Fot a link to an interview with Derek Leinster one of the Protestant survivors of abuse I mentioned above .

http://www.indymedia.ie/attachments/jul2009/derekleinsterirtimes1jul09.gif

The way the churches treated the children shouldn't be seen as something seperate from the attitudes of the whole of Irish society at the time. What did the newspapers ,politicians ,trade unions do about it? Even people as progressive in his social attitudes as Noel Browne didn't address the problem.
Orphans were always pitied and at the same time blamed for their positions ,the sins of the mothers visited on the children - they became the embodiment of the concept of original sin . The institutions acted as a warning to women in the same way as prisons did to men. The message they sent out at a time when contraception was banned was don't transgress or this is where your child will end up.
In the end it was the children themselves who exposed the whole thing when they grew up , and the whole of Irish society owes them for that. We should be thanking them as well as apologising to them.