It was wrong to give a guarantee of anonymity to
both victims and abuser
IT IS exactly five years since the Ryan
report into the residential institutional abuse of children was published. When
he presented his report, Mr Justice Sean Ryan said categorically that the State
authorities had been systematically and continuously "submissive and
deferential" to the religious orders which ran the hellholes that were
industrial schools (and also the Magdalene laundries, although they were not
included in the scope of the report).
When his commission of enquiry had
originally been set up, it had been headed by Ms Justice Mary Laffoy; she
resigned in despair because she found herself faced with a brick wall in
attempting to get co-operation from the religious orders involved.
Judge Ryan stuck with it; and he
gave us a report which proved in the face of every attempt at denial and
justification, that children were denied their rights, denied an education,
physically abused, frequently sexually abused, half-starved, and terrorised.
Thirty five-thousand children were committed to industrial schools over the
years.
When the Ryan report was published,
Brother Kevin Mullan, the head of the Christian Brothers in Ireland, one of the
orders indicted, said he and his people would continue to co-operate with
"those seeking to explore" what had happened. But the exploration
would not include the naming of the individual members of the order who were
responsible for the inhumanity. The Irish State had, after all, guaranteed them
protection and anonymity.
A few months after publication of
the Ryan report, Judge Yvonne Murphy presented the report of her enquiry into
the sexual abuse of children in the Archdiocese of Dublin. Its findings,
let us remember, were equally damning. The then Vatican Ambassador to Ireland,
Monsignor Giuseppe Leanza said in reaction that communications between the
Irish Government and the Vatican would be "improved" to avoid
"misunderstandings".
What he described as
misunderstandings had been the deliberate attempt to prevent Ms Justice Murphy
gaining access to files in the Vatican archives which contained documentary
proof of the abuse.
But the evidence came out despite
church obfuscation, denial, and obstruction. It came out in no small part
thanks to the men and women, the dispossessed who had been abused, often to the
point of emotionally and mentally destroyed lives, who found the courage to
tell their stories in face of the awesome power of the Roman Catholic Church,
the monolith that had been buttressed for generations by the Irish State.
And many of them later went on to
give evidence to the Residential Institutions Redress Board, an indignity in
itself: their suffering had been proved, but the State was still prepared to
subject them to a further ordeal which seemed to many of them to be an attempt
to minimise the monetary compensation to which they were morally entitled.
In return for their courage, the
State guaranteed that the documents which contained their testimony would be
destroyed. It was to be their "protection", giving them some kind of
empowerment over their personal dignity.
The guarantee of anonymity applied
alike to victims and perpetrators. But neither guarantee should have been
given, in the interests both of justice and of compassion. The guilty men and
women of the religious orders did not deserve to escape their shame, for
whatever reason: "the culture of the time" or any other spurious
excuse. Nor should they have been immune from prosecution where their behaviour
merited it, regardless of old age or infirmity.
Equally, and for entirely different
reasons, the victims of abuse should not have been assured by the State that
their documentary testaments would be destroyed. The assurance was akin to the
legal custom of not revealing in court the identity of a rape victim: but a
victim has nothing to be ashamed of.
The abuse victims whose sad stories
formed the evidence for the Ryan report had learned to keep their stories
secret: they had been well-trained in the industrial schools which stole their
youth, and often their innocence. They had lived their lives believing they
were worthless, their childhoods something to be ashamed of, bewildered and
bereft. When they summoned up the courage to have their stories heard, they
should have been helped to realise that they had nothing to be ashamed of, and
that the only people shamed by their experiences were the religious authorities
and indeed, the State authorities who had allowed themselves to be browbeaten into
complacency by the prevailing Catholic culture.
The victims should have been given
the opportunity and encouragement to understand that they could be proud of
their stories and their will to survive.
But not having taken the trouble to
help the victims to come to terms with that simple premise, the State assured
them that what they had lived with as their "shame" would remain a
secret. They were assured when they gave testimony to the Ryan Commission and
to the Redress Board that more than two million documents which had been the
basis for both reports would be destroyed.
And now the Government has agreed
in principle that the Minister for Education Ruairi Quinn may bring forward
amending legislation to retain the documentation instead of destroying it. It
is to be deposited in the National Archive, and sealed for at least 75 years,
with access after that to be subject to very "strict safeguards".
Not merely is that a betrayal of a
solemn promise to the victims, it is also pointless. In my opinion, the only
reason to retain the documents would be for them to remain as a scar on our
national consciousness, available at all times to remind us of our inhumanity
as a society. It is a reminder that should hang over us, rather than having it
concealed until the generation which colluded in the guilt is long dead.
The victims should have demanded,
and should have been encouraged, to name themselves in pride. That they weren't
was a betrayal. And this latest move is a double betrayal.
Emer O' Kelly
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