[click on picture to enlarge] Many people, including me, see the Redress Board as nothing more than a means of gagging people. It is secretive and confrontational irrespective of what Government Ministers say. Many of us who have appeared before it have been seriously traumatised.
good evening this is patriciajennings and my case is physical and emotional abuse that i suffered from the nuns that call themselves the daughters of charity nuns in st teresas special school for girls temple hill which was an industrail school also for people like myself with long term interllectual disabilitys i was badly beaten punched in face dragged by the hair all the way up the stairs to the domority were i slept with other girls like myself with long term interllectual disabilitys or if i wet my bed at night as every other child would back then and the night nurse reported to our staff the next morning i would be severly punished for a week and left without any food what so ever i was also sent out to do slavery work even i didnt want to what so ever i was sent to a nuns convent to wash and buffet their floors make their beds for all them polish all bannisters of all the stairs wash all the stairs and buffet all the stairs in convent and clean the toilets as well and that went on every week from monday to friday till one oclock and then when i came back to that industrail school once again i went back to school half day then after school was made clean our domitory from top to bottom then clean our two bathrooms down stairs and our toilet and bathroom on the top of the stairs then wash the two flights of stairs down to the open and polish the bannisters also and i could never say no to any of our staff or the nun that was in charge of our group sr martha or i would be truly severly punished if i did sometimes for no reason at all as you have no i dear what i went through as a child it was truly horrific for me it really really was untill i left there when i was 18 years old so all that i ask for the redress board to be reopened once again for people like myself with a long term interllectual disabilty to be compisated or have my case heard after a long long time now thakyou very very much
I went through the redress board, and felt I was back in the insitution the way they bullied me, telling me I was suffering mild retardation and would not have earned anymoney due to this, this made them make me the lowest offer you can imagine, but by the time the case was over I had owed money to people so had to accept it, I am happy to stand up against these bullies as who claimed I was a retard just because they wanted to offer me a very low amount, the nuns were not at the board the nuns representitives were not there either to be questioned,yet their statements were allowed to be taken in consideration and read out, My solicitor was not allowed to speak , so what kind of board is this if not for the church, I feel now that the redress board themselves should be taken into court and made to answer our questions, as they told me the buck stops with them then let them be the ones to answer why they ran the cases the way they did, why did they bully the victims leaving them feeling they were in the wrong, why were the accused not made to go to the session to be asked questions, why was their denials allowed into the sessions and why did they tell me I was a retard when the psychologist who they choose for me to see said in her report Had I been given the chance I could have been anything I wanted to be,
I want answers who is going to give me these answers I say the redress board
WHEN INJUSTICE BECOMES LAW, RESISTANCE BECOMES A DUTY.
WHEN INJUSTICE BECOMES LAW RESISTANCE BECOMES A DUTY.
Thanks so much for your kind words. They are much appreciated.
Hi Paddy,
I only picked this up on the radio today but thought I heard that the Knights of Columbanus and Opus Dei had members on the Redress Board. Is that correct and if so who? Again, congratulations to you and others for your courage in exposing these hypocrites.
Conor
REDRESS BOARD MORE THAN GAGS – IT GETS THE MONEY BACK – READ ON
Two Institutions left me the following Legacy
For those of you who have already gone through Redress, and those yet so to do, the following paragraphs will be of enormous interest, horror, bewilderment and anger. Of interest to you since a lot of you, (including me) until recently, were not aware of the consequences of a bad diet when we were growing up in Institutions. Horror due to what is foreseen to occur in later life as a consequence of Malnutrition. Finally, anger. For those of you who have signed the document which disbars one from taking any Court action in the future, it is only then that you will realise why. It will become clear to you when you are in agony from Arthritis or some other debilitating disease which was just waiting to appear as a direct consequence of the really bad food we were given in early life by the religious people, anger at the state for hiding these facts from you, fully knowing what would happen in later life and finally, anger at oneself for not stopping to ask the question – If I am being held equal before the Law – why is there a need to (1) not disclose the settlement figure, and (2) Why sign away any future litigation? People held equal before the law do not need to sign away their rights.
You are signing away your right to future litigation for 2 reasons. 1, you were short changed in the monetary sense at Redress, and 2, it is going to cost the individual and or family or both an absolute fortune in Doctors, Hospital visits and drugs etc, the government have known this for some time and want to save the enormous expense that this will incur. Of course, there will be those of you who are already incurring these costs.
The bottom line is the government, in giving Redress is not actually living up to the true meaning of Redress, since at some point in the future you will actually give the money back (via Doctors etc) to the state in some form or another.
Read the following paragraphs on Malnutrition, a few of many from an 83 page document on just that subject.
Malnutrition: Causes, consequences
Violates children’s rights in profound ways
Compromising their physical and mental development
Sound nutrition can change children’s lives, improve their physical and mental development, protect their health and lay a firm foundation for future productivity.
