LETTERFRACK: The Irish Gulag. By Uncle Monty.

LETTERFRACK: The Irish Gulag.

Letterfrack Story By Uncle Monty.

Letterfrack Photos By Alex Albion.

Part One of Two.

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~~~

Lovely little yellow buttercups and bluebells in full

Springtime bloom densely marked the earthy and

grassy pathway to the tucked away inmate cemetery

of the Letterfract Industrial School for Boys that was

guarded only by two small rusting black iron gates with

a small metal cross on each one of them at day noon.

~~~
The second gate gave full view to the strange and sad

graveyard that had belatedly been erected years later in

memory of those 8 to 16 year old Irish lads that had died

at the savage and murderous hands of the wicked Irish

Christian Brothers from 1887 to 1974.

~~~
Small black marble heart-shaped burial markers en-

graved the names, ages, and dates of death of each of

 the young lads that had, for various reasons, been put

 in care of such a Letterfrack brotherhood and religious

order of Holy Cathoilc Church of Free Eire. Some of

the buried dead lads, however, had no given age for

 nobody knew their actual birthday or even when

 or where they were actually born in Ireland.

 So their burial marker simply stated: 

"Died A Very Young Boy."

~~~

The All-Irish Boy Cemetery was to me clear evidence of

what I can only call: “LETTERFRACK: The Irish Gulag”.
For that was what the Industrial School of Letterfrack

had become – a kind of brutal Sovietique gulag for the

poorest, for the most unloved, and for the rejected

and unwanted young lads of Catholic Ireland.
~~
As I then silently stood and angrily gazed upon the

isolated graveyard, I felt cold shivers running down

my Anglican back in fully realising now the true horror

and utter brutality that had been inflicted on at least 77

suspected murdered boys. They now laid quietly buried,

and almost forgotten, at the somewhat bizarre and

macabre Catholic graveyard all because of what the

Irish Religious Brothers had done to them at the

evil Letterfrack Industrial School.

~~~

Housing upto 100 detained and captive boys, from 7 to

17 years of age, the reform school it seems was also for

years upon years a kind of hidden and active homosexual

haven for adult male perverts or paedophiles of the

religious kind. Christian Brothers they were by name

and by dress and by seminary training, but by practise

totally unChristian and unGodly were many of them.

“An ape is an ape, even though dressed in scarlet,” noted

Shakespeare. The same is true of those dressed as Irish

Christian Brothers at Letterfrack, it seems to me, for

they were apish apes for the most part and not truly

Christian men of good Catholic virtue and high praise.

Apes, after all, shouldn't be allowed to work with vuner-

able children placed in so-called "care and protection"

by The Church and Republic of Ireland.
~~~
Roadside Entrance To The Letter-

frack Industrial School Graveyard.

~~~
Finally, in 1974, after intense public scandal and wide-

spread national publicity, Ireland’s own Archbishop Joseph

Cunnane of Tuam placed the whole estate of the Letterfrack

Industrial School up for sale. The remaining boys and

brothers then vacated the school that had been in

existence for over 85 years of physical and sexual

abuse against the hapless boys who had been sent to

the industrial school for street begging, for being home-

less, for being orphaned, or for having committed petty

crime or for simply running away from home.

~~~

It also appears that dysfunctional and illiterate

Irish parents oftentimes signed away their under-

age sons and/or daughters to the predatory and

sex wolves of the Irish Christian Brotherhood

without being aware of the cruel fate that would

await such marginalised youngsters once they

entered the likes of the Letterfrack Industrial

School. For some, the graveyard awaited them.

~~~

In collusion with the Catholic Church was the

Irish Garda (Police), too, who enjoyed the un-

healthy and unquestioning privilege of sending

unwanted or troubled boys and girls to such in-

dustrial (reform) schools all across the Republic

of Ireland with little or no safeguards for those

children once sent by the Garda under court

order to such brutal and menacing Church-

run juvenile institutions. The more kids they

sent, the more taxpayers money from the

government entered the coffers of both the

Church and the Garda based on the number

of kids placed in reform school care.

~~~
Letterfrack, however, led the way beyond

all the other industrial schools for its sheer

brutality and gross sex crimes against those

Irish lads abandoned forever to its wicked care.

Years later, a few of the Christian Brothers

were given short and token prison sentences

but most of them escaped from judicial punish-

ment for the murderous and abusive crimes

they had for years committed so brazenly

against Eire's poorest of poor children.

