For generations, the Catholic Church ruled that babies who died before being baptised could not enter heaven – but were relegated to limbo. They were denied funerals and could not be buried in church graveyards. For the families of these babies, though, the grief lives on, writes CIAN TRAYNOR

THERE ARE countless mass infant graves scattered around Ireland, left unmarked, unconsecrated and containing hundreds of bodies.

They are a legacy of Roman Catholic tradition, which stipulated that babies who died before being baptised did not go to heaven, but to an in-between state known as limbo.

Baptism, it decreed, corrected humanity’s original sin in falling away from God. As a consequence, children who died at birth were forbidden to be buried on consecrated ground and denied a funeral service.

Instead they were buried in anonymous plots known as “cillín”. Veiled in secrecy, mired in shame, the burials usually took place in the middle of the night along cemetery boundaries to get the babies as close to sacred ground as possible.

Limbo complicated the grieving process for Eithne Hyland’s stillbirths in 1974, 1977 and 1982, posing insurmountable challenges to her faith.

“When you saw healthy babies growing up, you couldn’t keep your sanity thinking yours were floating around in limbo, as if they were stuck in some maze they couldn’t get out of. That image could torment you,” she says.

A priest said Hyland needed to be “churched” after her first stillbirth, kneeling her down with a hand on her shoulder before saying a prayer to cleanse her.

“I couldn’t understand: why would you need to be cleansed after bringing a life into the world? What has a mother done wrong in giving birth? That still gets me pretty mad. But back then our religion was so staunch that you had to go with what the Church told you.”

Hyland believes the Catholic Church’s attitude towards stillborns was so widely accepted that it made maternity wards unsympathetic places. Parents were not allowed to see or hold a child who died at birth, the logic being that any opportunity for attachment would prolong the grieving.

However, after Hyland’s second stillbirth the sight of her baby, Lisa, left at the end of the bed, tugged at her maternal instinct. “I said, ‘for Heaven’s sake, could you not wrap her up in something?’ The midwife called the student nurse, who came back with a plastic bag and the baby went in with the dirty sheets and everything. I thought, ‘oh my God, did she just throw her out?’” Parents were typically expected to bury the baby themselves. In Dublin, however, the city’s three main maternity hospitals had an arrangement with the non-denominational Glasnevin Cemetery where children were allowed to be buried in mass graves in what was known as the Angels Plot.

After her first stillbirth, Hyland was given the choice of burying her baby or having the hospital take care of it. “Naturally you’re trying to deal with the grief and shock, then suddenly you have to decide what to do. We wanted to protect the rest of the family from the trauma of burying a stillbirth at home but we didn’t know what the procedure was. So they buried our baby, for £5, and nothing more was said.”

Many parents held on to the bill, often framing it, as it was the only memento they had. Custom dictated it was never mentioned it again. “People said, ‘ah sure you’re young enough, you can start again’. After that, you were told to keep it to yourself; otherwise people thought you were looking for sympathy.” It wasn’t until the early 1990s that Hyland “found the courage” to look for her three stillborn babies.

“My husband said: ‘Listen, they’re in your heart. Don’t be puttin’ yourself through that.’ But I had this feeling it wasn’t finished and that it needed to be. To me, an unmarked grave was the real limbo.”

It was through Isands, a charity now known as A Little Lifetime Foundation, that Hyland learned she could trace the burials in Glasnevin Cemetery. They had kept exceptional records; all you needed was a name and date.

Ron Smith-Murphy, the charity’s chairwoman, lost a daughter at birth in 1993, as did her parents 29 years before. Like Hyland, Smith-Murphy didn’t know what her rights were as a mother when she was told her baby would live for minutes. That sense of vulnerability inspired her to establish a supportive framework for parents dealing with a similar loss, both past and present.

She constantly hears accounts of babies being snuck into adult coffins so they could be buried in consecrated ground, or unsympathetic priests telling mothers to bury their baby in the garden.

