The Most Heartbreaking Speech You’ll Hear All Week

The Ryan Commission in Ireland is a government measure designed to look into the effects of child abuse since 1936. As you might expect, much of the abuse has to do with the Catholic Church and its schools.

Yesterday, former councilor and Mayor of Wexford Michael O’Brien addressed a panel running the commission. He spoke about the abuse he suffered and how he was ignored when he reported it. It’s powerful and heartbreaking at the same time:

It might be tough to understand the thick accent, but a transcript can be found here.

Here’s the worst part:

… Could I speak to you (comment directed to Leo Varadkar, of political party Fine Gael), and ask your leader, would you stop making a political football of this.

You hurt us when you do that.

You tear the shreds from inside our body.

For God’s sake, try and give us some peace.

Try and give us some peace and not to continue hurting us.

That woman will tell you how many times I jump out of the bed at night with the sweat pumping out of me. Because I see these fellas at the end of the bed with their fingers doing that (gestures) to me. And pulling me into the room, to rape me, to bugger me and beat the shite out of me. That’s the way it is.

It should matter if it’s a priest or a school official or just a pedophile on the street. All these rapists need to be in prison for life.

(via Cynical-C Blog)

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Bacopa

No transcript needed. Some aspects of this accent are common in some US Gulf Coast accents.

Religious people don’t have a sense of right and wrong. They are amoral sociopaths who should be mistrusted and excluded from positions of influence. Yes, I know some Christians are trustworthy; They are trustworthy because they are good people who have not let their Christianity corrupt them.

This is what the Abrahamic monotheisms do. They beat, rape, torture, and kill. Wherever they are are strong they seek to obliterate human freedom and dignity.

We must never forget they are the enemy. We can make alliances with some of their factions when it suits our interests, but we must never lose sight of the ultimate goal of having power over them. They have arms and legs, they speak and seem to love, but we should not be fooled into thinking they are like us. We have the responsibility to become stronger than they are so that abuses like this will never happen again.
CatBallou

Just wanted to say that the transcript should read “beat the shite,” not “bite the shit.” Very different concept!
ursulamajor

Well, there was my morning cry. And if I spend more time on the atheist blogs today, it probably won’t be my last. They call their religion one based on love. What bull*hit!
Hemant Mehta

Just wanted to say that the transcript should read “beat the shite,” not “bite the shit.” Very different concept!

Ha. Yes. Fixed now. Thanks!
LeeLeeOne

Got here in a round ’bout way through Pharyngula.

It breaks my heart to see such pain in this gentleman’s face and hear such agony and anger in his voice. I applaud his courage as well as the support of his wife.

Reminds me of the same evil that the Catholic Church also covered up for decades. This link provides the lyrics and a very clear, concise explanation/history behind the song.

http://jonimitchell.com/music/song.cfm?id=150

Thank you for posting this video and and thank you for the work that you do. Continue to bring to the forefront and speak of what religion for too many years has kept “unspeakable.”
Zar

It’s so horrible. It’s mind-blowing that something so unthinkable could happen to so many kids for so many years in modern times in a European country. It’s insane.
hoverFrog

I’ve finally got round to watching this and it has left me with a feeling of profound disgust in organised religion and in politics. At the end of religious social policy and political will are real people who have been hurt, neglected and abused. If this is a political trade off for some idea of the greater good then it isn’t worth it. It just isn’t.
Paul Lundgren

My take from my own blog post:

I want to once, just once, see one of these criminal scumfucks who cover for the rapists go to prison. Not the rapists themselves, but the enablers and coverup artists who get promoted for it. I’m looking at you, Cardinals Law and George. And I want to see priests treated with open suspicion to their faces. Not rudeness, per se, but I want people to start asking a hell of a lot of hard questions until these creeps get the point.

Sorry, Hemant, we can’t all be friendly atheists.
CheezChoc

Have you seen the documentary film Deliver Us From Evil? It’s about a priest named O’Grady who molested many kids in California for years and just kept getting transferred from one parish to another. The man who transferred him is Roger Mahoney, who is a bigwig in the L.A. Diocese now, as far as I know. He should be in jail. O’Grady eventually got moved to Boston and then to Ireland.
The kids he harmed are still suffering along with their families.