Woman ‘enslaved’ at 13 can seek legal redress

A woman sent at the age of 13 to a residential children’s hospital where she cooked and cleaned daily for two years under an arrangement described by a High Court judge as resembling "a form of slavery" is entitled to seek redress, the court has ruled.

Now in her 60s, the woman claimed to have been sexually abused by older male patients and by a priest at the hospital and to have witnessed abuse of patients.

She said she was sent to the hospital by her mother; was not permitted to return home at Christmas, Easter, her birthday or any other holidays and was afraid to leave “because of the consequences”. She cooked and cleaned daily from 6am to 10pm.

After breaking a glass water jug on one occasion, she felt she had to run away and was punished for that, she said. Anyone who broke the rules had their heads shaved and signs placed round their necks describing their wrongdoing, she claimed.

Her duties included preparing and serving three meals daily, and cleaning, and she was woken at 6am by a gong, she said. If she failed to get up immediately, one of the sisters would throw herself and her mattress to the floor, she claimed.

On the morning of her father’s funeral, she was “thrown out of bed” and made to wait until somebody took her to the funeral Mass, she claimed.

The refusal of her application for redress arose after the Residential Institutions Review Committee found the woman was not a “resident” within the meaning of the Residential Institutions Redress Act 2002. It took that view after finding the woman was “employed” at the hospital and was not receiving treatment or schooling there.

The woman challenged that finding in High Court judicial review proceedings and Mr Justice Iarflaith O’Neill yesterday upheld her challenge. The central issue was whether the committee adopted a correct approach to ascertaining the proper statutory interpretation of the word “resident” in section 7 of the 2002 act, he said.

The judge found the committee correctly concluded the woman’s circumstances at the hospital came within the ordinary meaning of “resident”.

However, it erred in law by then applying a purposive interpretation of that term under the 2002 act and finding the woman’s status, while in the institution, was of a person there by virtue of a lawful contract of employment, he found.

The woman received no payment herself for her work, although her mother was said to have received IR£6 monthly.

Apart from the fact the terms of her “employment” prevented her attending school in contravention of the School Attendance Act, the arrangement whereby she was in this institution “lacked any recognisable elements” of a lawful contract of employment, he said.

The arrangement was more akin to that easily recognisable “as a form of slavery” — involuntary labour provided with no remuneration to the person providing the labour, accompanied by “extraordinarily long” hours of work.