In many cases, she says, parents tend to return to the child they never got to be with once the rest of their family has been reared. “It’s almost like the grief was delayed because it was suppressed. Often when they’re near death, they talk of the baby they almost had. It’s heartbreaking.”

Change has been gradual. Isands successfully campaigned for a stillbirth register in 1995 and their booklet A Little Lifetime is now distributed to all maternity hospitals, offering parents crucial information and support.

Glasnevin’s Angels Plot, where more than 50,000 babies have been buried, with as many as 70 in each grave, has now been restored to include a memory garden and its annual blessings are well-attended.

“I suppose it’s a change in society, a change in the recognition of grief,” says George McCullough, the cemetery’s chief executive. “When I came here 24 years ago, the remains of babies would arrive at nine in the morning in the under-section of the hearse, with no parents, no ceremony and no recognition. It was an Irish solution to an Irish problem. Now you have 40 fathers, mothers, grandparents and children all with an emotional interest in the one spot for a loss from maybe 30 or 40 years ago.”

In 2007, the International Theological Commission announced there was “hope for the salvation of children who have died without baptism”. Though this upheld the concept of limbo, priests were finally allowed to bless limbo graves and bury the unbaptised in church grounds.

Fr Joe Brophy, who is based in Kiltegan, Co Carlow, says there is nothing about limbo in the scriptures and that it evolved from a climate of control. (St Augustine concluded in the fifth century that infants who die without baptism were consigned to hell.)

“The mind boggles,” he says. “Why would a child born without being baptised [not go to heaven]? It’s gobsmacking arrogance that a pope or someone in authority could say, ‘we’re sorry now but that child is not up to scratch for us’. And that’s really what we were saying. Thank God people have grown up a bit and we don’t take that anymore. It was nonsense.”

Smith-Murphy, and many others, feel the Vatican has not gone far enough. She believes parents of children who died prematurely are owed an apology and has campaigned for a plaque to be erected in every Church-owned cemetery to acknowledge those buried in its hedgerows and ditches.

“There are so many aspects of disrespect to these children and their families. Thankfully, we’re coming to a point where we’re acknowledging what they went through. But for a lot of them, it’s too late. My mum believed she would one day be reunited with her daughter, whereas my dad – a holy man who lived by the book – died believing he would never see her. They never got one shred of recognition from the maternity system, the State system or the Church.”

A Little Lifetime Foundation can be contacted on 01-872 6996 or isands.ie

Donegal’s Oilean na Marbh

Oileán na Marbh (Isle of the Dead) is an island off the west coast of Donegal that was used by locals to bury children who died at birth.

In September 2009, the neighbouring community of Carrickfinn decided to have the island blessed and to erect a commemorative stone to recognise the 1,200-plus children buried there.

“It was always thought that something should be done because after our generation, nobody would know anything about it. It would all be forgotten,” says Seamus Peter Boyle, who led the campaign.

Many present at the ceremony had grown up with the sight of mothers and fathers standing on the piers and gazing across the water, not knowing, as children, that what they were seeing were parents pining for their stillborn babies buried on the island.

For Boyle, now 66, one image in particular has stuck with him: a man leaving for the island in the middle of the night with a spade to bury his twins, whom he carried in a shoebox.

The ceremony was so well-received by the town that they repeated the commemoration last September and hope to continue doing so.

“It was beautiful, so it was,” says Boyle. “There was joy and sadness in it at the same time. Everybody’s just pleased that things have changed. It’s very sad that it was left like it was for so long. It never should have happened that way.”

The Irish Times 02/02/2011

If you’ve donated money please contact us, says boss

A SUPPORT group for victims of clerical abuse that has received more than €3million from the taxpayer has admitted it has no idea where the cash has gone. The charity is now in the extraordinary position of asking anyone who has ever made a donation or received its help to get in touch so it can work out exactly how much money has gone missing.

