Sins of the Mother

by Irene Kelly

  That night I reassured Jennifer that her mum was on the mend – she seemed very relieved but, still, I didn’t tell her all the ins and outs of what was happening. How could I tell our teenage daughter her mum had wanted to die?

  When Irene returned three days later, she was pleased to be home but also grateful for the continuing support from her psychiatric team. She still had intensive daily counselling at the hospital and regular meetings with her psychiatrist. It was paying off – she no longer locked herself away in cupboards or banged her head against the wall, and she spent a great deal of time writing her poems and her diary. Now, when I offered her a slice of toast, she agreed to half. After a week, she was eating a whole slice and after four months she was up to a healthy nine stone. I had my Irene back again!

  Then her solicitor got in touch – they had sent her psychiatric reports to the Redress Board in support of the evidence she gave at the trial and the Board had increased their offer of compensation by a few thousand euros. But there was still no admission of the nursery abuse. Irene rejected the second offer and, six months later, she returned to Dublin to appear before the Board again. I was terrified that this would jeopardize her recovery but she was determined and I couldn’t do anything except support her.

  ‘I won’t be called a liar,’ she said to me the night before she left. This time Jennifer had to stay at home because she was sitting her exams, so Irene was going over on her own.

  ‘What does the psychiatrist say?’

  ‘She told me that I wasn’t the only woman to say these things. We can’t all be liars. Everything that’s happened to me has happened to others too – if they call me a liar, they call us all liars. Well I won’t stand for it.’

  I had to admire her – the old fighting spirit was back. After all the pain and the trauma of the past six months, she wasn’t going to be beaten down.

  Still, on the day she was due to give her evidence again, I was a bundle of nerves. I couldn’t sit still for a second and lucky Bess got three walks that day as I tried to burn off all my nervous energy. I didn’t know how Irene would react if they rejected her evidence a second time – was she stronger now? Could she cope? It was so hard to say. In the past six months she had made real progress with her counselling but there were still tough days, days where she couldn’t face the world, couldn’t get out of bed. She was writing a lot of poetry now, which I knew helped her, but I was terrified that another rejection would tip her over the edge again.

  I was on tenterhooks that evening, desperate for and yet dreading her phone call at the same time. I couldn’t concentrate on anything for more than a few seconds before getting up to check and recheck the clock on the kitchen wall. Why was time dragging by so slowly?

  Finally, at 8 p.m., she called.

  ‘How did it go?’ I asked straight away.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Irene replied thoughtfully. If she was upset, it didn’t show.

  ‘What do you mean, you don’t know?’

  ‘Well, I said my piece. I went in there and I told my barrister that I didn’t want him to speak on my behalf, I wanted to speak for myself. And I did – even though I was nervous, you know, really nervous. I told them, “Look, you can call me a liar all you want but I know the facts. I know what’s happened to me. I was there. And I haven’t come here looking for money. You can shove your money. I want an apology, a public apology.’’’

  ‘What did they say?’

  ‘They said, “Oh, so you’re expecting us to go public and say we’re very sorry, Irene?” I said, “No, I want those nuns to take responsibility for what they did to us because they’re getting away with murder. Not one nun has been arrested, not one nun has come forward,” and “yes, these things did happen.” They’re still denying it!’

  ‘Oh wow! Irene, you really gave it to them!’ I was so impressed. It must have been so hard for her to get up and say those things to the Board.

  ‘I did, Matt. I did. So then they said. “Well, we’re sorry.” But they didn’t sound sorry. They said it very matter-of-factly. And then they said they believed me because they had seen more women who had said the same thing.’

  ‘They believe you, Irene. That’s brilliant!’ It was a huge relief to hear that. I couldn’t imagine the people on that Board had any idea how much Irene’s sanity and our home life relied on that.

  ‘Yes, the barrister says we’ll get another offer now. But it’s not about the money – I just want somebody to take responsibility for what happened.’

  ‘Well, maybe they will now.’

  ‘I hope so.’

