WHO IS CHRISTINE BUCKLEY
On the road to self promoted sainthood, Christine Buckley has the credentials of any martyr. Being a woman in an island of yesteryear was in itself a challenge as well as being reared in and surviving an industrial Gulag prison. Having being abandoned by her father and mother, she like all the other tens of thousands of children, boys and girls, in these prisons made do with what little they had left and tried to survive. The rest as they say is history.
Christine, despite these disadvantages, did not just survive, she was given a Secondary School education while most inmates did not. Because of it she would go on to become a nurse. That’s the nun’s for you. If they hate you enough they may just educate you for spite. Today, an Institutional and tragic background gains the currency of understandable sympathy. It is when that sympathy is devalued by taking an advantage of the giver and fellow survivors is where the lines become more than blurred.
It is when one voice mandates itself as the voice of thousands without being mandated by them is where it becomes blinded; It is when the fourteen thousand and five hundred survivors from those gulags, which is more than 99.9.9% of the survivors, suffer as a result of that devaluation is when it has been corrupted; It is when one voice uses the crutch of their background to forward only their aims and ambitions is where it is morally criminal to the survivors of institutional abuse in this country. This is what Christine Buckly has and is still doing. Let us look again at some of the actions and words of this woman and try to see a little deeper into her mind of how she has successfully manipulated two generations since with her own allegations of abuse:
At age 45 years old in1992, Christine appeared on television for the first time to tell her story about abuse at the hand of nuns. Because of it she set about to launch her cottage industry out of the misery and suffering of others and her 'abuse'. It would in time to prove very lucrative. To bolster her position and victimization she claimed this: I had many beatings from the nuns with one beating in particular that left me with 100 stitches that ran the length of my thigh. I was treated in hospital but not hospitalized."
This is what the head doctor said about that time: "I cannot recall ever treating a Goldenbridge child with a lacerated thigh. An injury requiring such extensive stitching would not have been treated in casualty alone. Standard medical practice would have necessitated that such an injury would have required extensive surgery under a general anaesthetic, and a child would have been detained as a patient in hospital. As a specialist in soft tissue injuries and burns, such an injury would have been referred to me by medical staff”. This senior doctor has no record of this injury and neither does any of the other three doctors who were there at that time."
A bit of fiction should not get in the way of a good story by Christine unless the doctors are lying and she is telling the truth. She then went on and set up the Alslinn Centre to ‘support victims’ with therapy and a few courses as the main meals on offer. Astonishingly, she claimed a few years ago that she did this without any help from the Government and that she has also helped over 8,500 victims since it opened. I was not one of them along with the other 8,499 survivors. It turns out the Government did help after all except they called themselves the HSE, the Health Service Executive.
So much in fact they gave her "centre" €1,475,985.00 over a four year period ending in 2008. The years before 2004 the auditors could not find or verify any accounts except for €110,420,00 advanced from the HSE. This was advanced to Christine and her fellow director and not the centre. No information or proof has been provided as to the nature or extent of services except for 2005. On this point Christine claimed "she was being discriminated against." On the grounds of race, colour, gender, or institutional victimization is not stated or made clear but one can predict by now that this would be her defense. Her accounts auditor went one step further against her on this point.
This is what he said:
“What is clear from the accounts is that for two years, and for part of a third year, money received could only be reported as having being advanced to directors. (Christine and her friend) It is possible that this money was channeled to previously existing organizations and used in their work. (it was not) Otherwise it is hard to see how the expenditure could have been justified, as the company had no other staff or premises. Whether a similar situation existed for the rest of the periods for accounts from 2003 to 2008, it is not possible to say from the information given in these accounts.”
In other words he was not shown receipts or proof of where all the money had gone. These monies do not include other donations that she may have received from different sources. Fast forward to the present:
Christine now wants the paltry offer of further compensation to be used for (you guessed it) more counseling, courses, tin whistles lessons and further education, even though these are a duplication of services on offer if you are unemployed. Of course she will be getting paid to provide these services even though she has no credentials in this area except for steely eyed bullying to get what she wants or else. If you dare to object to this singular world view of hers you will be considered an ungrateful survivor for daring to want to raise your impoverishment to an acceptable level of dignity. You will be reminded in no uncertain terms that "this is not about the money" and be lambasted a selfish and ungrateful person. You will be told again "be gone from this place for you have asked and got far too much already."
