Sir, - I am disappointed that RTE's new-style weather forecasts generated more outrage than the victims of our industrial schools. Some broken survivors told their stories recently in Louis Lentin's Stolen Lives on TV3.
While the hypocrisy of those secretive days fills us with anger, it is debilitating to realise that we still lack the collective commitment to redress the pain inflicted on these abandoned fellow citizens. The permanency of their hell became very evident when the titles rolled at the end of the programme. The anticipated victim helpline number failed to materialise. There isn't one.
This week marks the 50th anniversary of a students' strike against brutality in St Eunan's College, Letterkenny. Certain staff members there engaged in a daily regime of physical and emotional humiliation. The senior students felt empowered to strike because, unlike the industrial schoolboys, they had a support system - caring mothers and fathers who saw to it that the beatings were curtailed, at least.
My own research shows that brutality was not confined to St Eunan's. It was commonplace in most of the diocesan colleges. There must be thousands of us out there who were thrashed daily in the 1950s and 1960s. And, having seen how the purpose of life has been torn out of the victims in Stolen Lives, I think it is long past time when we diocesan alumni should try to organise a support system for everybody out there who is still crying. My hat is in the ring. - Yours, etc.,
Terence Ferry, St Catherine's Avenue, South Circular Road, Dublin 8.