  Irene was home the next day and I was waiting with a cup of tea and a big hug – I was so proud of her! Just a week later she accepted an offer of 22,000 euros compensation which she couldn’t give away quick enough. She gave it to the kids and treated the grandkids.

  I overheard her on the phone to Anna one night, who felt bad about taking her mother’s money.

  ‘Don’t be silly,’ Irene was saying. ‘I WANT to give it to you.’

  Silence as she listened. I knew all the kids felt the same about this; their mother had gone through hell for this compensation. What right did they have to take it off her? But as I explained to them myself, it was never about the money for Irene. She could never have spent it on herself anyway, even if she wanted to. Irene didn’t want anything to do with the money. As far as she was concerned, the money was tainted – it represented a childhood destroyed by evil.

  Now she was quite cross.

  ‘Look, Anna,’ I heard her from the kitchen. ‘If it’s my money to do what I want with then what I want to do is spend it on my children and my grandchildren. I don’t get that sort of opportunity every day so really you’ve got no right to tell me I can’t.’

  It was only after she had spent it that we found out it was hush money, meant to buy her silence. Until the Redress Board published their report in 2009, we didn’t know that by accepting the money she could never speak publicly about what happened to her. That she could never identify the people who did it or even the place where it happened. When they signed all the papers for the compensation, she was aware of the fact that she was signing away her right to a private prosecution but she had no idea the contract included a confidentiality clause which prevented her going public. She thought that when the report came out all the evidence would come out too and the nuns would be punished. She was wrong.

  Under the terms of the compensation package, no nun, priest or member of staff in the orphanages could be publicly named or identified. The Catholic orders had done a deal with the government, which meant they couldn’t be prosecuted. So when the Ryan Report came out detailing all the abuses in 250 institutions and involving thousands of children, it didn’t name the abusers either. The nuns and the priests that had terrorized children for decades – beating them, raping them, torturing and humiliating them – they all got away with it.

  Irene, like so many who gave evidence, felt betrayed. If I had lost faith with the Catholic Church before then, I hated them afterwards. They had failed to live up to their own teachings and then, when they had been found out, they’d tried to cover it up. It was disgusting and hypocritical. What right did they have to tell anybody else what to do any more? They were finished. Morally bankrupt.

  But that wasn’t the end of the story. The fact was that, by their actions, these nuns and priests had created a generation of very damaged individuals. When these people got their compensation and they realized they weren’t going to get real justice, they killed themselves. We watched it happen in front of our eyes. There were men and women we knew, like Irene, who had gone through the rigors of the Redress system, bringing up all that pain again, only to be told that nobody would get punished. It was too much and they overdosed on drugs or drank themselves to death. The tragedy played out over and over again.

  It was far from the end of the story for us, either. Irene was still battling her demons and, unknown to us, our own daughter was sufferin
g too.

  When she was a little girl Jennifer was by my side the whole time; we were inseparable. She followed me about like my shadow, helping me with all the little jobs around the house, never leaving my side. I was so charmed by her and thrilled to be able to teach her and help her develop her talents. It wasn’t a selfless act – it fed my own soul to nurture her.

  There was an unspoken agreement between Irene and myself – we were leaving the past behind so our daughter didn’t need to know about our old lives and, in time, she learned not to ask. As Jennifer got older and excelled in school I became stricter, keen to push her as far as she could go and help her avoid the troubles that childhood can bring. I returned to Ireland occasionally for family funerals but I never stayed long and I never took Jennifer. She was innocent and I wanted her to stay that way as long as possible. Occasionally she went to stay with her Aunt Emily on Irene’s side, but I didn’t want her mixing with my family too much.

  Neither Irene nor I had had a proper childhood so we were determined to give that to Jennifer. We thought she was happy, we thought she had everything she could possibly want. But as time went on and she began to push at the boundaries, it became harder and harder to explain that we were only trying to do our best for her. I wanted to give her freedom as an adult – freedom to choose her own place in the world. But she definitely didn’t see it that way.

