See Haunting Photos of the Sites of Child Abuse

3 minute read

In a damning 2009 report, Ireland’s independently-run Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse – which spent nine years investigating thousands of allegations of abuse at religious-run institutions – spoke of a culture of “endemic sexual abuse” in the country’s Catholic boys’ schools and of the “deferential and submissive attitude” of the Irish state towards the religious orders who ran them.

What emerged from the investigation, and from a separate Dublin-specific inquiry concluded the same year, was that institutional child abuse was widespread and that it had occurred not only in schools, but in many places where young people were in the care of religious orders. The commissions also revealed that very often when children reported the abuse, they were largely ignored and even punished, with many of the adult perpetrators being relocated to new parishes by church officials. The state, too, had willfully turned a blind eye.

For victims like Andrew Madden – one of the first people in Ireland to have gone public about the molestation he suffered – much of the abuse happened in the living room of Father Ivan Payne’s ordinary looking house in the middle-class Dublin suburb of Glasnevin. Madden had worked weekend odd jobs for the priest, a common arrangement in many Irish towns, and like many children in the care of religious figures mentioned in the report, had been abused on a regular basis.

It was the very ordinariness of both the context and the location in Madden’s case, and in many others, that struck photographer Kim Haughton as profoundly disturbing. This was molestation that was at once hidden and woven into the fabric of everyday life. Abuse that was, in effect, ignored while happening in plain sight.

“So much of this happened in places like schools and churches, and in homes,” she tells TIME. “I consider these images of seemingly ordinary spaces as crime scenes — where the cruelest acts were carried out on vulnerable children; children that society had a responsibility to protect,” Haughton says.

And so she embarked on In Plain Sight, a project in which the sites of these abuses became the subjects of her lens. Here, the work would not be merely illustrative of the sorts of places where abuse occurred, but photographs of the actual sites where victims were molested. We see a parochial house, a local shop and a swimming pool – places that, when taken at face value, seem unremarkable.

To find the sites, she talked to abuse victims who were willing to share their stories and found out how and where the abuse occurred: “Finding people was a challenge but not as hard as listening to their experiences,” she says. “They endured so much. It is very difficult to drive away after somebody has shared profound life experiences with you.”

When revisited with the knowledge of what happened at each location, Haughton’s work seems to permeate with an uneasy stillness, the images transforming from long-silent witnesses of horror into a haunting cartography of extreme suffering. A visible record of abuse that can never be – and should never be – forgotten.

“The work, I hope, challenges us to confront these crimes in the context in which they happened,” Haughton adds, “everyday life.”

Kim Haughton is an Irish photographer based in New York. Her work has appeared in TIME, Vanity Fair, Financial Times, Business Week and The Guardian, among others.

Richard Conway is reporter/producer for LightBox.

In Plain Sight | The Curate's House
The Curate's House Fr. Ivan Payne sexually abused twelve-year-old altar boy Andrew Madden in this house in Glasnevin, Dublin. In 1998, Payne was convicted of abusing eight boys over nineteen years including abusing sick children whilst he was a hospital chaplain in Dublin's Children's hospital. He served four and a half years in prison and was released in 2002.Kim Haughton
In Plain Sight | The Boreen
The BoreenAs a young boy, Martin Gallagher was abused on this boreen in Gortahork by Fr. Eugene Greene. Greene would offer victims drink and cigarettes and let them drive his car. Kim Haughton
In Plain Sight | The Shop
The Shack John O’ Donnell says he was abused from the age of nine until he was fourteen in this shack situated on a fork in the road outside the small village of Church Hill in Co. Donegal. The shack was used as a storage area for goods by a local merchant and member of the church choir. The choir member who abused him is now dead.Kim Haughton
Despite a previous conviction for indecent assault on an 11 year old boy in 2002, school caretaker Michael Ferry was allowed to resume work at Ard Scoil Mhuire in Gweedore, Donegal. Ferry was eventually convicted in July 2011 of the rape and sexual abuse of four boys at the school between 1990 and 2005 and sentenced to fourteen years in proson. One of his victims was Derek Mulligan who was 12 when he was  raped by Ferry. Mulligan suffered from depression following the abuse and made several suicide attempts. A smart student, he dropped out of school and couldn't hold down a job.
The Playground Despite a previous conviction for indecent assault on a boy in 2002, school caretaker Michael Ferry was allowed to resume work at Ard Scoil Mhuire in Gweedore, Donegal. Ferry was eventually convicted in July 2011 of the rape and sexual abuse of four boys at the school between 1990 and 2005 and sentenced to fourteen years in prison. Kim Haughton
The beach at Loftus Hall on the Hook head peninsula where notorious child rapist Fr. Sean Fortune would organise to bring boys for beach 'parties'. He would give them alcohol and drugs and sexually abuse them.  Fr Sean Fortune committed suicide whilst in prison awaiting trial on sixty-six charges relating to the abuse of twenty- nine boys in 1999.
The Beach The beach at Loftus Hall where Fr. Sean Fortune would organize to bring boys for beach 'parties'. He would give them alcohol and drugs and sexually abuse them. Kim Haughton
Dunderrow National School in Kinsale, Co Cork where Louise O' Keefe was sexually abused by the school principal Leo Hickey in the 1973 when she was nine years old. Hickey was charged on 386 counts of sexual abuse involving 21 former pupils of the tiny two room school. In 1998, he pleaded guilty to 21 sample charges and was sentenced to three years in prison. The same year, Louise sued the Minister for Education and the Irish state on the grounds of negligence. She sought damages for personal injuries claiming Ireland had failed to put in place appropriate procedures to prevent and stop Hickey’s systematic abuse. In 2004, the claims were dismissed. With nowhere else left in Ireland to get justice, she took her case to the European Court of Human Rights after the Irish Supreme Court ruled the state could not be held responsible because the primary school system had to be viewed in its “specific context” of Irish history and the Catholic Church’s privileged position in Irish society. Dunderrow National School was managed by a priest on behalf of the Bishop of Cork and Ross. In January 2014, the Strasbourg based court ruled that her rights had been violated on two counts; under article three of the European Convention on Human Rights which prohibits inhuman and degrading treatment and of article 13 which gives rights to an effective remedy. Her fifteen year battle for justice was eventually over.
The SchoolDunderrow National School in Kinsale, Co Cork where Louise O' Keefe was sexually abused by the school principal Leo Hickey in the 1973 when she was nine years old. Hickey was charged on 386 counts of sexual abuse involving 21 former pupils of the tiny two room school. In 1998, he pleaded guilty to 21 sample charges and was sentenced to three years in prison. The same year, Louise sued the Minister for Education and the Irish state on the grounds of negligence. Kim Haughton
In Plain Sight | The Castle
The CastleThis castle in Fethard-on-Sea, Co Wexford, is one of the locations where Patrick Bennett says Fr. Sean Fortune would sexually abuse him. The castle stands off the main street of the seaside holiday town in the south east of the country. Fr. Fortune committed suicide whilst in prison awaiting trial on sixty-six charges relating to twenty-nine boys in 1999. Kim Haughton

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