Ad campaign aimed at child abuse victims gets huge response

THERE has been a huge response to an advertising campaign urging victims of institutional abuse to make contact with a redress board set up to assess their compensation claims.

It looks as if the Residential Institutions Redress Board caseload will surpass that of the Laffoy Commission, established in 2000 to listen to and investigate childhood sexual abuse claims. The radio and television advertisements, first broadcast on Monday, follow the board’s newspaper advertisement that appeared at the start of December last year.

They are directed at people who suffered abuse as children in a residential institution and who may be entitled to compensation from the Redress Board. “The phones have been hopping all day ,” a spokesperson for the board said yesterday.

The board has issued about 4,000 forms, mostly to solicitors’ firms, and while the response at 200 so far is a trickle, that is expected to turn into a flood, the spokesperson said.

The board, chaired by Judge Seán O’Leary, is expected to begin hearing cases by the end of next month. The State will pay victims’ legal fees. The deadline for making claims to the board is December 2, 2005. It won’t be until after the first case is heard that the board will have some idea of how long it will take to complete its work.

Patrick Walsh, British spokesperson for the Irish Survivors of Child Abuse, said 4,000 application forms already dispatched by the board was almost twice the level of interest expressed by individuals in the Laffoy Commission.

“The Government has based its assessment of redress applications on the numbers that have expressed interest in the commission that they put at around 2,500,” he said.

Mr Walsh said he would advise anyone contemplating a visit to the Redress Board to seek legal advice first.

The Redress Board can be contacted at www.rirb.ie