How the f indings of the reports contrast
WHO WAS RESPONSIBLE?
OFFICIAL REPORT: Responsibility for the harsh treatment of women and their children rests primarily with the fathers of the children and with the mothers’ immediate family. Lack of family support was the primary reason for entering an institution.
NEW SUMMARY:
Responsibility in law for breaches of constitutional and human rights rests with the State, which funded and regulated the institutions, delegated key public functions to religious bodies, through its laws created the conditions by which the institutions became a default option for the containment of unmarried mothers. The State was generally aware of abusive conditions in the institutions.
PHYSICAL ABUSE AND DEGRADING TREATMENT
OFFICIAL REPORT: Some evidence of minor physical abuse. Children who spent very short periods in the institutions would find it very difficult to establish that they had been abused.
NEW SUMMARY: There is significant evidence of abuse amounting to inhuman and degrading treatment, including of pregnant women, children and survivors of sexual abuse. Given the extreme vulnerability of young children at a key stage in their development, the severity of the abuse is not inevitably determined by the length of stay.
FAMILY SEPARATION
OFFICIAL REPORT: Only children who were resident in an institution without their mothers have a case for redress.
NEW SUMMARY: Regimes of separation were often enforced even when mother and child were housed in the same building or complex.
ADOPTION
OFFICIAL REPORT:
The Commission finds very little evidence that children were forcibly taken from their mothers, even if it accepts that women had little choice. Any payments made by adoptive parents in respect of transnational adoptions were donations.
NEW SUMMARY:
There is significant evidence of coerced adoption, amounting in many cases to forced adoption, throughout the period under examination.
BURIALS
OFFICIAL REPORT:
In cases where the mothers were in the homes when the child died, it is possible that they knew the burial arrangements or would have been told if they asked.
NEW REPORT:
The Commission heard significant evidence from family members who have been unable to access information about the fate of relatives.