For the past few months, Fin Dwyer, of the Irish History Podcast, and journalist Peter McGuire have been looking into child sexual abuse in the recent past and present.
They have been doing their investigations with the help of the Mary Raftery Journalism Fund.
Further to this…
Mark Malone writes:
Your readers might be interested in this podcast around sexual abuse published today by Irish History Podcast. It’s not easy listening, but in the context of what it explore and uncovers, it’s necessary listening.
It includes information on how conservative Catholic activists acted in the 1980s to shut down Department of Education research into the nature and scale of abuse experienced by school kids in the family home.
From 8.33min in… “In 1981, the Department of Education surveyed school children and the results revealed child sexual abuse to be a considerable problem. However, in January 1982, Christina Bhean Ui Chribin and Una Bhean Ui Mhathuna took court action to prevent the department conducting further surveys. These women, deeply conservative catholic activists, reflected a view held by many in Irish society that the safest place for children was in the traditional family home.”
Listen here
Haunted by our history: Ireland and Child Sexual Abuse (Irish History Podcast)
Related: ‘I was eight when my brother started coming into my room’ (Peter McGuire, Irish Times)
Thanks Mark
Not the first time a Bean Ui Chribin interfered in a child abuse case, to the detriment of the children involved.
Evil people doing evil things shocker.
what is actually the logic there?? that the kids asked for it? that they’re just making trouble? that the abuse is better than non-nuclear structures?!
No the logic was that the Department and the State had no right to pry into family life. I contextualise the time in the podcast – its more about how the family is viewed in wider society than anything else.
Fin and Peter have done an investigation and discovered REALLY bad stuff happened ** SLOW CLAP**
Are you one of the Mac/Nic/Ui Cribins or the Mac/Nic/Ui Mathunas?
Thanks for the link – incidentally the court action failed on that occasion.
“Christina Bhean Ui Chribin and Una Bhean Ui Mhathuna took court action to prevent the department conducting further surveys. These women, deeply conservative catholic activists, reflected a view held by many in Irish society that the safest place for children was in the traditional family home.”
Would you blame people for thinking that most devout catholics do not consider child abuse a crime?
Though lay people are likely to have championed ‘the cause’. 1 and 4.
I need a qualification on ‘most’ in fairness.
Likewise. I know a bigly number of Taigs and none of them are what you’d call aficionados of the ol’ kiddyfiddling.
I am so glad we no longer live in an Ireland where part of the anti divorce campaign was “Stay with your violent husband in case he gets violent with someone else. Now you wouldn’t want to be responsible for that, would you?”
The mindset of the “traditional family home” brigade is deeply scary.
Can we do something to stop the Nic Mathunas’s reproducing? A scourge of a family.
The daughters are in youth defense and its many alternative guises.
Would love a timeline of their activities & family tree to work it all out.
This’ll get ya started, Dubloony. They’re a pox on our country.
https://comeheretome.com/2012/07/29/una-bean-mhic-mhathuna-40-years-of-reactionary-politics/
We owe a huge vote of thanks (and should be conducting weekly novenas) to these great Catholic ladies – mothers both – who strove so heroically to ensure that paedophiles and bum bandits of all description could escape the attentions of “de law” then, and into the future. These evils have existed since the dawn of history, and will probably continue, but the fight against them was severely hampered by these women and their like.
Was Ui Chribin that postwoman who only died a few years ago? Who inserted herself into that horrendous Cavan case?
I don’t say this often, but I hope she died screaming.
The very same KY – curses be upon her.
I’m sick of your lily-livered prevarication, man. What did you really think about her actions?