  We had worked so hard to protect Jennifer from our pain but in the end we became like strangers to each other. In 2010, just after starting her medical science degree at Manchester University she moved into her own flat. I was so proud of her and proud of everything she had achieved. I thought we had done it – we had managed to break the cycle of our past. She had achieved freedom. Only it came at a cost . . .

  21

  JENNIFER

  Understanding

  MANCHESTER, 2010

  ‘Will you meet me in town?’ It was rare for Mum to call me up, but even more unusual for her to ask to meet me anywhere. I had been living on my own for the past five months and it irked me that her and Dad had only visited once.

  Now nineteen, I lived in a small, one-bedroom flat with my boyfriend Arnie, just on the outskirts of town. It had been exciting moving out but the day itself was tinged with sadness. Dad had refused to come and help me with the move so in the end I had made three journeys in Arnie’s car to get all my stuff and I hung all my own pictures. Now I was constantly on the go, trying to keep up with my studies, and waitressing nights and on the weekend to pay the rent and the bills. Most nights I fell into bed completely exhausted. There were no wild freshers’ parties for me, no drunken nights on the town – I didn’t really drink and, in any case, I needed to save every penny to pay the bills.

  ‘You’re so boring!’ complained my friend Kim one day after I turned down an invitation to her house party. ‘You never want to do anything!’

  ‘I can’t help it!’ I shot back defensively. ‘I’ve got to work. I don’t really have any choice in the matter.’

  I was rattled by her accusation, but also resentful. I couldn’t afford to be exciting. I didn’t have wealthy parents supporting my years through college like Kim. Her parents gave her enough money to live off in the term time and then she went home in the holidays where she picked up her easy part-time job to buy herself nice clothes. In Kim’s world, going to university was normal, expected even. But to my family it was amazing – nobody in my family had ever been to university, most of them hadn’t even finished school. I knew my parents had been very proud of me when I’d got into Manchester University to study medical science, they just didn’t have the money to help me out. Both on benefits, they struggled to make ends meet.

  I was desperate to leave home as soon as I turned eighteen. I wanted to live my own life, away from my parents and their strict rules. I had bought myself driving lessons and passed my test first time, and now that I was with Arnie it felt like we needed our own space. Dad had spent so long forbidding me to have relationships that he couldn’t get his head around the idea of my boyfriend coming to spend the evening with us. Just sitting in front of the TV with them both was unbearably awkward and I knew Dad didn’t trust Arnie. He made his feelings perfectly clear, even if he never spoke. So I think it was a relief to everyone when I told my parents I was moving out.

  They couldn’t say anything – I’d done everything they’d asked of me. I had stayed in school, out of trouble and worked hard, achieving two As and two Bs in my A levels. When I got my results through, I was ecstatic. I showed Dad and he gave me a half-hearted pat on the shoulder. I couldn’t remember the last time I had hugged either one of them. Arnie said I wasn’t a cuddly sort of person and it made me realize that he was right. Growing up without physical affection from my parents had made me that way, and even though my sister had liked to hug me, she’d left home years before, so I got used to keeping my distance. I shied away from touching people and loathed public displays of emotion.

  Now I sat at a window seat in McDonald’s, sipping at my tap water and watching the busy street thrumming with activity. It had taken two buses to get into town and it annoyed me a little that she hadn’t wanted to come to the flat. After all these years controlling my every move, it was like I had moved out and they had forgotten all about me! I glanced impatiently at my watch – another three hours before I had to start work in the hotel restaurant near my home. I was on late shift so that meant I wouldn’t get in before midnight tonight. I sighed – I’d already done a full day of classes and now I was looking at doing another full day’s worth of work.

  Mum was ten minutes late and, when she found me by the window, she seemed edgy and nervous.

  ‘I have to go to a therapy session with a nurse,’ she explained. ‘They need to assess me for my disability allowance. It’s not far from here – would you like to come?’

