President McAleese finally signed into law last month "The Residential Institutions Redress Bill" which, along with the Laffoy Commission to inquire into Child Abuse, is to allow compensation for some of those people who were abused in religious institutions. Will it compensate those who have suffered? Will it assign blame where it is due? Will it bring the offenders to book? Will it prevent the same thing occurring in the future? ROISIN DE ROSA investigates.
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The religious were paid handsomely by the state, per capita, for each child they took in. They ran industrial 'schools' and farms. "We made all our clothing, our food, and our equipment," said one former inmate. "We even made the leather straps they would use."
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"What are they talking about 'redress'! The only redress we know is to be told to put your clothes back on," says John Kelly, a member of Irish Survivors of Child Abuse (SOCA).
"There is no redress here for us. It's a sham to cover the culpability of the state, the unconstitutionality, the illegality of the gardaí and judges and successive Education ministers who suppressed reports and dissembled what they knew to preserve and protect the cosy relationship between Church and State.
"And now," John goes on, "the state consistently hides its culpability, its inertia, its denial, under a sea of pornographic, prurient media interest in the obscenity of the churchmen's sexual abuse of young boys who the state committed illegally to their care.
"By way of what they call "redress" they have reached a squalid deal with the religious giving immunity from prosecution, and a financial arrangement which to a large degree lets the Church off its responsibilities to compensate those they have abused, leaving the taxpayer liable to carry the can. The deal sets a judge to inquire into the behaviour of judges, who undoubtedly acted unconstitutionally since the foundation of the state, in 'convicting' babies and thousands (estimates are around 60,000 children) of little children to institutional care. They were locked away because their families were poor, or because they were bastards and needed to be hidden away to meet the sexual mores and property relations of the day."
Patrick Walsh
Patrick Walsh was two years old, his little sister was one and his two older brothers were three and five. All four were charged, found guilty and sentenced by the court, a Justice O'Grady, for "their improper guardianship" in August 1955. Their father had sworn an affidavit against his wife, which led the said justice to declare, "Ah, she is that sort of woman". There was no legal representation for the four children. The judge's view was enthusiastically supported by uncorroborated and untested garda 'evidence'. The children were sent to St. Kyran's industrial school in Rathdrum.
On reaching the age of ten, Patrick Walsh, still convicted of "his improper guardianship", was transferred by administrative order from care of the nuns to care of the brothers in Artane Industrial school. His 'sentence' continued until his 16th birthday in 1969. Patrick was inmate number 14435.
Patrick left Artane when it was finally closed, in July 1969, with 10 shillings in his pocket, enough for a ticket to answer the call from a lady in Mullingar who had visited Artane and "wanted a boy" to help in the house. He worked for this lady for some years before making his way to England. Many of the children 'released' were placed at the disposal of people who treated them as indentured labour.
The last of the Industrial schools was Letterfrack, which finally closed in 1975. It was eight years after the Inquiry under District Justice Kennedy was first set up, and was to deliver the report that finally led to the closure of these institutions. It is a generally held belief that the then Minister for Education, Donogh O'Malley, set up this inquiry, as he said "to take the skin off the pudding", because of the exigencies to put the Irish house of Church and State in order before joining the EEC.
Redress
Now, 27 years after the last of these religious institutions closed its doors, what has been done to redress the obscenity, which was the illegal brutalisation and exploitation for economic gain by the religious of so many children, who happened to come of poor families?
First, the Statute of Limitations was annulled in 2000, for just one year, but only for sexual assaults. "Flogging" they said was "too hard to prove". This offered the chance of prosecution to just 8% of the estimated 4,000 people who have been the 'victims' of violence.
Criminal prosecution of the perpetrators, even for this 8%, has not been easy. Records have to be got. Either the records have been 'disappeared' or are not released. Far from demanding all records be released immediately to the Garda Siochána, the procedure has been along the old boy network.
Patrick Walsh is a case in point. He talks of giving his whole story, lengthily and painfully, to the Guards, looking for them to chase the 'evidence' and prosecute. "It's not that simple," says the local inspector investigating the case. "Sure, apply for the records," Patrick suggests. "No. We don't do that." "Well, what do you do?" he asks. "Well, we just ring up the Christian Brothers up on the North Circular, and tell them we want the records on such and such a case, and then they let us go up and look through them, though we are not allowed to remove them."
Laffoy Commission
nulment of the Statute of Limitations was accompanied by The Commission of Inquiry, set up in 1999, under Justice Mary Laffoy of the High Court. There are two sides to this commission, a therapeutic side, and an investigative side.
But as many victims point out, any documents, statements, utterances discovered by the Commission are privileged and cannot be used in evidence in any further proceedings. Furthermore, as a spokesperson for SOCA points out, there is an obvious imbalance between the legal support offered to the victim, which is limited to around Û1,000, and the perpetrator, who is able to afford the best legal defence in the land. Any award of compensation is an ex gratia payment, with no blame attached, and the victim has to sign a waiver form that he/she will take no further action.
