The God Squad
Authors: Paddy Doyle
Paddy Doyle
CORGI BOOKS
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Version 1.0
Epub ISBN 9781407084251
THE GOD SQUAD
A CORGI BOOK : 0 552 13582 8
Originally published in Great Britain by The Raven Arts Press
PRINTING HISTORY
Raven Arts Press edition published 1988
Corgi edition published 1989
15 17 19 20 18 16
Copyright © Paddy Doyle 1988
The right of Paddy Doyle to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988.
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Printed and bound in Great Britain by Cox & Wyman Ltd, Reading, Berkshire.
For Eileen
Paddy Doyle was born in Wexford in 1951 and now lives in Dublin. He is married with three grown up sons. He is recognized as a leading disability activist in Ireland and has been a member of the government-appointed Commission of the Status of People with Disabilities.
A frequent contributor to television, radio and the print media on matters as diverse as the role of the church in caring for children to the legalization of marijuana for medical use, he is currently Chief Executive of the National Representative Council – a body established to ensure that the rights of people with disabilities are upheld. He has also travelled extensively throughout Europe and the United States, speaking at conferences about disability and child sexual abuse.
Paddy Doyle was the first recipient of the Christy Brown Award for Literature, in 1984, for a television play entitled
Why do I Bother
. Shortly after it was first published,
The God Squad
became a bestselling book in both Ireland and the United Kingdom. It also won the
Sunday Tribune
Arts Award for Literature. In 1993 Paddy Doyle was awarded a Person of the Year Award for An Outstanding Contribution to Irish Society by the Rehab Group.
For years I had believed my uncle to be dead. Attempts at correspondence, spanning over twenty years and including an invitation to my wedding in 1974, had failed to bring any response. So that Sunday in 1983 as I drove with my family from Dublin my feelings were of trepidation. The phone call telling me he was still alive and in hospital in Wexford had come about because of the media exposure surrounding my being awarded the first Christy Brown Award for Literature.
How was he going to react to me – or I to him? I was aware of going to see a man who was ill, but even more aware that he was the sole living relative I had – apart from my younger sister. He surely would give me the information I needed about my parents and my past.
On arrival at the hospital, crowds were lining the grounds for the removal of the remains of a local dignitary of the church. I left my wife and children in the car and moved through them, overhearing their comments about my appearance on
The Late Late Show
the previous night.
I was nervous and waited outside the ward before asking a senior nurse to tell him I had arrived, explaining to her
who I was and the number of years that had elapsed since he and I had last met.
As soon as I entered the ward we recognized each other and he began to cry. He was in some pain following the removal of his appendix and obviously distressed at seeing me. After awkwardly discussing his health, I asked him about my parents. At first he ignored my questions about them and would only reply repeatedly ‘You’ll be all right when I’m gone’. Finally I forced him to tell me that my mother had died of ‘the disease’ but he just wept when asked about my father, avoiding the question in every way he could. Eventually he revealed where my mother was buried but still consistently refused to say anything about my father. When I asked about photographs he said there were none.
Back in Dublin the suspicion of a conspiracy of silence which I had long held was reinforced and I was convinced that whatever happened to my parents had been deliberately concealed from me by the silence of a whole society and time. I knew so little that I even began to wonder if the man I called ‘uncle’ could in fact be my father. I discussed what had happened with a doctor friend and we decided that there had to be a way of getting to the truth. I was a man with no past. There must be someone who knew why I was sent to an Industrial School and somebody who could explain the origins or cause of my disability. Previous attempts at such ventures had failed. What past I did have amounted to a birth and baptismal certificate. Enquiries about medical records had yielded no results. I had no reason to believe that things would be any different this time.
Yet gradually the truth began to filter through as the thirty year conspiracy of silence slowly cracked. Unexpectedly I learned of the deaths of both parents in a
letter from someone who did know of my past. Though the information was scant it was filling great gaps. I began to delve further and with the help and support of my wife, I intensified my search.
I discovered that on the morning of August 15th, 1955, I was taken to the District Court in County Wexford, where I was found to be in possession of a guardian who did not exercise proper guardianship. Two days after my appearance an Order of Detention in a Certified Industrial School was drawn up and brought to the house I was staying in by a Garda for legal execution. The form was signed by the Justice of the Court. I was four years and three months old at the time.
In early June of that year my mother had died from cancer of the breast and six weeks later my father committed suicide by hanging himself from an alder tree at the back of a barn on a farm where he worked as a labourer. I was taken into court by a woman who was later described as ‘a sort of an aunt’.
Earlier at the inquest into my father’s death, my mother’s brother who had lived with us had given a statement which I have in my possession. Part of it reads:
‘I left the house at 8.15 a.m. this morning 15/7/1955. When I was leaving Patrick Doyle was in bed. On my return to the house this evening at 9.15 p.m. Patrick Doyle was not in the house. I looked around the back of the house and later went to the haggard where I found him with a rope around his neck hanging from an alder tree on the fence. I felt one of his hands and it was cold. His feet were about two feet off the ground.
‘I didn’t cut down the body. I sent word to the village with a little girl that was passing for someone to come down to me. Someone arrived in about 15 minutes. A priest from the nearby parish cut down the body. Since the deceased
man’s wife died about six weeks ago he has been worrying about her ever since. He was a labourer by occupation and about 52 years of age.’
A doctor had told the inquest that he had been called to the farm by the Gardai and after an examination had estimated that the time of death had been some twelve hours earlier. It appears that I witnessed the suicide and may have been found wandering on the farm in great distress.
It had taken me thirty years to discover the truth about the deaths of both my parents even though a death such as my father’s was likely to have made the local, if not the national newspapers, of the time. With that in mind I searched through old copies of
The Wexford People
in the National Library. There in the July 1955 edition I read the details of my father’s suicide, and the other events surrounding it. While searching through these papers I tried to find a death notice for my mother, but did not succeed. Reading a journalist’s report of the event made me realize that this was not a secret, unheard of event, but a public domain issue.
I began to pressurize my uncle for photographs, certain there must be some and that he could tell me where to look. A letter arrived at my home, containing a short note and two photographs: one of myself with a group of children on my First Communion day, the other of two women and a child in a buggy. The child was me, and the woman standing behind was my mother. Until then I had no idea what my mother looked like. Though she had obviously been a part of my early life, I had no memory of her. At 35 years of age I was seeing my mother for the first time. I didn’t cry, nor was I jolted in any way. Despite my best efforts I have as yet been unable to get a photograph of my father. I still have no idea of what he looked like, my only
memories of him are those that haunted me as a child. A faceless man hanging dead. A fierce determination set in to get any information I could, which eventually resulted in my obtaining the original Order of Detention, rust marks from a paper clip etched on it, statements of witnesses given at the coroner’s court and other papers pertaining to his death.
There were many times during the course of writing this book, that I questioned what I was doing, often frightened by the chill running through my body as I wrote. The support I received from people, particularly Eileen, my wife, was limitless. The impact of having to absorb one shock after another was at times very painful for her and she cried enough for both of us.
Many people familiar with the effects of institutional care, particularly Industrial Schools, will say that I have gone too easy on them. Lives have been ruined by the tyrannical rule and lack of love in such places. People have been scarred for life. Others will wonder why I bothered to delve into the past at all.