Letters to the Editor: ‘Loneliness took hold of me in a school full of people’
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Let me tell you about being lonely. Research shows that Ireland is the loneliest place in Europe.
The way I see it there are two types of loneliness, the first is the literal interpretation: You might have no friends, you’re not so close to your family, not too many meaningful relationships, and you’re alone a lot with just yourself for company. The other meaning is the worst one, you could be surrounded by people, have a really big family, yet still feel so alone.
In my life I’ve experienced both.
Realistically I shouldn’t feel alone, I’m in a secondary school with almost 1,000 people, I’m a part of 20 different organisations and I have 10 siblings. I wish I didn’t feel how I do, I want to go back to when things were normal. When I wasn’t the loner kid crying over everything she lost.
I had a lot of friends once — like a lot; my smallest friend group had 10 people. Everything changed when we went into fourth year. And I get it, people grow up and sometimes they grow apart but I always thought that since we all started together maybe we could grow together. I guess I was wrong.
When you’re in fourth year or transition year (TY) you’re told it’s a year for change, on your very first day they take you out of the base classes you’ve lived in with the people you grew up with for three years and they mix you all up.
I understand the intended purpose of doing this, to let everyone meet the other half of the year; there are 160 people it makes sense they want us to get to know the rest of them but how is it that I was put in a class with none of my friends and out of my 10-person friend group, nine of them were put into the same class. I must just have the worst luck.
It started off slowly.
At the beginning, we would still sit together at lunch and we would talk but slowly I started noticing little things. Like if they went to the local shop at lunch and they all just didn’t notice that I wasn’t there or little comments that someone would make and everyone would laugh and there’s that awkward moment when you hear something that kills you inside but you just have to smile even though you know that if you said that to them there would be no forgiveness.
I tried to let things go and just move past it. I was in TY after all so I joined a couple of clubs in school and signed up for some TY courses. They were so much fun, they’re the reason I can’t fully regret TY because without it I never would’ve become an activist.
One day I came back from a week-long course I did on the future of education. I went to go meet my friends for lunch at our usual spot and everyone just went quiet. I tried really hard not to think much of it, but over the next couple of days the signs got harder to ignore, I would wave, smile, and say ‘hi’ to my friends when I’d pass them in the halls and their smiles seemed so forced like this was the last thing they wanted to be doing.
School life didn’t get any better, I stopped going to anything school related. I missed out on all of my TY trips, I didn’t even go to my graduation. I was just so alone all of the time. How do you go seven hours being surrounded by people talking and not having a conversation that lasts longer than two minutes. My entire personality in school died, I started getting quieter, my attendance got really bad, I started having trouble concentrating, and the last thing I had, my grades started to fall.
Truthfully, I’m not a whole person anymore and I don’t think I ever will be; parts of me died in those school halls. I visit them when I dream
If there ever was a need to prosecute entities like religious orders or the Catholic Church for criminal malfeasance, corporate manslaughter, neglect and abuse, then this is the time to enact legislation to support it.
The Government’s report into sexual abuse at religious-run boarding and day schools revealing the sexual abuse of children is a watershed moment for the Catholic Church and other religious orders in this State.
That it involved 308 schools, 884 alleged abusers, and 2,395 allegations of abuse is shocking as it is disgusting.
Who knew of this abuse and why wasn’t something done to stop it?
Where were those righteous religious lay people or those who oversaw these institutions, when these children were being abused? What were the other state agencies doing as they averted their eyes from what was happening?
How many of abusers, and those abused, are no longer of this world and how many more allegations of abuse are still to be investigated that have never, or never will, come to the fore.
While the Catholic Church and institutions insulate themselves from any criticism, by sticking to their core message of ecclesiastical dogma, that prevents women from being priests; divorcees or separated couple from receiving or giving communion or even absolution; this corporate entity or deity, has been exposed as a vile abuser and corrupter of children and the innocent.
I wonder do those who grab the altar rails, with their rosary beads in one hand, praying to our Lord, have any concept or idea the damage the Catholic Church or its religious orders have inflicted on its own citizens?
In light of yet more disturbing and heartbreaking revelations of child sexual abuse in religious-run schools, one is reminded that the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse revealed that thousands of children were raped and abused in Catholic schools across Ireland over decades.
The majority of allegations it investigated related to the infamous industrial schools operated by the Catholic Church, which were funded by the Department of Education. The commission’s report stated that the entire system treated children more like prison inmates and slaves.
One is also reminded of the 2009 Murphy report, which concluded that “the Dublin Archdiocese’s preoccupations in dealing with cases of child sexual abuse, at least until the mid-1990s, were the maintenance of secrecy, the avoidance of scandal, the protection of the reputation of the Church, and the preservation of its assets. All other considerations, including the welfare of children and justice for victims, were subordinated to these priorities.”
What these children needed was love, support, counselling, and justice.
Instead, they were met with cold, adversarial treatment by the Church, which harboured and protected their abusers, often moving them elsewhere, where many re-offended. The Church also fought tooth and nail against providing compensation to victims, leaving the State to pick up most of the tab. This continues to this day.
Children suffered similar horrendous abuse and there were similar cover-ups in Church-run institutions across the globe, from Canada to Australia. Yet this organisation still has a virtual monopoly over Irish primary schools.
There is no separation of Church and State in Ireland. What we have is integration of Church and State. And this rotten marriage has presided over decades of horrendous abuse of our most vulnerable citizens, our children, on an industrial scale.
As far back as 2009, then Archbishop Diarmuid Martin said that the Catholic Church’s near monopoly over schooling in Ireland was untenable and failed to reflect current realities. A recent Education and Training Boards Ireland-commissioned poll found that 61% of adults expressed a preference for multidenominational education, compared to 9% who expressed a preference for a religious body to provide education.
These latest revelations provide yet more evidence that we need to move to a school system worthy of a modern, democratic republic. One which values and protects its most vulnerable citizens.
Reading the introduction to the Irish government’s 2021 animal welfare strategy, one could be tricked into believing that the strategy itself would be ground-breaking in its legislative commitment to make the lives of animals significantly less traumatic and painful.
“Our starting point in developing this strategy is that animals are sentient beings who can perceive their environment and experience sensations such as pain and suffering or pleasure and comfort, and can give expression to these sensations — sometimes in ways that are easy for people to perceive and understand, and at other times not.” This is a remarkable statement. It signals a sea change in political thinking and would sit easily beside an animal rights charter. However, in the real world of Irish politics, it is meaningless, for the strategy itself is steady-as-she-goes, no need to change anything, make sure the industry isn’t hampered by unnecessary improvements in animal welfare regulations.
How can cramming 50,000 chickens into a single shed for their entire 40-day life honour their sentience? In the final days of a chicken’s life, the crippled bird is often unable to stand, due to its brittle bones and the massive upper body mass it must carry.
How can forcing a sow to have two litters a year while spending much of her life in a sow stall and a farrowing crate and her entire and cruelly short life in a huge, windowless shed, honour her sentience?
It’s all very well producing animal welfare strategies filled with colourful images of the perfect farm with seemingly healthy and happy animals, but a welfare strategy has to live up to its stated intentions. The very existence of factory farms makes a mockery of the government’s animal welfare strategy.
Gerry Boland, Keadue, Co Roscommon