Abstract
This chapter argues that there was a suppression of any public acknowledgment of the reality of sexual crime, immorality, child abuse, family breakdown and poverty in the Irish Free State. A tactic borne of a desire by the post-colonial elite to preserve the nation’s founding myth of religiosity, purity and virtue, seen as central to the survival of the State and its religious mission. It was a crusade to create a cultural myopia, prosecuted by Church and State, through legislative and non-legislative means. A cause pursued so vigorously that it left those who bore witness to the illusory nature of the founding myths, no matter how inadvertently, to be branded as other, non-Irish, anti-Catholic, taboo figures to be feared and despised. A reality that contributed substantially towards the unchecked abuse of children in Ireland’s industrial and reformatory schools for decades to come.
Original language | English |
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Title of host publication | Agontology, Power and Harm: The study of Ignorance in the Criminological Imagination. |
Editors | Alana Barton, Howard Davis |
Publisher | Palgrave Macmillan |
Publication status | Accepted/In press - 12 Feb 2018 |
Keywords
- Child abuse
- Ireland
- Censorship
- Church
- State
- suppression
- secrecy