Survivors of child abuse criticise advert by Commission

SURVIVORS of abuse in children’s residential institutions have said plans by the Laffoy Commission to interview people who were not abused will make nonsense of the commission’s work.

The Aislinn organisation and Irish SOCA (Survivors of Childhood Abuse) both criticised the move as an attempt to cast doubt on the testimony of the hundreds of victims who had trusted the Commission with details of their suffering.

Colm O’Gorman of the One in Four organisation described the move as an “extraordinary development” which he said appeared to have no basis in the legislation brought in to set up the Commission.

“It’s difficult to see why they are going down this route. Their brief is to determine what abuse happened, what knowledge existed around that abuse and who was responsible. They are no in any way endowed to investigate abuse that did not happen,” he said.

He said the perception being created was that the Commission had taken upon itself to paint a “rosy picture” of life in residential institutions and his fear was that victims would think the Commission was starting to disbelieve them.

The Commission recently placed newspaper advertisements saying it would like to hear from former residents who considered their experience of institutional life to have been “positive”.

The ads referred to one Sisters of Mercy institution, Our Lady of Succour Industrial School, Newtownforbes, County Longford, but it is to be the first of a series of invitations for submissions by people who were not abused in a range of institutions.

The invitation is also extended to “persons who have knowledge of the above institution through professional, work or business contacts, or residence in the locality or otherwise”.

Mr O’Gorman said this would bring a huge amount of extra work into an inquiry which was already stretched work-wise and behind schedule in its investigations and he called on the Minister for Education to make an urgent public statement on the issue.

In a statement, Irish SOCA accused the Commission of trying to undermine the testimony of survivors. “If your house is burgled, the police will not seek evidence from the residents in your street who were not burgled in order to discredit your evidence,” the organisation said.

Christine Buckley of Aislinn said an immediate public sitting of the Commission was necessary to explain the rationale behind the move and hear objections and concerns of victims.

“It seems to me they want to find a happy story for every sad story but this inquiry is not about happy stories,” she said.

A spokesman for the Laffoy Commission, Pat Curley, said he could not comment on the statements of survivors’ groups but he pointed out that the plan to gather evidence from people other than victims was disclosed in a “framework document” published last November.

The document is available on the Commission’s website but Ms Buckely said she had not heard of it before and that her organisation had not been notified about it or about a December 15 deadline for submissions on the document.

“We heard on December 20 that there were going to be substantive changes in the remit of the investigation committee but that is all they said. We had to wait until now to know what they meant.”