www.jamesdoyle.co.uk

SUNDAY WORLD ARTICLE 9/01/2002

On September 1st the Sunday World, Ireland's largest circulation newspaper did an expose on the child abuse that my brother Patrick and I underwent in our childhood years.  The investigation and article were done by James McDonald, one of Ireland's most respected reporters.

The headline of the article reads: THE MOST EVIL MUM IN IRELAND: TWISTED REIN OF TERROR OVER HER TWO SONS".   The article and I quote, contained the following:

"Today the SUNDAY WORLD exposes one of the most grotesque

child abuse scandals in the history of the State.

We lift the lid on an unprecendented reign of terror that senior authorities

say lasted more than 16 years.

We reveal how two brothers, Ken and Patrick Doyle, from Tullamore in Co, Offaly,

were severely abused and neglected by their mother, the Christian Brothers,

the Gardai, and the Midland Health Board.

During their childhood, the brothers were starved, tortured, brutally beaten,

and forced to steal by their mother.

When the Midland Health Board finally removed the boys from their home

at 3 Pearse Park, Tullamore, they were sent to state institutions where

they were raped and sexually abused.

Now, after 25 years in hiding, the two young men have returned to Ireland from abroad

to give official statements to the Tullamore Gardai and to tell the

Irish public of their bizarre and monstrous past."  Copyright Sunday World

Response from the people of Ireland has been gratifying.  Patrick and I had to expose what we went through in the hope that this kind of abuse in Ireland would stop.  In addition, it was meant to be a wake up call to the Gardai and the Irish Health System to look for abuse, to see the warning signs and to put a stop to it when it first rears it's ugly head.  But unfortunately in 2008 things are the same in Ireland as they were in the 1960's.  But more of the ongoing situation in Ireland on a later page.

We have heard from people in Tullamore, who have told us directly or through others that they knew something was wrong but did not know what.  One schoolmate of Ken's recently told him that he remembers Ken searching through the trash cans for food at the school they attended in Tullamore.

One letter published in the Sunday World states:

"SHAME ON EVIL MUM

R.E.: last week's article Ireland's Most Evil Mum

I'm sure I'm not the only reader who felt hate for that woman,

and the pain for those two men.

To those men, the country that once let you down

is behind you now."  (Signed) Anna

Our lives have been ruined.  Our childhood taken away from us.  Our futures in doubt, becasue the absue still haunts us.  Mentally we are wrecks, both suffering from PTSD.  We can't even sleep at night because we fear Mrs. Doyle is coming for us to continue her abuse.  Both of us wake up screaming in the middle of the night from the nighmares of what happened to us.  Our physical state continues to deteriorate with each passing year because of the abuse suffered at the hands of this Evil Mum.  Patrick has heart problems among other ailments directly related to starvation and beatings.  Kenneth has severe back problems that doctors have attributed to the starvation and abuse in childhood. The leg the mother broke still bothers Ken after all these years.  And both of us never received an education in Ireland because we missed so many days of school due to the abuse.

What we have tried to do with the Sunday World article and the web page is to tell parents and professionals what to look for if one parent is abusing a child.  No child should go through what we had to go through.

 

3 Pearse Park, Tullamore, Co Offaly, Ireland

The Doyle House of pain and torture.

Pearse Park, Tullamore, Co Offaly, Ireland

With canal in front: so often I wished I could go fishing on

the canal but Patrick and I were prisoners in the house. Now

we both go fishing whenever we can.  Patrick off Swansea and I on

the Delaware River at the end of my street or on the New Jersey Coast.

Kenneth and patrick doyle