The God Squad

Bruce Arnold Irish Independent 10 June 2009

A huge burden of guilt and fear still rests upon those people abused in the industrial schools and other institutions. Specific examples of guilt include the committal procedures by which many of them were hauled through the courts and sent to the child prison system run by the religious orders. Specific examples of fear may be readily found within the redress system through which many of the abused have taken their applications.

Unless the Dail addresses these issues in specific undertakings, then the debate tomorrow and Friday will become meaningless and the show of political solidarity will be wasted in fine words and emotional reactions. This is not what the abused men and women want.

It is difficult to define what it is they do want. A new organisation, calling itself Survivors of Institutional Abuse Ireland [SOIAI], has seized the initiative on applying public pressure, both on politicians generally and on the Government, by organising today’s march from the Garden of Remembrance to Leinster House. This is designed to set a solemn tone for tomorrow’s Dail exchanges. But its message is unclear. Though it intends to present a petition to CORI, its message there is unclear as well.

The position of the Government is that it is marking time. It will wait until the representatives of the religious orders come back and tell them how much money they can afford and how much of their financial information they will divulge. So far, they have prevaricated on both these questions and I am not optimistic that this approach will change for the better.

In the light of this there is an onus on the politicians in the Dail itself, collectively and firmly, to give some serious undertakings.

The first should be to amend the Redress Act. It is a serious problem for those men and women who were abused to have to observe secrecy over their applications for redress, over the amount of money they received, what the categories were and what the nature of the abuse was. This abuses their rights to openness and transparency of treatment. It inhibits the rights of the people to know what the huge sums of taxpayers’ money were spent on and how the figures were arrived at.

At present the penalties are very severe against those abused who have gone before the Redress Board and who divulge information about their awards. They range from €3,000 or six months in prison for summary conviction to €25,000 or two years, or both, for conviction on indictment.

This should be withdrawn immediately with clear-cut amendments and the public, outraged anyway at what has happened to these innocent sufferers, should have access to the State’s attempts at recompense. These attempts are the subject of serious criticism and reservation by the groups representing the abused, as they are by commentators like myself. But there is great fear about divulging information and of being criminalised all over again. This issue has to be resolved now.

Secondly, despite the verbal assurances and reassurances that have been given to people that their court committals to industrial schools, which to all intents and purposes were prisons, were not criminal convictions, they remain in doubt and in fear over them. That is a fact, confirmed by many in discussion with me and in messages about the indignity of what happened all those years ago. It is by no means clear, in law, and may need amending legislation. The legal clarification of this should be the subject of firm undertakings by the Oireachtas, contained within any motion that is passed in solidarity with those who have been through this terrible State system.

Thirdly, there is need to protect all the documentation of the Ryan Report and lodge it safely for posterity. Documents and the many failures to keep them, retrieve them, make them available and protect them, have been at the centre of another terrible series of personal and collective mistakes by the State. It should not happen again. Confirmation that it will not happen now or in the future, to any documentation that affects these people – indeed of all citizens – must be a priority for those who elect us.

Finally, the State must resolve firmly the revised issue of compensation. It must be firm with the religious orders in bringing about a proper level of compensation from them. But this is only the start of the problem. Neither Brian Cowen nor his ministers have made clear at all the methods that will be adopted in dispersing further money to the abused.

It will be evident that these issues, as well as others, are inherently divisive. Fianna Fail created this cover-up, developed it under Michael Woods, Mary Harney and others, passed the legislation, ordained the secrecy, imposed the fines and terms of imprisonment – all in the name of redress. They also included in the legislation setting up the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse the bar on extending its work to the investigation of the committal of children through the courts.

The Opposition parties opposed these restrictions, at least in part, and now see the true picture unadorned by the hypocrisy that shielded the State at the time of the passing of the key pieces of legislation. It will be difficult to reconcile these opposed views in the coming debate.

Yet reconciliation is vital for all politicians on this issue unless they are to end up as a mockery of all that has been revealed about the way thousands of children were cruelly cheated of their childhoods.

This is not about pain or hurt. This is about flawed and oppressive legislation, legislation that adds up to an abuse of human rights and should be swept aside in the interests of the damage done to these children.

There is, furthermore, a practical need for this approach. Quite simply, unless the law is changed there will be no mechanism available to the State, other than the Redress Board with all its faults, for distributing the largesse from the religious orders. That is, if and when it becomes available.