The bizarre move comes after the HSE stepped in to appoint a temporary administrator to run Right of Place/Second Chance, which is carrying out a full investigation of its finances. Tom Wall, a director of the Cork-based charity, said last night: ‘As bad as it sounds, we simply do not know exactly how much money the charity has received. And, more worryingly, we don’t know what it has done with the money.

‘I would urge anybody to get in touch with us and let us know how much money they gave us and when.’He added: ‘There is a feeling at the charity that in the past it has not always acted in the best interests of its members and that is very regrettable.’

Tom Cronin, a survivor of institutional abuse at Presentation Brothers’ Greenmount Industrial School in Cork who helped set up the group in 1999, welcomed the internal audit, which he has been demanding since 2006.

He said last night: ‘Just who actually benefited from this charity is still something of a mystery. That is an outrageous situation and it has gone on for far too long.

‘I am delighted that the board are taking such a bold and innovative step as part of their determination to re-structure the charity. I think it’s now just a matter of time before the gardaí are called in.’

Mr Cronin, who resigned from the board of directors in 2001, accused the Government of handing over vast amounts of Exchequer money for more than 10 years without bothering to find out where it was going.

‘The various departments who have given money to this charity have, in my opinion, being a bit relaxed when it comes to checks and balances,’ he said.‘

This has gone on far too long’

The Irish Daily Mail has learned that between 2001 and 2008 the Department of Education gave a total of €980,080 to Right of Place, which claims to represent 1,500 people.

A further €677,000 was received from the Department of Health between 2002 and 2005. Between 2006 and 2010, the HSE – which took over funding for the charity from the Department of Health – gave €1,498,723.
Noel Barry, the organisation’s founder and a victim of abuse at the Rosminian school at Upton, Co. Cork, resigned last month following attempts to oust him. He has always refused to comment on the situation.
Mr Barry went to the High Court last year to apply for an injunction against a committee of members who were trying to wrest control from him. Meanwhile, the HSE said it would provide no more public money unless his organisation proved it could handle it responsibly.

On top of the €3.1million in direct government funding, the charity also received €50,000 Lotto funding in 2003. Controversially, it also accepted money from some of the very religious orders that ran institutions accused of
abusing the people it claims to help. The exact amount the various organizations gave is not publicly known but it is estimated at €300,000. The Sisters of Mercy in Cork gave at least €20,000 but by last year they were demanding to know how the money was actually being spent.

In 2009, Sister Maria McGuinness from St Columba’s Convent in Cork wrote to the charity saying: ‘I would be grateful to receive the detailed breakdown of how the grant of €20,000 was spent.’

Other orders include Brothers of Charity, which gave €5,000 in 2000, the Sisters of Charity, which gave €10,000 in 2006, and the Congregation of the Brothers of Charity. The Galway-based charity donated €6,350 in 2002. The Rosminians Institute of Charity in Drumcondra, Dublin, donated €5,000 the previous year.

The HSE last night denied ignoring how Right of Place administered tax-payers’ money. A spokesman said: ‘During the period December 2009 to date, the HSE has worked with the organization to bring about structure and good governance.

‘In May 2010 all parties signed an agreement which created a pathway to move forward. It provided a mechanism to democratically elect a new board of directors representative of the local committees of the organization.’

She said the HSE would not be able to give details about its funding plans for Right of Place next year until the Budget has been announced. Mr Wall said: ‘We are currently going through a major restructuring process. A major part of that is a detailed look at the charity’s finances.’

Irish Daily Mail 29/11/2010

Monday, November 15, 2010 Archives Pictures

By Jennifer Hough

Monday, November 15, 2010

THERE is no “record or evidence” of how anyone except a select inner circle benefited over a 10-year period in which the State was funding an organisation for survivors of institutional abuse, it has been claimed.

Right of Place in Cork, which has been in crisis since last year following revelations that donated money was not filtering down to members, has been funded to the tune of at least €2.4 million by the HSE since 2002, with more than €1m coming from the Department of Education.

These figures do not include unknown amounts from religious orders.

