s initial apology and the subsequent Redress Board and Child Abuse Commission initiatives, I have searched repeatedly for Aislinn’s and Soca Ireland’s websites. A website finally appeared some weeks ago, the night before the “March of the Survivors,” and yet it did not enable survivors to contact group leaders. It did provide contact details for the media. And now this website is no longer operating.
The Department of Education has funded such groups to the tune of hundreds of thousands of Euros in the last decade. But survivors are afforded little by way of transparent accountability.
Another survivor organization, whose website has not been updated for some years now, received almost €800K in 2006. Of this amount 217.240.00 was spent on salaries, and a further €32K went to travel expenses. The website revealed no information about direct assistance to survivors.
Survivors in Ireland inform me that some group leaders travel to Dublin from the UK, almost on a monthly basis. They stay in the best hotels it would seem. The deadline for the Redress Board was 2005, so why are they traveling to Dublin in the first place? Do their meetings have any agendas and/or minutes that fellow survivors can access? Again, we have no website to go too.
The only “One Man Band” as he is known by many survivors is Paddy Doyle. He has manned a website for over ten years now, and it receives over one hundred thousand hits a month, even more since the publication of the Ryan report. Paddy Doyle has accepted not one penny from the Irish government to fund his website. His mission is a simple one: to get information out to his fellow survivors.
Information is what this is really about for people like me. And, we receive little by way of information from groups purporting to have our interests at heart. I am more likely to hear what is happening through the Joe Duffy show and other RTE radio programmes. Likewise, print journalists like Bruce Arnold, Vincent Browne and especially Mary Raftery, remain constant in bringing important information to our attention. They work tirelessly on our behalves.
But survivors should not be dependent on the media. They need to be better served by the groups claiming to represent us. Many of the problems I, and many others, encountered going before the Redress Board stemmed from a lack of basic information. The survivor groups should have served us better, as individuals by providing necessary resources and collectively by disseminating information through their website.
In the past few days I found myself working with an elderly survivor, a woman in her seventies who had received a copy of the Ryan Report on CD disk. A leader from one of the survivor groups, who had not been in touch in years, mailed it to her. The woman brought it to my home because she does not own, and neither could she operate, a computer. Not nearly good enough.
So I ask, “Is this what we survivors want?” “Is this acceptable”? Should we not expect more from the organizations, and the self-appointed leadership of those organizations, that claim to represent our interests and? They accept State funding on our behalf. Moving forward do we not want to demand a level of transparency at least to the same level now demanded of the Religious Congregations and the State?
*
Note
I am waiting for the Department of Education and the Health Services Executive (HSE) to furnish me with the up to date figures on grants given to various Groups, on receipt I will furnish them to you.
I came up with the slogan “Nothing About Us Without Us” so that there would be no deals done anywhere or by anyone The main ‘players’ is this horrendous abuse saga are those people who were abused. It is they who must be heard and consulted before any decisions are made.
I’ve believe passionately that people who purport to represent any group of people must have a mandate to speak on their behalf. Self elected spokespersons serve no purpose other than to hear their own voices rather than the give expression to the voices of those they claim to represent.
Paddy wrote……I hold fast to the view that there must be no more deals, secret or otherwise done between Religious orders and the Government of Ireland without in depth consultation with people who were abused while in the care of religious orders or the state.
Paddy.
Paddy
You should have added also No deals with unelected group Leaders also
Our Voices will NEVER Merge!
“Nothing About Us, Without Us” says it all.
There are group Leaders who say they represent us. They do not have a Mandate. We never elected them to represent us.
Nothing About Us Without Us
Our Voices Have Emerged ! Lets hope they’re not to be submerged or silenced.
Paddy, This is the one I meant, sorry!
Deals are easy to make especially when they’re against the disadvantaged who don’t know too well the language of the schemers & the deals & the trying to stay rich, Church congregation’s whose eyes reach towards Heaven in prayer…while at the same time down here on Earth they were dealing & scheming their next episode of Child Abuse…their next crash of the fist on an innocent face, their next kick into an innocent child’s groin…their next game of thrashing a little boy or girl…just for the reason they were there…to be played with as toys…& then the abuse & rape, & their victim’s screaming & crying as they hid behind their cape & their collar & their head-gear…so righteous & saintly, but behind it all they were Satan’s, Satan’s… on call to punish the children in their care with depravity, & lust. & the deadly sins that there were in those places of sin…now where do I begin…I can’t because the story’s not over yet to have an end to the grotesque spin in its tail…it will never be…till those responsible still living are rotting in jail…because “ROT” is the word, that Satan give them when they emerged from the womb…they have no need to turn into dust…on their passing…for its a fact they’re already, “Putrefaction”!
Deals are easy to make especially when they’re against the disadvantaged who don’t know too well the language of the schemers & the deals & the trying to stay rich, Church congregation’s whose eyes reach towards Heaven in prayer…while at the same time down here on Earth they were dealing & scheming their next episode of Child Abuse…their next crash of the fist on an innocent face, their next kick into an innocent child’s groin…their next game of thrashing a little boy or girl…just for the reason they were there…to be play with as toys…& then the abuse & rape, & their victim’s screaming & crying as they hid behind their cape & their collar & their head-gear…so righteous & saintly, but behind it all they were Satan’s, Satan’s on call to punish the children in their care with depravity, & lust, & & the deadly sins that there were in those place of sin…now where do I begin…I can’t because the story’s not over yet to have an end to the grotesque spin in its tail…it will never be…till those responsible still living are rotting in jail…because “ROT” is the word, that Satan give them when they emerged from the womb…they have no need to turn into dust…on their passing…for its a fact they’re already, “Putrefaction”!
Let this be the forum in which we can LET OUR VOICES EMERGE!!!!!!!! Paddy. I know L.O.V.E. is SECOND HAND but perhaps we can borrow the acronym now as that organisation appears all but defunct!
Erudite, succinct and very much to the point as usual, Paddy.
Totally agree. On the radio yesterday Saturday May 31 a nun from CORI said she didn’t like the word ‘deal’ as it implied shady goings-on !!!