The cruelty inflicted on boys in industrial schools is perhaps the darkest stain on our history since independence.Boys, who were frequently incarcerated at the schools simply because they were orphans, were routinely flogged naked, and many were sexually abused by Christian Brothers.
Those in powerful positions in the Catholic church and in government turned a blind eye to the evils inflicted in institutions that have been aptly described as the "Irish gulags''.
Back in the early 1990s, Patrick Touher helped to expose this scandalous abuse with his account of life in Artane Industrial School, Fear of the Collar.
The book became a bestseller in Britain, with Patrick characterised as "the boy they couldn't break''.
Now Patrick has written a follow-up, revealing the full story of his life. Scars that Run Deep tells how Patrick struggled to adjust to life after Artane, and also explores some of the terrifying episodes in his boyhood, including how he was seized and taken away from his foster family to become a virtual prisoner in the industrial school.
Patrick, now a widower, welcomed me warmly at his home in Balbriggan, picking me up at the train station. He proudly showed off pictures of his family, including his late wife, Pauline.
These are ordinary mementoes of family life. How he managed to turn his life around after years of abuse in Artane is itself something of a minor miracle.
Patrick, an orphan, was living in a whitewashed cottage with a foster family, the Doyles, at Barnacullia on the edge of Dublin. He was just approaching his eighth birthday when his life was suddenly turned upside down. As Patrick puts it, "it was never explained to me who I really was''.
And it was not explained why one day, the Gardai arrived to take him away.
"On the evening before we saw a big black car in the area and we were very excited. Little did I know that the car would come on the following morning.''
Patrick was told he was going somewhere, but he did not know where. Decked out in a new suit and shoes, he was told by a tall Garda, "Come with me son," and then he was taken away.
Driven to a courthouse in Kilmainham, he was told by a judge: "I am sending you to Artane Industrial School.''
"As far as I knew the Doyles were my family, but suddenly I was treated like a criminal. When I arrived in Artane, I was given a serial number 12928, which was stamped on my shoes and clothes.''
At Artane boys were flogged for the most minor misdemeanours. They were whipped for being among the last boys into the washroom, or wetting the bed.
"As we stood there we'd be beaten across our naked bottoms, six of the best with their iron-hard leathers.''
Early on, in his period in Artane, he saw a boy being beaten 365 times with a hurley stick -- once for every day of the year. He was then taken down to the infirmary.
Patrick was first sexually abused by two brothers in his first year and this continued sporadically until his release.
"I was sometimes abused, often hungry and always scared. I had nightmares and I would walk in my sleep.''
Despite the suffering which he endured, Patrick is even-handed in his descriptions of the Brothers.
"For the most part, the vast majority of the Christian Brothers were of good stock. There were good men who were not so hard to us kids in care. But there were also the sadists and paedophiles.''
After he stepped out of the gates of Artane for the last time as a 16-year-old, Patrick did not know where he was going. He got a bus into the centre of Dublin and arrived in O'Connell Street, not even knowing where he would stay.
A Garda pointed him to the Catholic Boys' Home, a halfway house for boys who had left school, but had no homes to go to.
Going from Artane into the Catholic Boys' Home was like stepping out of the frying pan into the fire. It was a tough, unruly place, where sexual abuse was also rife. The only difference was that the abuse and bullying were inflicted by the boys themselves on each other. He got a job with a baker in Fairview.
Patrick says it was difficult to fit in with normal life outside the institution that had dominated his life for eight years. Even after he left the boys' home and moved into digs, he struggled to adjust.
"I found it difficult to fit in at work. I couldn't relate at all to people who were not ex-Artaners, and I had no idea about girls.
"I remember I first began to feel normal when I went on holiday to the Isle of Man and I danced with English girls.
"The Brothers taught us to hate the English and they also forbade us from playing soccer, a foreign game. You could be beaten for playing soccer. It is curious that I now like English people very much and I ended up becoming a soccer referee.''
In the decade that followed his release, Patrick was a wandering spirit, moving between Dublin, England and Jersey. And he ended up boarding a Russian liner for New Zealand, where he ran a bakery for a time.
In 1972 he eventually settled down back in Ireland, marrying Pauline. They had three children together.
Patrick's life was at last on an even keel. But he still had to face his demons.
Artane Industrial School was closed in 1969, but it was many years before the abuses there were publicly exposed, most notably by Patrick himself.
In 1999, the Government set up a Commission of Inquiry to look into child sexual abuse in the semi-state boarding institutions, and he was interviewed by detectives.
He eventually received a settlement in compensation for his suffering. He is not bitter towards the Catholic Church.
In a tribute in his new book, he expresses his gratitude to Bishop Dermot O'Mahony for his help at the time of the death of his wife.
Patrick wonders how different his life would have been if he hadn't been sent away as a boy of seven. "Artane was the complete opposite of my life until then. Christian Brothers, who were charged with looking after us, in fact tormented and sexually abused us.
"We orphans, with no family to worry about us, were placed there by the state, forgotten about by society and used at the Christian Brothers' pleasure.
"But if I had stayed in Barnacullia, content and happy, would I ever have had the drive to travel, to see and live in exotic countries? Possibly not. You have to make the most of what you have been given. While Artane may have broken my body and cowed my spirit, it also instilled within me a drive to succeed, as a baker, as a family man and as a writer.''
Scars that Run Deep, is published by Ebury Press on Thursday, €8.99
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