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A childhood ‘Hell’

February 17, 2011

By Staff Reporter

The former construction worker saw his health plan rates triple after he obtained his personal files under Ireland’s Freedom of Information Act.
The documents, which relate to aspects of his and his brother Patrick’s upbringing in the 1960s and 1970s, are included in their book “Mother from Hell.”
The O’Brien Press-published book, which has been selling well in airports in the last six weeks, is available in all bookstores in Ireland from this week.
The woman referred to in the title is Dublin-born Olive Doyle, who lives in Tullamore, Co. Offaly, with her husband Patsy.
The mother of nine children was first exposed in 2002 as one of Ireland’s worst parents on the front page of the Sunday World, a best-selling Dublin newspaper.
That publication reunited Patrick Doyle, who lives in Swansea, Wales, and Gloucester City, N.J., resident Ken Doyle after 20 years’ separation. The brothers were encouraged to write their accounts by their doctors as a form of therapy.
“We decided to let the people of Ireland know about it [the abuse],” said the American-based brother.
Ken Doyle, who was born in Tullamore in 1964, said his mother psychologically tortured all of her nine children (one, Michael, took his own life in adulthood), but singled out him and Patrick for horrific physical abuse.
“The Midland Health Board were well aware of it,” Doyle said. “It really hurts me that so many people knew, but wouldn’t do anything about it.”
He said that the state failed in its duty to protect innocent children. The authorities have since made no effort, he added, to find out “why a mother would do that to a child.”
Some years ago, Doyle was asked to seek his childhood medical files by Paradise Valley Hospital in Arizona when he became ill with a serious intestinal complaint.
He’s been told by University of Pennsylvania Hospital that it would cost $500,000 to treat spinal injuries he received as a youngster.
When he despaired of the Irish government accepting its responsibilities in this regard, he wrote offering to go home to be treated. He hasn’t received a reply.
Doyle, who suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder, has medication bills that exceed his monthly disability check of $480.
He said that because of the personal intervention of Taoiseach Brian Cowen, a fellow native of County Offaly, the government does pick up the $200 monthly tab for his counseling sessions.
Others have shown kindness and concern throughout his life, but for years it was never enough to remove him from a life-threatening situation.
His paternal grandfather went to the Irish Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children in Athlone, in neighboring County Westmeath, to report that 7-year-old Patrick and Kenneth, just a one-year-old, were suffering from starvation and living out of garbage bins in the town.
Nothing was done.
Ken Doyle was hospitalized for 14 weeks with a broken leg when he was nine. Records show he was severely underweight and malnourished.
Doyle in his book recalls returning home after a day in school: “She met me at the back door, her face set in a dreadful pose of something between pure rage and madness. Her weapon of choice, the dreaded ‘Cheese Please!’ board was in her right hand, her sleeves were rolled up to the elbow and her large body tensed in preparation for what she felt she must do.
“I stared at her stupidly as she towered over me; I had been in school all day and could not think of a single reason for this horrible welcome home. All my classmates were probably entering their own houses at this exact moment, to be greeted by their smiling mothers who perhaps handed them a glass of milk and a sandwich, telling them to do their homework before putting on the TV. I was very sure that none of them, at this moment in time, were in actual fear for their life.
“Suddenly she lunged forward, grabbing me by my shirt and ripping it from my body. Next it was my trousers, shoes, socks and pants. By the time I was naked we were in the middle of the kitchen and my fate was sealed.
“Apparently I had robbed by sister’s purse. This was today’s reason. She started to whack me around my back and shoulders with the board, kicking my legs from under me, all the while explaining that my sister had visited that morning and now her purse was gone, and I had obviously taken it.”
It’s clear now from the documents, said his son, that Patsy Doyle was fully aware what was happening to two of his children. He spent much of his time in America working in construction, sending money home and making extended visits at Christmastime. “She wanted for nothing,” Doyle said of his mother. He referred to his father as a “very corrupted” person. His half-hearted complaints to the authorities went nowhere.
Finally, a Dr. Stephen Keeley of Monesterevin, recommended that Ken, then 12, be removed immediately from his environment and fostered with another family. That didn’t happen. Instead, he was to spend time in a series of industrial schools, where he witnessed sexual, physical and psychological abuse. He ran away several times.
“There should be a complete separation of church and state,” said Doyle, who details his mother’s religious fanaticism in the book.
He left Ireland at age 17 and joined the British merchant navy. Then as he approached his 21st birthday, he came to live in the United States.
“I was illegal, like millions of others,” he said.
Ken and Patrick Doyle retain a warm relationship with one sister who lives in the United States, but are estranged from the rest of the family.
“She doesn’t take sides,” he said. “We want her as a sister. She doesn’t even have to read the book.”

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