Old God's Time

Content Warning: The source material contains depictions of physical and sexual violence against minors. It also depicts suicide, drug abuse, acts of terrorism, violence, and murder.

In Ireland, through much of the 20th century, state-funded institutions that were run by the Catholic Church perpetrated widespread abuse of women and children. This institutional abuse played out against a backdrop of civic tensions and violence stemming from English colonialism and its aftermath.

In the 1800s, poverty and starvation were rampant in Ireland since the English colonial forces redirected resources to the Anglo-Irish upper classes and to England. From this period and through the early 1900s, institutions like industrial and reformatory schools emerged with the aim to help Irish children. They housed children who were orphaned, separated from their parents due to financial hardship, or because the state deemed their households to be unsafe or immoral. Usually, the conditions in these institutions were appalling.

The laundries were church-run workhouses where “immoral” women—often young, unwed mothers—were incarcerated. These young women were ostensibly meant to learn new skills that would grant them independence; but, in reality, this institution became a source of free labor for the church. The mothers were placed in different institutions from their children, and they didn’t have access to information about each other. In Old God’s Time, this is what happens to Tom: He is not an orphan, but the religious brothers who run the orphanage shame him because his mother was a sex worker.

These institutions expanded and solidified in the 1920s and 1930s. In the challenging aftermath of the Irish War of Independence, the Catholic Church—with its unifying ethos, resources, and extensive organizational infrastructure—assumed a prominent role in education, health, and social welfare. The state largely deferred to the church’s authority. Industrial schools closed through the 1960s as new social policies were introduced, but the last laundry didn’t close until 1996; until then, women continued to be incarcerated for immoral behavior, such as having a child out of wedlock.

In the 1980s, sporadic reports surfaced of physical and sexual abuse in church-run children’s institutions. By the 1990s, more people became aware that this abuse was a widespread phenomenon. Investigations found that physical, sexual, and emotional abuse were rife. Demeaning practices were common, such as shaving children’s heads as punishment or referring to them by numbers rather than their names. These institutions were careless with the children’s records, often destroying or misplacing them; the records were usually not accessible to the children. In the novel, when June says she has no history, she refers to this deliberate erasure of her past. There are high rates of suicide among people who survived these institutions; the novel captures this reality in its portrayal of June’s death.

Investigations in the 2000s also found that child sexual abuse by priests was endemic. In 2009, a report found that the state prioritized the protection of the church over the welfare of children. Soon after, the Prime Minister of Ireland formally apologized to victims for the government’s failure to intervene earlier. There were more cases of sexual abuse than the state could afford to put through a court; instead, a compensation scheme was established, which offered survivors a smaller sum than a court payout but with a less formal process. However, survivors reported issues with this process: They were sometimes cross-examined using information that had come from the religious order that had abused them; also, the payouts were made on an ex-gratia basis, so they were a gift rather than a legal acknowledgement of wrongdoing.

The Catholic Church was held partially responsible for the sexual abuse alongside the state, and it paid out large sums of money. In 2008, the Pope asked forgiveness for the church’s role in silencing reports about this abuse, and in 2010, he published a letter apologizing for the Catholic clergy’s widespread abuse of children in Ireland. He also established an investigative panel to look deeper into the matter.

The investigation uncovered widespread covering up of child sexual abuse by priests. For example, the Catholic Church used the practice of “priest-shuffling,” which involved moving a priest to another parish when his superiors suspected him of abusing children; however, they would not inform the new parish of their suspicions. The Norbertine order used this practice with Brendan Smyth, a priest who sexually assaulted at least 20 children; his superiors never reported him. In 2012, an Irish cardinal was called to resign because, during investigations, he only reported information about Smyth to church authorities rather than the police (“Cardinal Brady Will Not Resign over ‘Abuse Failure.’” BBC, 2 May 2012). This long-term subversion of investigations into Smyth by church and state authorities allowed him to continue abusing children. This is echoed in Old God’s Time: The police force’s decision to allow the archbishop to handle Byrne’s actions internally grants him more time to continue his abuse.