Malnourished children often suffer the loss of precious mental capacities. They fall ill more often. If they survive, they may grow up with lasting mental or physical disabilities.
This human suffering and waste happen because of illness – much of it preventable. Its ravages extend to the survivors who are left crippled, chronically vulnerable to illness – and intellectually disabled.
Malnutrition is not, as many think, a simple matter of whether a child can satisfy her appetite. A child who eats enough to satisfy immediate hunger can still be malnourished.
Research indicates a link between malnutrition in early life – including the period of foetal growth – and the development later in life of chronic conditions like coronary heart disease, diabetes and high blood pressure, giving the countries in which malnutrition is already a major problem new cause for concern.
Among children, malnutrition is especially prone to strike those who lack nutritionally adequate diets, are not protected from frequent illness and do not receive adequate care.
Illness is frequently a consequence of malnutrition.
There is no one kind of malnutrition.
Vitamin A deficiency, which affects about 100 million young children worldwide, was long known to cause blindness. But it has become increasingly clear that even mild vitamin A deficiency also impairs the immune system, reducing children’s resistance to diarrhoea. At its most basic level, malnutrition is a consequence of disease and inadequate dietary intake, which usually occur in a debilitating and often lethal combination. But many more elements – social, political, economic, cultural – are involved beyond the physiological.
Malnourished children, unlike their well-nourished peers, not only have lifetime disabilities and weakened immune systems, but they also lack the capacity for learning that their well-nourished peers have.
In young children, malnutrition dulls motivation and curiosity and reduces play and exploratory activities. These effects, in turn, impair mental and cognitive development by reducing the amount of interaction children have both with their environment, and with those who provide care.
Robbed of their mental as well as physical potential, malnourished children who live past childhood face diminished futures. They will become adults with lower physical and intellectual abilities, lower levels of productivity and higher levels of chronic illness and disability.
And investments in basic education by governments and their partners are compromised by malnutrition’s pernicious effects on brain development and intellectual performance.
Some 67 million children are estimated to be wasted, which means they are below the weight they should be for their height – the result of reduced dietary intake, illness, or both.
The effects of malnutrition also cross generations. The infants of women who are themselves malnourished and underweight are likely to be small at birth.
The power of good nutrition.
The devastation of malnutrition is hard to overstate, but so is the countervailing power of nutrition. Not only is good nutrition the key to the healthy development of individuals, families and societies, but there is also growing reason to believe that improving the nutrition of women and children will contribute to overcoming some of the greatest health challenges facing the world, including the burden of chronic and degenerative disease, maternal mortality, malaria and AIDS.
The most obvious proof of the power of good nutrition can be seen in the taller, stronger, healthier children of many countries, separated by only a generation from their shorter, less robust parents, and by the better diets and more healthful, nurturing environments they enjoy.
Stronger children grow into stronger, more productive adults.
Well-nourished girls grow into women who face fewer risks during pregnancy and childbearing, and whose children set out on firmer developmental paths, physically and mentally. And history shows that societies that meet women’s and children’s nutritional needs also lift their capacities for greater social and economic progress.
The right to good nutrition.
However far-reaching the benefits of nutrition may be, ensuring good nutrition is a matter of international law, articulated in variously specific language in international declarations and human rights instruments dating back to the adoption of the Declaration of the Rights of the Child in 1924 (Panel 4).
Under the 1979 Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, for example, States parties must ensure that women receive full and equal access to health care, including adequate nutrition during pregnancy and lactation. And the 1990 World Summit for Children, with a Plan of Action that recognized the devastating effects of malnutrition on women and their children, set specific nutritional goals for children and women, including access to adequate food during pregnancy and lactation; the promotion, protection and support of breastfeeding and complementary feeding practices; growth monitoring with appropriate follow-up actions; and nutritional surveillance.
But the right to nutrition receives its fullest and most ringing expression in the 1989 Convention on the Rights of the Child, whose 191 ratifications as of late 1997 make it the most universally embraced human rights instrument in history.
Under the Convention, which commits States parties to realize the full spectrum of children’s political, civil, social, economic and cultural rights, virtually every government in the world recognizes the right of all children to the highest attainable standard of health, to facilities for the treatment of illness and for the rehabilitation of health – specifically including the right to good nutrition and its three vital components: food, health and care.
Under the Convention’s pre-eminent guiding principle, good child nutrition is a right because it is in the “best interests of the child.”
Article 24 of the Convention specifies that States parties must take “appropriate measures” to reduce infant and child mortality, and to combat disease and malnutrition through the use of readily available technology and through the provision of adequate, nutritious foods and safe drinking water.
The world is obligated to ease child malnutrition on the basis of international law, scientific knowledge, practical experience and basic morality.
The ravages caused by malnutrition on individuals, families and societies are preventable. The measures needed to reduce and end it are becoming increasingly well understood. And the gains for humanity from doing so – in greater creativity, energy, productivity, well-being and happiness – are immeasurable.