Christine knows the game is up and like a person fleeing the scene of any immoral crime for her self preservation, she decided to pick on a man she hardly knew about his own sexual abuse. This man she rarely spoke to, and claimed or implied he probably made the whole story up about his experiences. This is an old trick. You do this to deflect but yet draw attention to yourself. It is the quality and nature of that attention that will matter for it is a desperate shot in the dark for one that has a lot to answer for. Everyone reveals themselves in the end for reason itself will force the truth to come forward.
She blamed a man who is 77 years old, named Michael O Brien, who just like Christine waited until the right time, even if it was later than her, before he could tell his story. This man received no Secondary School Education from his jailers and left that prison without being able to read or write. She attacked this man on the eve of the Ryan report to gain maximum publicity for herself by trying to destroy him. Her attack was about his denial of abuse. I was married for twenty years before I told my wife. My denials to her were my lies, my truths to her in the end was that denied reality. It was one of the factors that killed the marriage. Many survivors still today continue to deny the worst horrors of their abuse because of the shame they feel. The facts, unlike Christine, vindicated me. In fact Christine is very short on facts and long on fiction. She sat on so called ‘proof’ about Michael O Brien that was in the public domain anyway, and waited like a predator for eight months to deliver her "killer blow." It may yet prove to be her waterloo instead.
Be that as it may, for now Christine is getting well paid for hectoring and guilt laden bullying even though she keeps reminding us "it is not about the money." It always wryly felt by me that this is more often used as a byline for those who have money, a good pension, or at least a job, and who utter these patronizing jaded phrases as nuggets of moral wisdom. This is in fact survivors money rerouted to her before it ‘never’ gets to us and will be added to her own compensation for having been ‘abused.’ She wants and intends to continue in the lifestyle that she has become accustomed and the fame that goes with it. That fame may yet turn to infamy. Christine still steadfastly clings and adds to her carefully crafted persona and even desperately going great lengths to add to it. She is a media junkie. One time, she went as far to phone me out of the blue to solicit my vote to name her as European Volunteer Of The year this past winter. She forgot to tell them them that she was a paid volunteer. Apparently I could vote for her 32 times with 32 clicks of a button on my computer she gleefully informed me. I had never met her before nor asked her for favour, and only spoke to her on the phone seven years earlier as she tried to hijack the publicity surrounding my brother’s terminal illness. My brother and I had become media interest because the Redress Board would not come to England to take his testimony. They did for I made them change their mind. My brother died a few weeks later. I knew what she was up then and avoided her like the plague. She, like Noel Barry and other common viruses, was now back years later and looking for votes. Like any virus too it must be treated before it infects everything. Her bullying, her ego, her megalomania must go with her as surely as she has to. Christine's behaviour may well at last unite the rest of the disenfranchised groups except for Noel Barry and his cronies.
I will leave you with some final words from Christine Buckly about compensation for survivors:
"How can we have people [survivors] stating that they are entitled to this money when the same people do not see the importance of education and counseling."
Forgive their impertinence and mine for all along I thought it was about how survivors felt and not Christine.
Their therapy will be the financial compensation that they were promised but never got. It is called 'survival therapy' because of the reality and circumstances of their lives.
Considering that most survivors are aged between 50 and eighty years old, impoverished, and will unlikely have or be able to find a job, what good is counseling or education.
On the 20 may 2010 Christine will be remembering the exoneration of victims at her centre using your money to do so. There will be poetry reading, music, drama, art and culinary delights to name but a few. I was not invited but Barry Andrews was.
On that day instead I will be trying to raise money for survivors for food, books to read, fuel for winter but no music for art or drama. Christine provides more than enough in that department.
"They who shout the loudest will be heard," the question is how loud are you shouting and what are you going to do about it
ps: "If it does not make sense reason itself dictates that it is not true."
Barry Clifford May 18 2010
http://www.childaware.net/contact_10.html
Welcome to childaware.net
This site has been developed to help protect children from child abuse and to support those who were and are victims of this most savage of crimes. We hope to achieve this in the following ways:
To benefit the community through the provision of emergency funding
Long term material and counseling support for child abuse victims
The promotion of a school curriculum for child abuse awareness
Support for adults on child awareness in the home.
Barry Clifford
http://www.childaware.net/index.html