Now the recently elected treasurer and secretary of a new board of directors, which the HSE hoped would ease unrest within the organisation, have resigned, claiming they cannot stand over an alleged cover-up in relation to past actions of the organisation.

In August Tom Brennan and Patrick Cleary were elected to the board of the Cork-based charity, which claims to represent up to 1,500 people, although a database has not been produced to prove this.

After taking legal advice, and having not received any answers to his questions, Mr Brennan quit.

Despite ongoing concerns the HSE continues to fob off queries in relation to Right of Place and is ignoring requests for a full and independent investigation into how millions of euro in taxpayers’ money has been spent.

Last month, the organisation’s founder and project leader, Noel Barry, who has always refused to comment on the situation, finally stepped down.

This story appeared in the printed version of the Irish Examiner Monday, November 15, 2010

By Jennifer Hough

Monday, November 15, 2010

JUST a few months ago a new board of directors was appointed to Right of Place, a charity for survivors of institutional abuse.

It was thought – and hoped – this would bring an end to the secrecy, unanswered questions and allow for a full airing of the facts, and an investigation into past actions which had seriously concerned members.

However, it has become clear this is not going to happen, and rather than facilitate this, the HSE seems happy to sweep it under the carpet.

Right of Place has been mired in controversy since last year when this paper revealed funding was not filtering down to the membership.

Now with the resignation of two of the new board and ongoing reticence from the HSE to investigate, it seems the only way forward is for the Public Accounts Committee to finally bring all the facts and figures together.

Abuse survivor Tom Brennan, stood down after just two months as the elected treasurer, as he maintains he was not comfortable presiding over the finances of an organisation with so many unanswered questions.

To say Right of Place in Cork has “unanswered questions” is putting it mildly.

Since last December this paper has repeatedly put those questions to the HSE, which funds Right of Place, and in the public domain.

Still no answers are forthcoming. Not even for the financial controller it seems. According to Mr Brennan he came up against an unwillingness to answer questions and an apparent lack of concern about finding out how millions of euro of taxpayers money was spent over the years.

“Looking at all the money which has been spent over a 10-year period I asked for a written record of who benefited, what was achieved and what the plan was. I asked the project leader Noel C Barry and was promised the information but I never received it,” Mr Brennan said.

“Every business has a business plan and upon that you can say fail, achieved or whatever the case may be.

“Apart from people who benefited from wages, meals, travel expenses, rent and the very small number of people who lived in Welcome House and Right of Place, there is absolutely nothing to show that anybody benefited from it.”

Examining the payroll system, Mr Brennan discovered there was four people who were being paid by cheque and not through the payroll system.

There was one employee out on long-term illness but who is still being paid – though again not through the payroll system so he could not see how much he was getting, and another man living in London getting €400 a week for running an office from his house where it is claimed he is running an advice service.

“I asked what this man had achieved over the years, what did he do, what progress had he made and I was told he repatriated three people.

“I told Mr Barry I wanted to see all the employee files. I asked that expenses had been drawn down, what entitlements were, who was out sick. On three occasions he was to have the information for me but it never materialised. He could not tell me how many people were employed there. I asked to see a database of membership, it never materialised.”

Mr Brennan then asked about an accountant.

“I met with the accountant who raised concerns. They said normally they charge €1,500 to €2,000 for an audit but for this year it was so complex it would be more than €10,000.”

A letter from the accountants to Right of Place, seen by the Irish Examiner, asks for copies of travel expense claims, purchase invoices, details in relation to cheque payments, copy of receipts in relation to petty case payments for 2009 and details of members assistance paid to individuals, among other things.

According to Mr Brennan, although Mr Barry had walked into a meeting one day and quit his post, it was later asked decided he should be allowed to “retire” rather than resign.

“This means he gets all his entitlements, I asked how could we let someone who had presided over this mess go away with a lump sum and a pension.”

At this stage, Mr Brennan was seriously considering about his own position.

“I was totally and utterly frustrated. I took legal advice and was advised by my solicitor to get out.

