Ryan Report must be put to real world test

IN Mr Justice Sean Ryan’s address in Cork about the ‘Protection of Children Post-Ryan Report’, he talks about “knowledge of abuse”. We have such knowledge of abuse again, this time in relation to HSE childcare.

What effective action is being taken? Having been subjected to all of the failures that brought about Mr Justice Ryan’s report, many of us today cannot be confident that the State, and its many agencies working in support of children, has fully grasped its responsibilities. Children are suffering, and will continue to suffer. A third generation of children from the institutions in all of the major cities, both here and in the UK and further afield, are subject to social services monitoring.

Our voluntary efforts working for survivors and our experiences within the institutions count for nothing among the professional bodies who regard academic qualifications as more important than life experiences.

Referring to “victims having been portrayed as guilty of exaggeration,” surely Mr Justice Ryan does not include those who gave evidence to the investigative part of the Child Abuse Commission and whose well-publicised, loud and exaggerated claims (so exaggerated as not to have been suitable for inclusion in his final report) were not proven when challenged under oath?

What are we to make of these claims and those who made them? Can all survivors claim that “Ryan vindicated them”?

The Ryan Report has yet to be fully understood. Government, and other professional bodies, have yet to implement its main recommendations. Social scientists, religious scholars and other professionals and learned persons must be prepared to separate childhood abuse experiences, given confidentially and recorded within Mr Justice’s Ryan Report, from some of the many clearly false stories that were omitted and which were challenged in the investigative part of the report.

There is a need to challenge the Ryan Report if we are to fully benefit from its findings.

Tom Hayes

Richhill, Co Armagh