Redress Board background

This is background for another post in the blog (see here)
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Sometimes we all think of ourselves as being in a part of a universe where most of the troubles outside our immediate vicinity are "someone else’s troubles" and not really like what we go through.

In a way that is a correct perception. No matter where we are, our own neighborhood/city/state/country are unique, with unique conditions and problems. Or perhaps not.

One of the dogged issues that has been plaguing us in the U.S. over the last several years that has been that of abuse of children by caregivers or others we thought that we could trust. Some of it in a faith-based background, others in a strictly secular setting.

Not many of us have paid attention to these abuses outside of the U.S., especially in the nations that our immigrant forebears hailed from. Including Ireland.. This perception, for Irish-Americans, was changed with the 2003 release of the Miramax film "The Magdalene Sisters."
Although the film focused on the Magdalene laundries, there was an entire network of "services" that the Church ran on the behalf of the government: the aforementioned Laundries, hospitals, reform schools, orphanages and so-called "industrial schools" (residential schools that "took in" children of indigent parents).

All run with the compliance of the government of Ireland, both pre- and post-partition.

More, under the fold...