Gates to Blackrock College or Gates to Hell?
Unity of Voice. Unity of Purpose.
One Voice is happy to report news that the RTE Radio Documentary on One "Blackrock Boys", which aired on Monday, 7 November 2022, has been nominated for the prestigious Amnesty International UK Media Awards 2023.
The documentary concerns the true life stories of two courageous brothers, Mark and David Ryan, who were sexually abused at Blackrock College in the 1970's.
Nearly 30 years later, the two men reported their abuse to their parents, the police (An Garda Síochána) and the Spiritans (a.k.a. the Holy Ghost Fathers) who were the religious congregation involved in the running of the prestigious boys college in Dublin, Ireland.
It is a shocking insight into clerical child sexual abuse in schools in Ireland. It is an indictment against a Catholic religious congregation and the Irish State, which allowed such depravity to prosper, and which failed to provide any protection at the time, despite knowing of it, to children forced to attend school under the School Attendance Act 1926, and all its subsequent iterations.
Desperate to seek justice for their horrific viollations recounted by Mark and David, their case is to fail in a Supreme Court decision in 2006. The failure to vindicate the boys was a profound blow to them, intensifying their suffering and that of their father in particular.
The programme caused a sensation in Ireland and internationally and led to the calling for an national inquiry by survivor campaigner Mark Vincent Healy, founder of One Voice, when asked on RTÉ Prime Time, by Miriam O'Callaghan, the day after the documentary aired.
Not long afterwards, Mark Vincent sent an email to the Minister for Education outling the absolute necessity for an inquiry. The plea for a national inquiry was sent shortly before meeting with the minister on 23 November 2022.
A meeting with Minister Foley was granted on the clamor caused by "Blackrock Boys" for a national inquiry, which clearly outlined the necessity of establishing statutory powers in gathering, accessing, processing, storing and deleting survivor sensitive data, yet to be defined in the inquiry's ‘terms of reference’ and to be agreed by a survivor-led process, and not a survivor-consulted process.
The RTE Radio Documentary on One was narrated and produced by Liam O’Brien. Executive producers were Seán Mac Giolla Phádraig and David Nally.
By way of background, RTÉ Documentary On One has won over 350 national and international awards - making it one of the most successful radio documentary units in the world at present - and the most successful programme strand in the history of RTÉ (in awards terms).
Amnesty International UK are delighted to announce the finalists for their 2023 Media Awards.
The 10 award categories celebrate excellence in human rights journalism from the past year and applaud the courage and determination of journalists and editors who sometimes put their lives on the line to report on vital human rights issues.
The judging panels were made up of high-profile UK journalists, former award winners and representatives from Amnesty.
The winners of this year’s awards will be announced at a ceremony in London, 26 April 2023.
The ceremony will be streamed live at 7.00pm via the awards website, and this event notice updated with the link to it.
"To the world you may be one person,
but to one person you may be the world"
Spirit of One Voice
