‘It revealed the depth and scale of depravity kids in care suffered’
Institutional abuse survivors reveal their pain is still raw
SURVIVORS of institutional abuse will unite in Dublin next week to mark 10 years since the publication of the Ryan Report.
A conference organised by the Christine Buckley Centre will highlight the supports it still needs.
The 2,600-page report, published on May 20, 2009, concluded nine years of investigations into decades of horrific abuse amid claims the Government did nothing to stop it.
The findings pointed to systemic deprivation, physical abuse and sexual violence on an alarming scale in orphanages, industrial schools and Church-run hospitals.
Yet since its publication just 11 cases have been referred to the DPP, with less than half of those resulting in prosecution.
One In Four founder and clerical sex abuse survivor Colm O’gorman says while the report marked a “significant moment” there is much still to do.
He told the Irish Sunday Mirror: “It didn’t deliver what it promised in terms of focusing on individual cases and identifying abusers.
“That wasn’t possible, that was never going to be possible.
“But what it did in the end was hugely important. It outlined in stark, clear terms the scale, extent and depth of the depravity children were subjected to in those institutions.”
Over the space of five decades more than 170,000 youngsters went through the gates of institutions where neglect, deprivation, abuse and forced labour were the daily norm.
Mr O’gorman, who is executive director of Amnesty International Ireland, said: “In 2011 Amnesty did a review of all the reports and in terms of Ryan it was the sheer scale of the violations.
“These are the gravest abuses in the history of the State. The simple fact is justice has not been delivered. We’ve had a handful of prosecutions, all for sexual violence and none for physical violence.
“There was no accountability for forced labour, no meaningful delivery of justice and the reality is that is not going to happen.”
The redress board set up in the wake of the report had 16,620 applicants.
Those who were compensated were awarded an average of €62,500.
Mr O’gorman said: “That has been very difficult for people. One of the problems with redress was it left people, after everything they had gone through, with a cheque.
“Many people felt like they were being prostituted.
“People are entitled to compensation, that is something to put their lives back to where it would have been if they hadn’t suffered the harm.
“But when you look at the level of violation that people experienced, and the average award, and look at people being awarded the same amount for a minor car accident or soft tissue injury.
“We’re talking about endemic, systematic, top-of-the-scale assault, appalling physical brutality, huge deprivation, which damaged and blighted people’s lives for decades to come, and the average award was €62,500?”
Top of the agenda at next week’s conference is how best to meet the needs of ageing survivors.
Mr O’gorman said: “I find it a challenging thing to be now talking about end-of-life care for people who were in those institutions.
“And 10 or 15 years ago we were talking about people being elderly and infirm, now for many of them end-of-life care is going to become the significant issue. “For people living in isolated circumstances, this is very much about going into a nursing home. “Can you imagine what that will bring up for these people? That at the end of their life they will end up back in an institution? We need to think about this, we have an opportunity to get this part right, it’s the very least we can do for these people that Ireland failed so horribly.
“This is a community of people we need to cherish and care for and respond to with love and compassion. If they don’t get the care they need at the end of life, then that is on us.
“That will be because we looked away and I think that is inexcusable.”
The conference – which also marks the 20th anniversary of the State apology to survivors of institutional abuse – will hear from Barnardos
chief Fergus Finlay. Government representatives and policymakers are expected to attend as the issue of Ireland’s lifelong responsibility to survivors is debated.
Mr O’gorman, whose decision in 1995 to report Fr Sean Fortune for raping him encouraged others to speak up, said truth and justice were key to the healing process and the Church needs to face up to this.
He added: “The only radical thing the Church and the Pope need to do is to tell the truth.
“At the stroke of a pen, Pope Francis could direct all the religious congregations here to co-operate [with the commissions of inquiry].
“But we’re still getting lies and spin and denial.”
And Mr O’gorman, who shocked the nation when he called Bishop Brendan Comiskey a b ***** d in a TV documentary, said he would continue to fight for survivors.
He added: “For a very long time I was so disconnected from who I was, I thought I was what he’d done to me. The shame I felt, the disgust. I thought I was all the things he did to me, I thought I was sick, perverse.
“When Sean Fortune killed himself, as far as the State was concerned that was the end of it but it was just the beginning for me.
“It’s not that it shaped me but I think how I responded to it says a lot about who I am. My resilience, asking questions that need asked.
“There are many things in Ireland we need to change but one thing we can be proud of, we can say we have looked with courage at some of the darkest parts of our relatively recent history.”