“I put it to the new board that if we did not get to the bottom of all of this then as the directors of a charitable organisation we could be held financially liable. My own solicitor told them this and they still would not believe it.”

According to Mr Brennan, the awkward questions he was asking were not going down well and it was about this time that his travelling expenses began going missing.

He saw this as a subtle but clear sign that he was to desist from trying to get to the bottom of things.

Did the HSE ever ask any of these very pertinent and important questions?

“I don’t know,” Mr Brennan said, “the HSE was very vague.”

Indeed, repeated requests to the HSE for answers simply refers the matter to the board, although this paper understands the HSE is only too aware of what is going on.

Of course, the underlying question, is why all of this was allowed to carry on for so long.

This story appeared in the printed version of the Irish Examiner Monday, November 15, 2010

Faith in BoI costs dioceses millions

By Siobhan Creaton

Saturday November 06 2010

CATHOLIC dioceses headed up by Cardinal Sean Brady and Archbishop Diarmuid Martin are nursing multimillion-euro losses following the collapse of the Bank of Ireland share price, an Irish Independent investigation reveals.

They are among a number of dioceses — and several leading political figures and charities — that lost a fortune on their Bank of Ireland (BoI) shares.

At their highest value in February 2007, the shares traded at €18.70, but yesterday they were trading at their lowest point this year — at just 43c.

According to the register of Bank of Ireland’s shareholders, Cardinal Brady’s Armagh archdiocese holds 409,000 shares that have plunged in value from more than €7.6m to €204,000.

Dr Martin’s Dublin archdiocese, which also lost money on AIB shares, had a much larger investment in Bank of Ireland with almost 400,000 shares, worth over €10m three years ago but now valued at just €270,000.

A spokesperson for the archdiocese said the shares are held in trust for 199 parishes and that a large number of shares were bequeathed to these churches over the years.

The Masonic Trust Company, which represents the Freemasons and invests money on behalf of masonic lodges around Ireland, is nursing one of the biggest investment losses — with its shares reduced from a high of €12.7m to just €338,000.

The trust holds one of the biggest individual shareholdings in the bank with almost 670,000 shares.

Other high-profile politicians and organisations badly affected include Fianna Fail backbenchers Ned O’Keeffe and Mary O’Rourke; Health Minister Mary Harney and her husband Brian Geoghegan; and Fine Gael frontbencher Richard Bruton.

The Diocese of Raphoe in Donegal, which also had shares in AIB, is sitting on big investment losses with its shares worth €192,000, compared to more than €7m in 2007.

Other bishops on the share register include Dr Tom Flynn, retired Bishop of Achonry, and Bishop Donal Murray of Limerick. St Finian’s diocese in Mullingar, saw its share value drop from more than €10.1m in 2007 to just €271,000.

St Patrick’s College, secondary school in Carlow, has also seen its large shareholding of 628,000 shares drop in value from highs of €11.7m to around €314,000.

College president Fr Caoimhin O’Neill said the shares had been a nice earner for the school.

“We purchased them for £20,000 in 1969 and they had proved to be a wise investment that yielded good dividends,” he said.

Amongst the charities, the governors of Mercer’s Hospital in Dublin hold 200,000 Bank of Ireland shares that are now worth €100,000 compared with over €3.7m.

The Health Service Executive holds almost 59,000 BoI shares on behalf of Cork University Hospital, which have fallen in value from €1m to around €29,000.

A spokesman said the shares were bequeathed to the hospital to help to fund cancer research and had provided an income to its Oncology Division.

Last week, an Irish Independent special Investigation showed that the Church of Ireland was one of the biggest losers in the AIB share wipeout, with its shares falling from highs of €17.6m to just over €260,000.

Charities

Amongst the politicians who invested in Bank of Ireland, Mr O’Keeffe saw the value of his shareholding fall from €213,180 to €5,700, while Mr Bruton’s investment has fallen from €123,515 to €3,302. Ms O’Rourke’s 6,000 shares are now worth €3,000 compared to €33,000 at their height.

