This article was originally published 26 October 2012
OVER THE PAST two decades the issue of child abuse has dominated the Irish political agenda. Harrowing as the various reports have been Irish society has yet to deal with one of the most challenging and complex aspects of the abuse; how much did wider society in Ireland know?
A frequent response to this question has been that the vast majority of people never knew about child abuse until the 1990s. This does not hold up to scrutiny. Historians such as Diarmaid Ferriter have have pointed out that evidence in newspapers, court reports and government files indicate many people on all levels of society had varying degrees of knowledge of the abuse of children.
http://www.thejournal.ie/readme/column-we-must-stop-claiming-that-we-never-knew-about-child-abuse-649607-Jun2014/
