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Ireland's Child Care Institutions during the 20th. Century. Fo'T: The most vivid and passionate stories - banished babies, cruel orphanages, old abuses of power - have concerned things that went unnoticed, or at least unarticulated, at the time. News has often had to be redefined, not as the latest sensation but as that which everybody knew all along yet could not say.

Monday, June 05, 2006

MINUTE AND EXACT DETAILS

The sisters of charity had TWO nuns employed FULL-TIME filling in the PUNISHMENT BOOKS.

This Book had a big E&OE stamp on it's wine-coloured cover. It was stated at the commission this week that if a child wet his bed he was made to stand by his bed for 4 or 10 minutes, then he was slapped and he had to carry his own sheets down to the laundry. In a dormitory of with 100 boys no child is going to wait 5 or 10 minutes for his punishment - what actually happened was that we were lined up in single file against the wall in the dormitory and one-by-one we were taken into the nuns cubicle where our trousers were taken down and we were lashed with with a stick (sister beard) or lashed with a leather strap (sister moustache). Us children waiting in line for this PUNISHMENT were terrified and formed huddles where we tried to comfort each other - in this way we gave each other strength and courage; and our biggest fear here was that we would cry, NOT that we were going to get hit (being hit was a regular occurence) or that there was going to be pain (pain was a constant) - THAT was our fear - Crying was a NO-NO. After being hit we then had to take our sheets to the laundry where we had to load the sheets into the drum. Then we had to scoot along to our first helping of bread and dripping but, because we had being in the PUNISHMENT LINE in the dormitory, we had missed this and so we were put into the PUNISHMENT LINE in the refectory where the CYCLE OF PUNISHMENT continued. Hungry and beaten we scooted then to our "classrooms" and because we were late we were placed in the PUNISHMENT LINE and at the end of "lesson" we were caned.

So when we hear of the phrase PUNISHMENT BOOK think PLURAL. The sisters of charity and the christian are NOT missing A PUNISHMENT BOOK, they are BEREFET OF PUNISHMENT BOOKS - SEVERAL VOLUMES of these E&OE BOOKS PER MONTH.

Yes I believe that SHELVES AND SHELVES AND SHELVES of these PUNISHMENT BOOKS are deliberately "missing". How these orders could attempt justify the MINUTE AND EXACT DETAILS carefully written into into these VOLUMES and at the same time claim lack of funds and lack of staff is something we will never learn because THESE BOOKS ARE MISSING.

Allegedly ..........

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