Book excerpt: Kenneth and Patrick Doyle grew up in a family of nine children in Tullamore, Co. Offaly. Though the home was dysfunctional and all the children suffered at the hands of their parents, Kenneth and Patrick were singled out for horrific abuse at the hands of their mother. Starved, beaten and sent out to steal, their story is a catalogue of abuse. It also implicates the authorities, who had pages upon pages of reports on their situation, and yet never stepped in.