THE death of journalist and broadcaster Mary Raftery has been marked with significant appreciation for her determined and courageous efforts to make the ‘dark secrets’ of our past come out into the light of truth.
Catholic archbishop of Dublin Dr Diarmuid Martin credited her exposés of clerical child sexual abuse on RTÉ television with making the Church a better place for children.
He also said it had made it a place that had learned many lessons.
Andrew Madden, the former altar boy who was abused by a senior Dublin cleric, said Ms Raftery understood the Church’s concealment of child sexual abuse was systemic, and that it could best be exposed by helping survivors to share personal experiences.
Mary Raftery was best known for her States of Fear documentary series, which revealed the extent of physical and sexual abuse suffered by children in Irish industrial schools and residential institutions. It subsequently led to the creation of the commission of inquiry into abuse.
In 2002, her Cardinal Secrets programme for RTÉ’s Prime Time led to the setting up of the Murphy Commission of investigation into Clerical Abuse in the Dublin Archdiocese.
The remit of that commission was extended by the government to include the diocese of Cloyne in January 2010. Its report on Cloyne was published last July.
Fintan O’Toole of the Irish Times, reflecting on Mary’s life, regarded her as ‘the most influential and finest journalist of the last 25 years’.
In relation to her life, O’Toole suggests ‘because of Mary, there are two groups of people for whom Ireland will never be the same again: the Catholic hierarchy will never recover the authority it lost when she exposed the systematic covering up of child sexual abuse; and Irish children will never again be so utterly exposed to systematic exploitation by those in power.
At a time when the values of professional journalism are being called into question, her work stands as the greatest examples anywhere of the capacity of a committed, skilled and eloquent reporter to change things for the better’.
Her final two-part series last September, Behind the Walls, revealed the harrowing story of Ireland’s psychiatric hospitals.
This chapter in Irish history regarded locking people into psychiatric hospitals for life as the norm. Per capita, Ireland had the highest rate of people locked away from family and community because of stigma and mental illness (the Soviet Union came a poor second).
Bishop Jim Moriarty, in his resignation statement over two years ago, bravely said: “I did not challenge the prevailing culture.”
That clerical culture covered up dreadful and criminal abuse. Mary Raftery brought a great gift to the Irish people.
Her investigative journalism, painful and sickening in its content, nevertheless lifted up the dark secrets of our culture and, with it, confronted this generation to engage with its content.
Truth brings us to a place of healing.
Because of this heroic and determined lady, our Church is now a much better and indeed safer place, having implemented best child practices.
Similarly, those who live with mental illness and depression find a more engaging and compassionate response than the high walls and mental hospitals.