Patrick Walsh spent six years in Artane industrial school simply for having no recognised legal guardian.His father had left his mother and the state deemed her unfit to look after her children, even though Walsh and his brothers wanted to be with her.
Locked inside the Christian Brother-run institution Walsh displayed some musical skills and eventually played the clarinet in the famous Artane Boys Band.
But even membership of this iconic Irish musical group did not protect him from physical abuse.
"We were not excluded from the other aspects of the system. Violence was a constant companion at Artane. The Brothers seemed to get perverse satisfaction from inflicting pain on children ... Around 1968 I remember a former Christian Brother calling up to Artane and offering to take children out for the day in his mini-bus. This guy, even though he was no longer in religious orders, had the run of the place even at night time. He caught me one day on the corridor and only for a group of lads arriving I don't know what would have happened to me. Others I later found out weren't so lucky. He was a predatory paedophile who could come and go as he pleased."
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