CHILDREN abused in residential care are often abused in their adult lives or turn to addiction or crime, a conference heard at the weekend.
The effect of having been told they are bad or that their parents are bad stays with them unless they are able to break the cycle, psychologist Ms Bernadette Fahy, who grew up in the old orphanage at Goldenbridge, Dublin, said.
She was addressing the annual conference of the Irish Association of Social Workers in Renvyle, Co Mayo.
The effects of institutional abuse can include feeling suicidal, feeling like a reject, feeling unlovable, feeling terrified of other people's power to hurt them and feeling angry, to the point of rage, about the abuses they endured.
"Lack of love can be coped with," she said, "but when it is combined with emotional, physical, mental and spiritual abuse it becomes intolerable."
Ms Fahy was critical of professionals who failed to listen to people who had been abused and who instead labelled them and regarded them as sick.
Helping people to overcome the effects of institutional abuse was hard work, she said, "but because it isn't easy doesn't mean it can't be done."
Counselling, support groups and self development courses were among the ways of helping such people. At heart, what was needed was "giving people due respect by acknowledging their basic human needs and attempting to meet them."
"There will be no healing of the wounds of institutional abuse until individuals who have been abused are respected enough to be empowered, acknowledged and accepted," Ms Fahy said.