The Memory Marketplace. Emilie Pine

eliciting audience sympathy for the children who suffered under such a regime. In order to move sympathy to something stronger, Raftery alternates testimony between competing witnesses: survivor-witnesses who allege abuse, and religious witnesses who claim the abuse allegations are unfounded. By reinforcing the truth claim of the survivor-witness, Raftery generates more than sympathy—audiences are encouraged to side with, or at least acknowledge the truth claims of, the abuse survivor.

      An idea of how this works can be gauged from this scene:

      Sean Ryan: One witness spoke of arriving at Goldenbridge as a six-year-old child . . . after her mother had died. . . . She said she used to lie in her bed at night and wished that she didn’t wake up in the morning. She said that she would sob her heart out crying for her mother.

      Witness 2 (female): I used to scurry around. I used to try to dodge and weave to get away from the beatings, the abuse. You didn’t. You were helpless. Wherever you were you were a helpless victim. You couldn’t get away from them. They used to clatter you, they used to batter you. The names you were called. The stuff you had to go through. The thing was you were always so alone. There was never anybody there for you. Nobody was there this is what I find so hard to tell you. You were lumped together and you were one of a many, many.

       [Public hearing (from Phase 3 hearing, 15 May 2006)—scenario as above]

      Sr O’Donoghue: Well . . . from all of the material that we have examined and all of the people that we have talked to over the past ten years we are of the conviction that Goldenbridge was . . . a reasonably efficient and caring school, that the managers and Sisters there were committed and worked long and hard in the interest of children, and that it was both committed and dedicated and progressive in very many ways. We believe that having examined some of the, certainly, serious allegations we have not been able to find grounds that would convince us that they were part of the reality.²⁶

      Here we see how the two types of witness statements alternate competitively. Ryan functions as an intermediary in this competition, to highlight significant points, leaving little room for an audience to sympathize or identify with Sister O’Donoghue, as Raftery’s editing strategy works to validate the survivor testimony and to set up an emotional connection between the survivor witnesses and the audience.

      It need not be the case, however, that emotion positively attaches to direct statements over interview testimony; it is easy to imagine a reverse of this scenario, where the stark direct-address statements would have a less sympathetic effect in contrast with a fuller and more complex representation of the witness via interview. The inclusion of onstage interaction might have given the interviewed witnesses a more humane quality or given more opportunity for the demonstration of emotion. The intercutting of the survivor testimony with an evasive religious spokesperson, however, creates affective impact and, combined with Sister O’Donoghue’s lack of remorse, gives that affective capital to the survivor-witness. In a way, then, the purpose of Judge Ryan’s onstage role is in educating and guiding the audience to understand that compassion is the correct witnessing response.²⁷