Abuse inquiry aims to reverse naming policy

THE Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse wants to reverse its policy on naming individual perpetrators.

It believes that only naming convicted perpetrators of child abuse will allow a worthwhile inquiry to be conducted within a reasonable time. At a public hearing in Dublin yesterday commission chairman, Mr Justice Sean Ryan, said the commission was also opposed to the holding of case-by-case investigations into allegations of abuse.

Mr Justice Ryan said hearing every single complaint would be impossible to achieve within a reasonable period. Many complainants would have died before their cases were heard. The commission has more than 1,700 complainants and reckons it will take the investigation committee more than 10 years to hear them, assuming that hearings were conducted six days a week without a break during that period. The commission’s legal team is proposing that the committee should hear as much evidence as required to establish whether abuse took place in any given institution.