by Rebekah Commane
MONDAY, 30 APRIL 2012 18:15
SURVIVORS of institutional abuse are calling for the reopening of The Redress Board and for more transparency on plans for a €110 million trust fund. The Right of Place/Second Chance Group believes that many people were not ready to come forward to the Board and apply for compensation while it was open, but they may now want to do so. In its recently published annual report, the group also called on the government to publish plans for the trust fund contributed to by 18 religious congregations. Right of Place/Second Chance Outreach Co-ordinator for HSE West, Val Groarke, said the group is worried that the government are dragging their feet in coming up with criteria for recipients of the fund.
He urged the government to supplement the fund on an annual basis to allow survivors who have not yet come forward, to access it.
“I believe that there are a lot of people out there who didn’t get the redress,” Mr. Groarke told the Limerick Post.
“Because the government had it shut down, we’re pushing for them to reopen it and leave it open for another few years.
“Just because some of us were ready, it doesn’t mean that everyone was”.
He said that while some survivors of institutional abuse in Limerick may have received compensation from the Redress Board, the damage inflicted continues to resonate.
Mr. Groarke also called for the children of survivors to be able to access the Trust fund, explaining that what happened to survivors also affected the quality of lives of their families.
The Galway/Limerick and western offices of the support group were contacted by clients 693 times from March 2011 to February 2012, and in one-fifth of these incidents, approaches were made by the dependent of a survivor.
“Money doesn’t give you back what you lost, like an education,” Mr. Groarke continued.
“A huge amount of our people have not worked for most of their lives and a lot would have got ‘low class’ jobs.
“A lot of survivors wouldn’t be able to read or write”.
Right of Place offers outreach and support to survivors in education, health, housing, employment, welfare, social issues and much more.
“If they have a problem we want them to know that there is a service here. They can just lift the phone”.
The Right of Place Limerick office is based in the Friends of the Elderly premises Carey’s Road, and is open to anyone who wishes to avail of its support
Meetings are held on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday mornings and are open to all to call in for a cup of tea and a chat.
My mother was in an industrial school in Waterford from the age of 2 till the age of 17 and she has never up until recently talked about her time in these institutions, She received her records from the Department of Education and Skills recently and because of her unwillingness to talk about these things until recently and the fact that she sometimes shakes and cries when talking about it i think that the survivors should be given a second chance with the redress board, Some of them may find it difficult to speak about thee things and without me keep encouraging my mother and reassuring her she would never have spoken about it never mind apply for redress.. My mother was split from her brothers and sisters, Has just recently found out she had a brother who was told that in 1974 my mother was in a mental institution when she was in England and had given birth to me two years before. So yes I think it should be reopened so the victims who never got to apply for what ever reason can now do so and get what they so rightly deserve,
Chris Gleeson
Thank you James Moy, for your very detailed account of the crooked Funding bodies. I saw this lot and their standover family members trading in names and extracting money through menacing Victims. I wrote to Brian Cohen re these crooks, one fled to England and some others just went to ground in Ireland. They even took a cut from victims Redress. They would have been of the bully the, in the prison schools. I put a few of them upon their asses , with my infamous headbut followed by a few left hooks, being left handed. Yes, something must be done, in order to shut down these crooks, and prevent them from using our kind, as a source of income. Well, my English domiciled family were very critical of the way the Irish Catholic Institutions and their ways of syphoning funds from the Irish Catholic bootlickers in the Dail and their ass kissing civil servants. This behavior, certainly can never justify what groups such as ROP are doing. What about approaching Enda Kenny through Paddy Doyle re shutting down these groups and I mean all of them. Using our kind as a gravy train. Anyone else out there with any worthwhile suggestions re getting rid of these Rip off artists. Forcing them to get a real job. Great work James Moy, if education is abused, then better off without it. The Australian Aboriginals survived for over 120,000 years without the 3 Rs and look at what happened to them in the course of the “Education Reveloutain”. Most of their real survivors can’t read or write, what a wonderful people and we Irish victims of Catholicism, have so much in common with them, even our names. Please keep in touch James. P.s Mary Spellchecker is very critical of spelling mistakes and our kind also. So sad Mary, hope you feel better after a few hours on your knees, yesterday. (Sunday) and Bibically not the Sabbath. Shucks, Mary, mis spent kneetime . Regards to all our true brothers and sisters, including Mary, Twisted Oliver.
Hi Oliver, I have tried and enquired of the possibility of groups uniting, but to no avail, beleive it or not, some respond with the same remarks/comments that you have made, quoting such things as mistrust, own agendas, allegations of corruption, ulterior motives, and sometimes pure ignorance. Bottom line ,i doubt at this late stage it would ever happen, as it is very obvious that some clearly wish to turn their existing groups into a means to feather their own nests and that of their close friends and familys.
I have also noted that apart from the dream of all Groups uniting, the opposite is happening, various new groups are springing up, take Cork for example, from one group there, 3 former committee members of that same outfit ,have started up their own groups,and all are engaged in sending out various pamplets, mailshots etc, and send this stuff to the names they have on a data base that they got their hands on when serving with the original group.
By having this list of names, they are able to claim that these names are of all the members that they claim to represent, and claim all the funding they receive from the HSE and other Government depts, not to mention financial help from the Religious.