  ‘Okay,’ I shrugged. I hadn’t planned on spending my only spare hours this week in a therapy session but then, this whole meeting was odd and out of character. Mum never invited me to go anywhere, let alone her therapy. She still didn’t like to talk about her past, despite having a full-on breakdown after we got back from Ireland in 2007. She didn’t even like to mention the fact that she’d had a breakdown at all, though of course I knew she had got money from the Redress Board for the things that she suffered in the orphanage. I didn’t know anything more than that, though. I just guessed it must have been serious because they gave her a lot of money and no organization gives away thousands of pounds for nothing.

  At the time, Dad had played it down, telling me Mum was going away for a rest and she’d be back when she was feeling a bit better. He made out that this was all very normal and I wasn’t to worry because he wasn’t worried. He drove me mad sometimes – I had seen her! She was a complete wreck! And of course I worried about her. I didn’t want to lose my mum – I knew that people who were depressed did stupid things like try to top themselves. I also knew that Mum was worryingly thin. But no one talked to me about her illness and their refusal to include me made me feel like an unwelcome intruder in their lives. In the end I didn’t bother asking for information, I just counted the days until I could leave home and start my life on my own.

  Mum and I chatted on the way to the clinic for her appointment – she asked if my coat was new and I told her pointedly that I hadn’t bought any new clothes in months. She brought me up to date on Dad’s latest successes in the garden and then said he was thinking of getting another shoal of discus fish.

  ‘Why does he keep getting those stupid fish?’ I asked irritably. ‘They only die on him!’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Mum sighed. ‘But he won’t give up. He’ll manage it one day.’

  We walked into a clean and well-ordered reception area and Mum gave her name to the woman at the desk. There were pot plants in one corner and, in another, out-of-date magazines on a low table. I shuffled through the selection – the latest one I could find was already nine months old. We sat in silence as I flick
ed through my well-worn copy of Reveal.

  At around 4 p.m. we were shown into the small, tidy office of a psychiatric nurse who had the job of assessing my mother’s suitability for disability living allowance. The nurse was a plump, breathless woman in her mid-forties with a kind, if tired, face. She invited us both to sit down and then introduced herself as Cynthia.

  ‘I’m so sorry to have to bring this all up again, Mrs Kelly,’ she addressed herself to my mum. ‘I know this is incredibly hard for you but it is necessary for the purposes of this assessment. Are you okay with that?’

  Mum folded her arms stoically and nodded.

  ‘And you are . . . ?’ Cynthia’s voice trailed off as she looked at me. She wore round wire-framed glasses and a smile of professional sympathy.

  ‘I’m Jen,’ I told her simply. ‘This is my mum.’

  Ah, okay.’ Cynthia’s eyes creased and she made a little note on the top of her form. ‘Jen – are you familiar with your mother’s background?’

  ‘I . . . eh . . . er . . .’ I didn’t know how to answer. The truth was that I didn’t know much at all beyond the basic facts. But it was uncomfortable to admit this to a stranger, like I didn’t really know my mum.

  ‘No,’ Mum jumped in. ‘She hasn’t heard much. I haven’t told her.’

  ‘Okay.’ Cynthia turned back to my mum. ‘Well, look, let’s get going, shall we? I understand this goes back to your earliest childhood . . .’

  Mum breathed in hard through her nose and looked up to the ceiling as if steeling herself for a long, uphill climb, then she started: ‘They called me Monkey Face . . .’

  And that’s when it all came out. For the first time in my life, I heard about my mother’s truly appalling childhood. I heard about her abusive mother and her absent father, the poverty, the overdoses watched by her and her siblings, the spells in various orphanages until the time the children were made wards of the state and sent to St Grace’s. Then I learned of the terrible abuses that went on there. I heard about what they did to my mother and other children in horrible, graphic detail; the beatings, sexual abuse, the daily ritual humiliations. Then I learned about the children returning to the family home, the way my gran forced my mum to work at thirteen, the way she beat her with a metal chain. And then the rape, my mother’s abusive first marriage and how she finally escaped to England with my dad to get away from my gran.