The inside story of eight long years spent in Artane Industrial School under the oppressive rule of the Christian Bothers.
Category: Biography/Memoir
Download Chapter one: In The Beginning
Life in Artane Industrial School was an education in cruelty and fear. Run by the Christian Brothers, the school has become synonymous with the widespread abuse of children in Ireland in the 1940s and 1950s and is currently under police investigation.
Patrick Touher's story bears testament to the courage and determination of the children who were forgotten by society. Sent there at age eight, Patrick Touher spent eight long years in Artane Industrial School under the oppressive rule of the Christian Bothers.
Patrick Touher reveals shocking new material about physical and sexual abuse by the fearsome and brutal Christian Brothers who controlled the school and the boys who lived there.
The story which couldn't be told - until now.
'Gripping in its honest and no-holds-barred account of one boy's sometimes tortuous trek through the grey underworld of Dublin's industrial school life during the 1950s ... Disturbingly, the grainy photographs are reminiscent of Russia at the turn of the century rather than an Ireland of only half a century ago.'
'A story ... which must be neither hidden nor forgotten.'
'It is a book of survival, of hardship, but also of friendships and solidarity despite the oppressive regime all the Artane Boys suffered in a society not willing or able to see its own faults.'
'he’s written powerful books on the whole ordeal, Fear of the Collar among them ... he’s written powerful books on the whole ordeal, Fear of the Collar among them.'