~~~

In 2002, Cardinal Desmond Connell himself, then

the Primate of All-Ireland and Archbishop of Dublin,

visited those convicted and imprisoned Letterfrack

Brothers. Such created vexation and strong criticism

among those representing the victims of abuse.

They felt the Cardinal had "not met the needs of

(the) victims." While that may be very true, I

think His Eminence, the Cardinal, was absolutely

right to visit his own imprisoned priests no matter

how terrible and criminal was their crimes against

children. The Joseph Pyke Research Trust repre-

sents the Letterfrack victims and it has repeatedly

called for a public inquiry, and rightly so, into the

diabolical deaths at the Letterfrack Industrial School.

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2002/1031/1033174067922.html

~~~

I only wish the good Cardinal had seen fit to have also

visited the same graveyard that I did to see with his

own Catholic eyes the evidence of the mindless deaths

of those young lads that had been almost certainly

murdered, and definitely brutalized before their

deaths, and then unashamedly buried by the wicked

and cunning mindset of the Letterfrack Christian

Brothers in broad daylight.

~~~

All was ignored then for years of what

was really going on as calculated steps were

obviously taken by the religious brotherhood to

hide the true horror and gravity of their constant

physical and sex crimes against the industrial

school boys in their care from public discovery

and media inquiry. They became a law unto them

selves and immuned from criminal prosecution

due also then to the conspiracy of silence between

the brotherhood and the civil authorities that didn't

want to rock the boat against the Catholic priest-

hood or felt the reform school boys even

"deserved the treatment they got!!"

~~~

At last, however, the devastating and hideous

Letterfrack story broke wide open in 1974. But,

alas, it was too late for those 77 dead boys I counted,

grave by grave, at their quiet and unfancy graveyard

just a stone's throw from the Letterfrack Industrial

School that had existed in utter social isolation for

decades by the sheer location and geography of the

community of Letterfrack itself that even today sees

only a bare population of less the 500 local residents.

Such was an ideal and secure place and cover for the

consuming tyranny and perverted sex drive and

skewed paedophile appetite of many of those Irish

Christian Brothers. Especially, going back to many

years ago from the late 19th century thru to the

mid-1960's when Letterfrack was clearly off the

beaten track for many from the outside world. It

still relatively is, even today, for there is only one

bus a week that goes there from Galway some

110 kilometers south east of Letterfrack. Some

maps don't even show where the place is ...

~~~

Ironically, it is amazing how such a small village

could produce one of Ireland's biggest ever priestly

abuse and sex scandals that it did. And, the Letter-

frack scandal is still reverberating to this very day

all across the Emerald Isle even after 35 years since

the Industrial School was forced to shut down and

at where most of the estate was later sold to the

Irish Government Office of Public Works in 1976.
~~~
In Part Two - entitled "Beyond Letterfrack" - I will tell

you briefly about James (who wouldn't give me his last

name) that I unexpectedly encountered at the Letterfrack

Industrial School cemetery just minutes after I got there

myself. He said he was age 74 and a retired Irish civil

servant at Dublin and now in retirement at Galway.

Also, I will tell you abit of how I came to find the Letter-

frack All-Boys' Graveyard thanks only to bumping into

a house painter called Shaun, who told me how to find

it and who is from Letterfrack himself and who knew

many of the sordid details of what had been going

on at his local industrial school. Without Shaun's

friendly help and open information, it is doubtful that

my visit to Letterfrack would have been as worthwhile

and as revealing has it was. Local information is usually

the best key. So more coming soon , with more photos,

on "LETTERFRACK: The Irish Gulag."
~~~
Truly, Uncle Monty.

+Day After Her Majesty's 83rd Birthday, 2oo9.

~~~

:: UPDATE ::

http://letterfrack.blogspot.com/

Thank you "anonymous" for sending the blogspot

on Letterfrack. I was unaware of it until you wrote

to tell me. It pleases me to add it here to my own

blog story on The Irish Gulag. So thankz ever

so much, again!! Your's, Uncle Monty.

~~~