Trying to put a price on survivors’ suffering
IT IS 12 years since an organisation was charged with trying to put a price on the suffering vulnerable people endured because they were placed in institutional care.
That unprecedented project guided the child abuse redress board and tried to translate the accounts relived by those sent to residential schools into a monetary scale to reflect the pain they endured.
The model, which was focused on the extreme abuse visited on children, is not easily replicated to other compensation schemes set up by the State.
But the process serves as a guide for examining how those incarcerated in Magdalene Laundries could have their claims considered.
The 2001 group was chaired by Sean Ryan, then a senior counsel but later to become a High Court judge, who authored the subsequent report on child abuse in residential homes.
His report to government examined other abuse redress schemes in north Wales and Canada but ultimately concluded that there was no obvious model to drop into the Irish context.
By its nature the process had to be outside the civil courts and the precedents for compensation already set down.
The redress board would be dealing with old cases. These would have been outside the statute of limitations had it not been for a legal amendment extending the period for potential civil actions in child abuse cases.
The report looked at whether awards should be reduced because the victims were spared the necessity of going through the courts.
But it said this could not be allowed because under the redress bill awards had to be “fair and reasonable” to the unique circumstances of each individual.
Suffering is suffering and the Ryan report said it was the experience of each individual. So it was unavoidably subjective.
For this reason it tried to split up the experiences so that the plight of different people would not be downplayed simply because there were other, more brutal, cases.
This meant that each claim was awarded a certain number of points between 1 and 100.
The reason for applying different points for different categories of suffering was set up to allow the redress board to assess the different impact experiences can have on people.
“A person who suffered dreadful sexual and physical abuse might miraculously have emerged relatively unscathed. Someone else might have reacted very severely to lesser trauma,” it said.
The report said the experiences of people could not be categorised with simple terms. It said there was no such thing as “mild” sexual abuse.
However, despite this, it recognised that it had to differentiate between the unique experiences of what would eventually be 14,000 claimants.
Different points were allocated depending on the nature of the abuse.
The report said that those assessing redress should firstly do two things. Initially they would look at the severity of the abuse and secondly they would look at the injuries that were suffered because of the treatment in the institutions.
Weights were applied to each section and in the area covering injuries, there were three subcategories. These included medically verified illnesses, social consequences, and the loss of opportunity.
The report said if abuse had been experienced it should be recognised but the severity and the extent of the trauma would add additional points to the assessment.
“Obviously, some instances of abuse will speak for themselves in point of severity because of the nature of the abuse or the combination of sexual and physical abuse, in addition perhaps to other elements,” it said.
“A further feature could be the prolonged nature of the suffering. These elements will clearly tend to push the case to the upper end of the scale.”
Similar to the noises from the Government on the Magdalene issue, the 2001 report recognised that you could not start a redress process by prejudging the stories you would hear.
On this logic, statements of those who lived in the laundries would have to be heard before a scheme for them is finalised.
However, Mr Ryan’s committee said this did not mean that those who were charged with assessing redress should not be given guidance.
Examples of abuse were provided to the redress board to inform their considerations. Setting aside the issue of sexual abuse, as it is somewhat self-explanatory, there were other definitions produced by the committee.
These could be crucial in assessing the Magdalene experiences. They covered many of the shared experiences between life in reformatories as children and in laundries as adults.
The physical abuse discussed included “gross overwork involving inadequate rest, recreation, and sleep” as well as beatings and corporal punishment.
Examples of emotional abuse included depersonalisation, a general climate of fear and stigmatisation by staff.
Neglect was deemed to have existed where there was inadequate clothing, heating or bedding; severe malnutrition, inadequate guarding against dangerous equipment in the workplace and a lack of appropriate training in life skills.
Below this again the committee set out other factors that should be considered. These would also mirror some of the accounts voiced by the former laundry women.
These include having to “work below employment capacity” later in life because of illiteracy; needing to concoct a false identity to live a lie with workmates; being unable to pursue certain occupations because of a “record”.
On the basis of these broad headlines, and the categories separating the effects, the committee recommended the establishment of five bands to decide how much redress should be paid out.
These went from those who received less than €50,000 to the upper end of the scale, where there were aggravated damages, at €300,000.
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