I am outsider to this, not being Irish or having anyone Irish in my family.
What I have come to believe after much reading is that between British occupation and the Church most of the ordinary Irish folk seem to have been doubly screwed over.
My mother's mother was brought up in a French orphanage run by nuns and I can tell you she was well beaten within an inch of her life to the point where, although she married into a very loving Latino family who loved her as one of their own and she brought her children up Catholic, she didn't believe in God at all.
Thankfully, her husband was a gentle man who loved her past anything and would always believe and defer to her first.
He was born and brought up very poor, the child of Mexican immigrants to America, and had also suffered beatings at the hands of priests.
So it was not just an Irish thing, as evinced by the many American people admitting they were abused as well.
.
It just makes me all the more sad for the heritage of Ireland.
DH's nana was brought up in a children's home in Ireland. Brought up to be a slave to British landlord.
She took the first opportunity she had to get away, by marrying a poor Scottish fisherman who nevertheless had enough to keep her and what children they had fed and dry and warm. And so he loved her very dearly. He said he had heard her singing in a yard, pegging out the wash of her landlord's children whilst on holiday in Scotland.
And then when he saw 'her black hair at her frost white neck' he would know no other.
But she would never speak of Ireland, nor would she set foot there.
She lies buried at North Berwick next to her husband.