Mary Raftery recalls how she came to produce the ground breaking series 'States of Fear'.
The Louis Lentin documentary 'Dear Daughter' brought the abuse suffered by Christine Buckley and others at the Goldenbridge orphanage in Dublin to public attention when it was first broadcast in 1996.
The RTÉ series 'States of Fear' produced by Mary Raftery documented persistent abuse of children in industrial schools and reformatories run by religious orders over decades. When broadcast in 1999 'States of Fear' challenged how the institutions of the State and the Catholic Church had treated vulnerable individuals.
When Mary Raftery started out to make the series she had a hunch that everything Christine Buckley and the women in Goldenbridge had been saying was true.
Not only was it true about Goldenbridge but it was also true about the other fifty-one industrial schools throughout the length and breadth of the country.
With the support of researcher Sheila Ahern, Doctor Eoin O'Sullivan and the personal accounts of male and female victims of abuse Mary Raftery through 'States of Fear' set out to create a body of evidence that could no longer be denied.
As soon as we got into those files we realised actually, the State new all about this. The State knew that children were starving. The State knew that the children were beaten and the State ignored complaint after complaint even from their own officials.
'The Big Story Mary Raftery' was first broadcast 16 April 2010. The presenter is Michael Murphy.
