Sir, - You report (The Irish Times, April 23rd) that the investigation into the sudden death in 1970 of 13-year-old William Delaney has concluded that he died from an inner ear infection. May he rest in peace. What must not be allowed to rest are the inescapable and unresolved issues surrounding industrial schools and reformatories such as Letterfrack.
There remains the incontrovertible reality that many children were brutalised and degraded at the hands of some adults. A violently contemptuous and abusive approach to children and childhood was prevalent throughout society.
The cries of many children, forsaken and friendless in fearsome institutions, should haunt us today. Both Church and State failed vulnerable children in orphanages and industrial schools, many of whom were already very broken at a tender age and most in need of love and proper care.
The atrocities inflicted on these boys and girls are by no means peculiar to religious circles. Some of those attempting to form public opinion would have us believe otherwise. These are merely indulging their own prejudices and their own abusive attitude towards the Church does no service either to the truth or to those who genuinely suffered.
Nevertheless, the particular role of Church personnel and ecclesiastical structures in this evil is a monstrous scandal. This matter concerns not only individual religious orders but the entire Church. Many other Church-run schools and colleges, up until fairly recently, were imbued with the same mind-set of vicious contempt towards children and teenagers that was found in places such as Letterfrack.
The estrangement from the Church of a huge sector of at least one generation of Irish people is undoubtedly related, in some part, to the maltreatment and psychological violation they may have suffered at the hands of certain clergy, religious and laity who were supposed to be communicating Gospel values.
Cruelty, constricting terror, poisonous sarcasm and experiences of humiliation have left profoundly negative impressions. The damage to the Church's mission in society is lamentable. The truth of human dignity rooted in God's loving regard for each person was, for far too many, badly obscured if not altogether lost.
Victims of abuse must live, day and night, with wounds and disfigurements in their inmost being that cause indescribable anguish and desolation. The Church, by its very nature, must have hope and consolation to offer them. We will not be able to do so, credibly and effectively, until we have first put our own house in order.
Immense spiritual harm has resulted from the abusiveness that was deeply embedded in attitudes and behaviour towards children by some "religious" people. It is, therefore, imperative that the Christian community and its leaders come to the fore in seriously engaging with every aspect of this painful issue, through comprehensive and imaginative pastoral initiatives. - Yours, etc.
Father Patrick McCafferty, Glenview Street, Belfast 14.