Personal Stories/Opinions
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What Redress?
"F**k off I am eighty years old. I don't give a flying F**k about Justice. All I want is the money". Very loud applause followed this statement made at a meeting I attended in London over two years ago."
"We're all getting old and all we want is the money. This is the only form of Justice we will get out of this mess". With promises of an interim award payment of £10.000 one could almost touch the despair of those present when they were advised no such thing would ever happen. One other thing: this statement was repeated time and time again by solicitors representing various Groups.
"What's this? Is the act up and running" I inquire of the
"Right of Place" Group leaders. "No...it's still being debated in the houses of Parliament" is the reply. Might one enquire then how you as a committee are so positive of what the Act will contain, when even those discussing the Act at this particular juncture are ignorant of what it's final content will be.
We as your group leaders warn you if you don't accept the advice we are giving, you will not have a committee. We are telling you what the Irish Government is going to do for you. The Irish Government and the Catholic Church are funding us in order to ensure total compliance of all survivors. Only 5 of the survivors present agreed with me when I put the motion "
That all further discussion on this matter be placed on the table until we were fully conversant with what was promised" Two years down the road what exactly do we have in place.
1.
We have no interim awards.
2. We have a fast track method of redress in which the actual survivor never gets to present his/her case in reality and in the main is left with only a vague description as to what the solicitor presented or the Redress Board Committee accepted as evidence as to his /her suffering.
3. We have a Redress Board composed of personnel who have not the remotest idea of what an Industrial or Reformatory School was/is like.
4. We have a Redress Board composed of the silver spoon brigade. Educated at the very finest institutes not Institutions such as Letterfrack, Artane or Daingean.
5. We have a piece of legislation accepted as law by the Irish Parliament but treated as a pet project by the Committee set in place to manage the financial redress of the survivors of some of the most iniquitous atrocities ever perpetrated upon children in captivity.
6. We have a piece of legislation which has
determined that the Law in Ireland is as open to abuse today as it was when they imposed a criminal conviction on each and every child ordered to be detained within the confines of the Industrial and Reformatory Institutions.
7. We have a piece of legislation which the Redress Board feel they can amend every and any time it suits their agenda.
8. We have a piece of legislation which no Group Leader or Solicitor who claims to be representing the victims has sought to place before the Courts of Justice for verification of its different aspects.
9. We have an illegal bond of silence placed upon every victim who seeks redress for what they endured. It is a fact this ban on the imparting of what occurs within the Redress Board would not be tolerated anywhere else in the world and the Redress Board Committee and the Irish Judicial System know this only too well. I have in my possession a letter indicating that what I have just said is true. Special advantages which the Redress Board have in Ireland would be considered illegal outside the boundaries of that God forsaken Country. Try to get any Solicitor representing Survivors to test its legality in court.
10.
We have victims reduced to tears having been awarded paltry sums of money for their years of torture, physical, mental, emotional and finally spiritual abuse. Yes! Spiritual Abuse.
11. We have a Redress Board determined to reduce the amount of average awards as cases continue, and indeed will, in the final analysis, reduce the amount of awards to nothing unless survivors take some form of positive action.
12. We have individuals feeling very bitter as they consider their situation after being compelled by their legal teams to accept the token awards as full and just compensation for what they have endured under threat. If people appeal against an award imposed, the Redress Board in an effort to stifle such application will invariably reduce the original amount awarded.
13. We have people taking their cases to the courts and who are achieving awards up to three time the largest amount offered to survivors for infinitely less suffering than that endured by victims of the Industrial and Reformatory School System
14. Sadly we have an ever growing group of people wishing they had taken their cases to the civil courts where they would have at least sampled some sort of Justice.
15. And finally we have the constant threat from the Redress Board chairman that he will take punitive action against any survivor who dares to relate events of what occurs within the confines of the Redress Board. This indicates to me that the personnel of the Redress Board believe they alone are the individuals upon whom the worst publicised abuses were ever inflicted on.
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