Irish Times columnist John Waters, the new consultant editor of Magill, has accused RTE of mounting a "witchhunt" against him after his controversial suggestion in the October issue of the current affairs magazine that many children sent to industrial schools in the 1950s and 1960s had criminal backgrounds.

A debate on the issue on last Monday's Liveline RTE radio programme ended up as an angry exchange between Waters and presenter Joe Duffy, who accused him of bullying the show's producers.

The debate continued for much of last week as hundreds of former industrial school pupils phoned in to RTE to express their hurt and anger.

Waters wrote an editorial in Magill that cast doubt on the Laffoy Commission, which was set up to investigate abuse of children by industrial schools in the 1950s and 1960s.

The most contested part of the article questioned the motives of the "alleged victims" of abuse, since "many will have been young offenders with all the baggage and possible motivation that this might imply". These were people, it continued, "who, as adolescents at least, had a history of disturbance or even criminal activity".

These were surprising -- and factually inaccurate -- comments to make on an issue that has received overwhelmingly sympathetic coverage in the media.

Department of Education statistics show that just 6 per cent of children admitted to industrial schools through the courts had committed any kind of offence. Of that number, half were under 12 and would scarcely be considered criminal by today's standards.

Waters is standing by his argument and alleging that RTE "drummed up hysteria" over his comments. He says Magill magazine received many calls in support of his points, including calls from former industrial school pupils. "I don't claim to be pious," he said. "But we are developing a culture where there is an omnipotent victim, an atmosphere where it is impossible for anyone to suggest the possible innocence of the accused."

Waters' central point is that people who worked in industrial schools are being scapegoated by the society that sanctioned abuses in the first place.

The accused, he said, have a right to have allegations against them treated with "scepticism" in a judicial process. He says the media is guilty of ignoring this right in the interests of "populism".

Eoin O'Sullivan, a Trinity College lecturer who worked on the RTE States of Fear documentary and is an expert on industrial schools, said it was "quite simply wrong" of Waters to suggest that "many" industrial school pupils had criminal backgrounds.

The overwhelming majority of children -- ranging in age from babies to teenagers -- were sent to industrial schools either because they were orphans or because the authorities decided their parents couldn't look after them.

Even the minority who were sent to reformatory schools for more "serious" crimes would scarcely rank as criminals today, O'Sullivan argued.

One 14-year-old boy was sentenced to four-and-a-half years incarceration in the 1930s for "larceny of apples and pears to a value of 30 shillings".

"Poverty and neglect -- that's why they were there: 20 to 30 per cent of children arrived at industrial schools before they were six," said O'Sullivan. "It's hard to imagine what kind of crimes they could possibly have committed."

One woman, Mary Norris, rang Liveline from Tralee to describe how she and six siblings were sent to different industrial schools in the area because their mother was discovered by the parish priest to be having an affair.

Writer Mannix Flynn, sent to Letterfrack industrial school at the age of 10 for playing truant and stealing a bike, also spoke up.

Former Lord Mayor of Clonmel Michael O'Brien, also a former pupil at an industrial school, was the first distressed caller to the programme.

Waters has accepted O'Sullivan's statistics, but said 6 per cent of the total number of children could still constitute "many" individuals, given the thousands of people who went through the industrial school system. He said he was not defending the industrial school system in general or denying that abuses took place.

"I have always disapproved of and criticised the [school] system in the past, where I felt it was appropriate," he said. "That doesn't mean it's not right to be mindful of the potential for miscarriages of justice."

Waters was invited to contribute to the first Liveline show on the issue last Friday week, but was unavailable. On last Monday's show, his contribution centred on his anger that Liveline had begun addressing the issue the previous week without his participation.