000			02014nab a22001817a 4500
003			NY
005			20210217152727.0
008			210217b xxu||||| |||| 00| 0 eng d
040			_cNY
100	1		_aFerguson, Harry.
245	1	0	_aAbused and looked after children as ‘Moral Dirt’ _h[electronic resource] : _bChild abuse and institutional care in historical perspective / _cHarry Ferguson.
300			_app. 123-139.
520			_aThis article argues that to provide adequate historical explanations for the maltreatment of children in institutional care it is necessary to ground the analysis fully in the context of the concept of child abuse and definition of childhood that existed at the time, something that many studies fail to do. Drawing primarily on the experience of the Irish industrial schools prior to the 1970s, while most commentators suggest that children were removed into care and treated cruelly because they were poor, there were also many children who entered the industrial schools who had been abused by their parents and welcomed being protected, and the community played a key role in supporting such actions. Children were treated harshly in the industrial schools not only due to their poverty but because they were victims of parental cruelty, which was perceived to have ‘contaminated’ their childhood ‘innocence’. They were treated as the moral dirt of a social order determined to prove its purity and subjected to ethnic cleansing. Prevention of such abuse today requires a radical reconstruction of the traditional status of children in care, while justice and healing for survivors necessitates full remembrance of the totality of the abuse they experienced, and that those responsible are made fully accountable.
538			_aMode of access: Internet.
773	0		_tJournal of Social Policy _g2007, Vol. 36, Issue 1 _x1469-7823
856			_uhttps://ezproxy01.ny.edu.hk:2078/10.1017/S0047279406000407 _zClick here to access full-text article
942			_2lcc _cE-ARTICLE
999			_c40797 _d40797