REMARKS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE AT THE OPENING OF THE CARI FOUNDATION ANNUAL CONFERENCE
REMARKS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE AT THE OPENING OF THE CARI FOUNDATION ANNUAL CONFERENCE BREAKING THE CYCLE
There are no bad boys. There is only bad environment, bad training, bad example, bad thinking – Fr Edward Flanagan.
Dia dhíbh a cháirde. Tá an-áthas orm bheith i bhur measc anseo ar an ócáid speisialta seo. Míle bhuíochas díbh as an gcuireadh agus an fáilte a thug sibh dom.
Good morning everyone - thank you for the warm welcome and the chance to open the CARI Foundation Annual Conference. My thanks to Caroline O’Connell, CARI’s National Director of Development for inviting me.
There is a saying that what is learnt in childhood is engraved on stone. It’s a chilling thought. Many years ago when my grandfather’s headstone was placed over his grave we noticed a small mistake in the text. It was a simple and small error but somehow the eye was always drawn to it. We asked the stonemason if it could be erased. He said it was engraved too deep in the stone and it would be best to start again with a fresh piece of granite. We don’t get chances like that with our children. We get one go around. If we engrave well we bring our children safely through the vulnerable precious and unrepeatable years of childhood. If we engrave badly the flaw we help to create may last a lifetime.
When we hear the word “childhood”, most of us spontaneously think with nostalgia to a time of enchanted innocence, before the cares of the world bore in on our consciousness. Much of what we saw and heard and experienced in those days is either gone from memory, or only dimly remembered, but its imprint is deeply embedded nonetheless, and as this organisation has cause to know there is an ugly truth in the words of Carson McCullers,
“the hearts of small children are delicate organs. A cruel beginning in this world can twist them into dangerous shapes.”
Brian Keenan’s great phrase “An evil cradling” could easily be used of the vexed subject for discussion today.
We have few illusions left about childhood, for its silently-suffered, dark side has had light thrown on it in recent decades. We have listened to the stories of childhood corrupted by abuse committed for the most part by people entrusted with care for the child and, importantly, for that child’s childhood. We have learnt a lot from those stories, about our society, its structures, its priorities. We have learnt a lot about the damage done to children and the deadly shadows it cast across their futures. And as we try to come to terms with these still emerging stories, this yet to be fully revealed set of truths, one awful aspect of the damage done is the challenge posed by the small number of abused children who go on themselves to engage in abusive or sexually inappropriate behaviour.
Their care is the concern of this conference and of this organisation. It is a care our society shares, for children whose experience of abuse so desensitises them to the inappropriateness of abusive behaviour, are destined to be, and to keep on being, problems. Finding solutions to these problems is as big a challenge as it is a necessity, and with the help of this conference I hope we find our way to effective answers by the quickest road.
In truth, of course, this whole area has been subject to such taboos and a culture of virtual omerta, to say nothing of the inarticulateness of the children involved until the damage is long done, that we are really only now beginning to seriously peel back those thick covering layers of concealment. We have a considerably better idea of the extent and effects of institutional abuse but the protective membrane that shields home abuse is still very hard to see through. Often the clues lie in the un‑self-conscious behaviour of an abused child who has little or no comprehension of the unacceptability of learnt abusive behaviour which he or she imitates or acts out.
The issues we face in coping with such children and their families, and their victims, are issues faced by other jurisdictions and it is reassuring to see the growth in international research, just as it is reassuring too to see the interdisciplinary nature of much of that research. What is also heartening is to see a more coherent and evolving child protection culture and the growth of appropriate services and supports for children who have been abused, and for their families.
CARI’s services, I know, play a most valuable role in the spectrum of services available to children and families affected by child abuse. It is to your great credit that through the past seventeen years your organisation rose so well to challenges posed by the coming to light of a long-suppressed and long-suffered story of child sexual abuse. You have helped many children and their families to cope with the appalling fallout that we now know is the legacy of such abuse and at the same time you have helped us, as a society, to face up to unpalatable truths which were ignored at too great a human cost for too long.
CARI’s record through the years has placed it in the best position to host this important event and to dare to believe that we can break the cycle. We come to this debate contrite and humbled by our ignorance, our misplaced trust, our failure to properly monitor the safety of children and our failure to listen carefully enough to the small voices who dared to speak out of their pain. The childhoods of all our children are a shared stewardship, a sacred stewardship. Children who abuse are a measure of how much work we have to do to ensure that childhood is a place of safety and not a place of danger.
I offer you my heartfelt thanks for giving your time, wisdom, experience and talent to this conference and this quest for answers which will help those tragic children who are at risk in Ireland.
Is iontach an obair ata ar siúl agaibh anseo. Go raibh maith agaibh.