However it has all been brought to the attention of the Government and the Data Protection Agency, and i understand that steps are being taken to have all funding stopped, and more investigation to be done with each group, so it remains to be seen how many will be exposed . A sad feature of this is the fact that many of those names that they send their mailshots to, are folk who have passed on, and also to many members who years ago resigned from the groups concerned. Shows you just how much interest they ever had in their members in the first place!
As regards your spelling Oliver ,i dont quite know who you are refering to, but i never take notice of mispelt words ,as i am very aware of the useless education that any of us ever had, i taught myself, and started with the Dandy ,and the Beano, and managed to attend some evening classes when serving in the army,also i love doing cross words, the easy kind, and assist myself by cheating with an dictionery alongside, when i see a word i dont know, simply check it out, and that in a nut shell is the way i learned the wee bit i now know.
Having a pc is also a big help, and allthough it has been a struggle learning the jargon and ways around it, after much swearing and screaming at the bloody mouse, i have improved a lot, and find Word is a great help also,especially with spelling!
All the best for now, send us some decent aussie sunshine, Regards Jimmy
To James Moy.
Yes James, it would be a great idea to push these Groups to merge into one.
Firstly, it would sort the wheat from the chaffe, as the crooks would want to stand alone, with no one looking over their shoulders.
True, it would probably have good coverage, but who can you trust. As most of these bodies have been branded as corrupt.
Lots of ex Artane Prisoners, have no reading, writing, or arithmetic, though difficult to manage without, have survived and only just. It unfortunately, is something that most Victims, of our kind, just will not admit to. Those of our kind with any dysfunctional problems related to reading or writing could never advance in any Irish Roman Catholic Institutional Prison. The very nature of these religiously Roman Catholic Morons, would stifle their learning abilities.
James, nice work with that particular Victim and Karma will favour your charitable nature. Charity is about helping those less fortunate and capable than ourselves and quite a number of them are hidden behind their comments upon this site. I Twisted Oliver, always read between your lines.
So see if you can get some of the more trusting outfits to combine, James and keep us all informed.
Keep up the Great Work , everyone and shame our Irish Roman catholic Moronic Enslavers. P.s hope I haven’t mispelled, Sister Mary? Spellchecker. Regards to all, even Mary. Your fellow victim. Twisted Oliver.
Oliver, i live in the UK, and i have known a chap who originated from Limerick ,for about 12 years now. He worked in a care home here, most of his time in the UK,and two years ago ,it became apparent to me that because he could not read or write, he was struggling with life and could only do menial type work. One day ,out of curiosity, i asked him why he could not read or write, and he told me the reasons, it was because he began life as a child being looked after by the Nuns in a convent in Kerry, from the age of 4, then at nine years old was transferred to the CBS industrial school at Glin, in Co Limerick, where he experienced the same type of Abuse , and hardship that so many of us went through.
It became apparent to me that this man was not aware of the Redress board or of any sort of help from anywhere, simply because he could not read or write, which explains why he did not know of the existance of the RIRB. While the RIRB advertised in most of the UK newspapers, he was unable to read this, and since it never advertised on the TV, until i told him about it ,he had been in the dark.
I helped him achieve a pension from Ireland for the 34 years he had worked there, prior to coming to the UK, and did the same for him to enable to get his UK pension, then got in touch with a chap who runs the Alliance Support Group in Ireland, this man on hearing the details about my friend, came to the UK and met me, and i took him to the address where they were able to meet.
That Group Leader went back to Ireland, and sorted out a Solicitor for my friend,who then made a late application to the Redress Board, and between us we helped achieve a good award that otherwise my friend would never have known about!
I was glad that my little bit of self education enabled me to fill out all the application forms for my friend.
He is aged 67 now, retired, but still suffering from health problems ,much like many of us, that went tru the Religious hellholes, but at least he now has a decent pot to pee in, and is financially better of now.
Oliver ,i relate this story ,not to blow my trumpet, but to high light the fact that there must be hundreds like my friend throughout the world, who are in the same boat as my friend, who are illiterate, and ignorant of any help they may be entitled to.
While there are many groups operating in Eire saying how much membership they boast, and the great ways they claim to help the Survivors, in my experience of some of these groups, their claims dont hold up, and many continue to pull the wool over the eyes of genuine Survivors.
With the exception of the Alliance support group, who helped my friend, and i know that they currently have a list of about 30 men ,just like my friend ,that were former residents of the Glin Gulag, that they are trying to locate.
To see and observe other Support groups based in Ireland do likewise would no doubt be help, especially if they expanded ther searchs further a field than just Ireland!
There are Support groups based in the UK who do great work for Irish Survivors, men and women, and in my experience always found them ready to assist and help with problems.
Considering we are all Survivors and Victims, would i be dreaming out loud to think it would be possible for all groups in Ireland and the UK, to
get their act together and unite, to become just one group, and be in a stronger position to take on the Government and the Religious in our request for fair play and final settlement, with
the overall concerns being the immediate matters that need to be adressed to everyones satisfaction, and including EVERYONE, who were unfortunate to have experienced the ways of a cruel Goverment and the Religious in their failure to us all.
Jimmy
Hey! Do you mean 693 “ring ins”, and possibly a lot of missed calls. Hello! Hello! I need help with my finances. Sorry, you have phoned the Wrong Place, sorry can’t hear you, line must be faulty. Please call Irish Telecom. Twisted Oliver. P.s your argument does not make cents.
For Right of Place to have the gall to even mention the word Transparency is astounding. According to what victims have generally experienced, it seems the help was so transparent, that in the light of it all, the Victims could not see it. It was too transparent. Twisted Oliver