But does this give redress? Will it allow the culprits to be brought to book, or allow challenges to the judges, the courts, or the guards who gave evidence at the 'trials' of these children, or who returned those children who had escaped into the hands of the religious, for punishment. Will the Commission question those officials within the Department of Education and successive ministers, who one and all accepted the reports of the religious into complaints made against their management of the 'schools', when each and every minister knew of the reality within these 'residential centres'?
The religious were paid handsomely by the state, per capita, for each child they took in. They ran industrial 'schools' and farms. "We made all our clothing, our food, and our equipment," said one former inmate. "We even made the leather straps they would use." A common complaint in almost all inquiries and reports of any of these schools was the inadequate food supplied to the children. Critics say it was a money making racket, which the religious fought with determination to retain, in collusion with the Department of Education. Will the commission inquire into the accounts of these institutions, which the religious always refused to put up for inspection by the Department of Education over the 50 years of inquiries and complaints of brutality and maltreatment? The answer is clearly No.
It is recorded of a visit to Artane by Brian Lenihan, Minister of Education at the time, that a boy came to him and said "Stop them beating us". Lenihan turned to get into his Limo and said in the hearing of the boys, "Get me out of this fucking place". The phrase became a repeated catch cry of the boys themselves.
Can a judge of the High Court be expected to insist on the extension of the terms of reference of the Commission of Inquiry to take into account the culpability of judges and Garda Siochána? Again the answer is No.
Money
It is estimated that compensation claims may amount to between Û200 and Û500 million. Religious Orders will contribute to the value of Û128 million, with the taxpayer subsidising the balance. In return for this deal, the government has agreed to indemnify the religious orders against all present and future claims arising from past child abuse covered by the Act.
Negotiations between the religious congregations and the state about who would pay the vast sums of compensation to the victims began in November 2000. After nine meetings in 2001 they reached an impasse, until around the time of the agreement to hold an abortion referendum, when the Minister of Education, Michael Woods, intervened and agreed the final 'soft' deal, whereby it is agreed that the church will contribute Û128 million.
The financial end of the deal is that the church would contribute a cash payment of Û38 million, Û12.7 million of which is to be placed in an educational trust. But the trust will have no statutory basis, will confer no legal entitlements on the victims, and the question of who will appoint the trustees of this fund, according to Minister Woods, "would be a matter for the religious themselves".
other Û10 million is for counselling, record retrieval and pastoral case - none of which can rightly be regarded as compensation. When asked for a breakdown of these expenses, the minister replied "I cannot give that as it is a matter for themselves."
The bulk of the compensation 'fund' subscribed by the Churches is in the transfer of property totalling Û80 million, there is as yet no list of properties to be transferred, and no independent valuation. Furthermore, Û10 million of this refers to property transfers that have already taken place since 1999, and bear no relationship to the issue of compensating victims of abuse.
They'll all be dead
d finally, it emerged this week that, according to representatives of the victims, less than a dozen of the expected 3,000 to 4,000 cases have so far been heard by the Laffoy Commission. At this pace, most of the victims will be dead before their inquiry is held. As it is, the Commission deadline has been extended by three years to 2005.
Representatives of the victims say there have been delays in handing over documents and seeking unnecessary clarifications of victims' statement. Indeed, Justice Laffoy claims that the lack of response on the part of some respondents "may be indicative of an unwillingness to assist the Commission". It makes the alleged newfound willingness on the part of the religious to cooperate with all inquiries into their obscene behaviour, somewhat doubtful.
The future
"What we want now," say representatives of SOCA, "is a full, complete and, above all, independent inquiry, so that the full culpability not only of the religious, but all those organs of the state, is investigated, and criminal proceedings, where appropriate, brought. There is no other justice. As things are we are suffering more abuse now, at the hands of the state, than we even suffered at the time."
When victims of SOCA went to the RDS to protest at the celebrations of the birth of the founder of the Christian Brothers, Edmund Rice, earlier this month, as Minister Woods drew up in his limousine, protestors shouted 'Opus Dei, Opus Dei'.
The cosy Church-State relationship, which enabled the obscene treatment of children in the industrial schools run by the religious, behind closed doors, continues. The abuse of children and their right to proper care goes on. Only two weeks ago Judge Peter Kelly faced the same situation he has faced for the last five years. He was obliged to detain kids improperly and unconstitutionally in prisons because the state will not make adequate provision for their proper care.
Last year, Judge Kelly threatened to bring the Ministers of Education, Health and Children before his court in relation to their dereliction of duty and send them to prison until they mended their ways. "Their culpability in failing to meet their responsibility to provide proper places of detention with adequate provision for therapeutic care, must be made accountable."
John Kelly of SOCA goes on: "It is just the same thing all over again, without, at present, the sexual overtones. The state is acting unconstitutionally in ways that are abusive of the constitutional rights of children. It is the state that needs to be held accountable, not just the religious."
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