I started this story because I like to write, and the journey of it evolved into something else as it went along. Therapy it was not, but more incredulity that it happened at all. I guess any biography can bring deep emotions to the surface unless a perfect life had been your lot. My life was a roller coaster of feelings long suppressed and hat was as good as it got in the writing of it. There is still a faint lingering anger mixed with a certain relief about that first twenty one years that not even the abstract counseling of a shrink could help me with, and God knows some of them could do with a lot of help themselves. The relief part came when about twelve years ago I went to see a long forgotten cemetary of an industrial prison that had closed down in the late nineteen eighties, sitting on the edge of the village of Letterfrack in Galway. This neglected acre of ground would have few visitors for fewer even knew who these souls were or why they were even here, separated in death as they were in life from loved ones. In that life too they could have been legally beaten and locked up in a cell on bread and water even though they were children, and there was much worse in their history. Two headstones with over seventy names written on it told you only the date that they passed away, but not a hint of how they had lived or died. Many more did not have a headstone to mark their passing. They all had one thing in common, they were all children and I could have been one of them.

We shared a history when 'Ireland's Republic' was represented by Church and State that imprisoned over 200,000 children in the name of God and money, and has tried to lie about it ever since. This happened in a small country at a time when the population rarely exceeded 3,500,000. In that time we were never mentioned in the struggle for independence or freedom north or south, and never mentioned in the tourist brochures or film documentaries of recent yesteryear. The fact we were never mentioned was that we did not exist at all. At least not until now.

The dust has settled a bit since that time. A more enlightened world has come to Ireland if nothing else, a light helped by the young where they have been taught awareness early, and individuality means just another point of view.

They have also been taught how to learn rather than what to learn and this is truly the beginning of all wisdom. Change has come and is still coming and is as unstoppable as the melting polar ice caps.

Church and state are now more like an old and bitter married couple that are divorcing due to irreconcilable differences. The division of properties is all that is left, our schools, universities, and hospitals. The religous owns most of them and are already selling them off, holding on to those that gives them bloated grants. This is no more than returning your property for a ransom and renting the rest back to you, properties that were given to them by their former spouse in more veiled and darkened times. Now, at last that veil is lifting with the best yet to come. I hope anyway. For me, my life is happy and not far reaching for the living of it keeps me busy enough. To keep it that way I have been aided by a certain discipline to keep negative thoughts from my past out of my head, and most of the time this discipline works. Any residue of real anger has got eaten up with the passage of time though the coals of it alays remain shimmering below the surface. This coupled with the great individualists and writers of the past like Socrates, Marcus Aurileus, and others, have also kept me in a better state of mind. Then there are the people that really helped me for without them I would have surely fallen, and the forefront of that bunch is my wife, Renee and a message from history and the pen of Socrates: 'Be of good cheer for it is a truth that no evil can happen to a good man either in life or in death and let it not offend thee that I only tell you the truth'. In the end I hope the children of this story will be remembered and justice served for it has all yet to be written for their epitaphs and for those still living the dream.

All the places and names in my book have been changed to respect their privacy, except those that are strong candidates for sainthood. All rights have been reserved.

THE END 


I am not a writer but have a love of writing. I also believe this is an incredible story that happens to be true. If you feel as I do, please phone or contact me at the address listed below.

Sincerely, Barry Clifford