Ms Harney and her husband’s BoI shares, meanwhile, have fallen from €95,625 to €10,625.

Bank of Ireland has emerged from the banking crisis as the best of Ireland’s bad banks, having escaped nationalisation.

The bank has said it doesn’t need any further financial assistance from the Government, which already has a 36.5pc stake in BoI since injecting €3.5bn into the bank earlier this year.

The bank’s prospects are brighter than AIB’s and the register shows that a small number of charities have started to put money into BoI shares since the collapse.

The Incorporated Society for promoting Protestant Schools acquired 75,000 shares this year, spending about €56,000. That investment is now down to €37,500 but the shares are likely to be held for many years.

Charities such as the Samaritans and the Irish Cancer Society have also bought the bank’s shares recently.

A number of county education boards, meanwhile, have also seen their investments in both BoI and AIB virtually disappear.

- Siobhan Creaton

Irish Independent

PADDY AGNEW in Rome

Irish Times 02/11/2010

MARGARET KENNEDY and Brendan Butler, two members of the seven-strong Irish delegation that attended last Sunday’s multinational protest by clerical sex abuse victims at the Vatican, are to register protests with the Department of Foreign Affairs in relation to how they were treated by Vatican police.

Ms Kennedy, a sex abuse survivor who suffers from Parkinson’s disease and is wheelchair bound, and Mr Butler both made their way up from the demonstration venue, just outside Castel Sant’Angelo, to St Peter’s Square.

Ms Kennedy wished to leave two stones in the square, in memory of sex abuse victims. Once inside the square, they were stopped by Vatican police who identified them as being linked to the Reformation Day protest, organised by the US victims’ group, Survivor’s Voice.

Given that no form of protest, political, religious or otherwise, is ever allowed by Vatican authorities within St Peter’s Square, Ms Kennedy and Mr Butler were stopped. Police asked them for their passports and took these away for verification. After 45 minutes, the passports were handed back and the two Irish protesters sent on their way.

Last night, Mr Butler said that, although the police behaviour had been courteous and correct, he still found it inexplicable that he and Ms Kennedy should have been asked for their IDs and stopped for 45 minutes.

While it is routine practice in Italy for police to stop citizens and ask for their identity papers, not everyone is happy about the treatment of the two Irish protesters.

Rome city councillor Gianluca Pecicola, a member of the leftist Sel (Left, Ecology and Liberty) party, yesterday called for an explanation “from the Rome head of police to explain just why [these] protesters have to be identified since this is an inexplicable incident which does damage to people who have already suffered terrible abuse and violence”.

Mark Hilliard

A COMPREHENSIVE survey of Irish survivors of religious institutional abuse living in the UK has exposed the damage caused to their lives decades after they fled the country.

Social housing, medical help, counselling and even pensions legitimised by child labour from the age of 12 are among the list of things survivors believe should be funded by financial contributions from religious orders.

It is believed that around one third of all abuse survivors, some 4,800 of the total respondents to the Redress Board, now live in the UK. Many want help to come home, others say they could never come back.

“I would like to visit my dad in Ireland [but] I could never live there again,” said one respondent who took part in the survey carried out by the Irish Women’s Survivor Support Network (IWSSN).

Another wrote: “I cannot return to Ireland… it’s too damaging.”

The survey was designed to address the needs of a substantial amount of abuse survivors who live outside the country and would therefore be outside the financial framework of the Statutory Fund when it is eventually administered. “It is very important to ensure that survivors in the UK have the chance to state their views,” said Sally Mulready, a British Labour politician and support worker based in London.

Some 122 detailed surveys were returned from a total of 383 distributed, representing 32% of the sample, a higher-than-average return for such research.

Among the findings, the IWSSN found that one third said they still required funding for counselling, 36% asked for assistance in returning home, 20% requested further educational support for family members and 76% asked that pensions be provided to those forced into child labour.

“Survivors started work at 12 years or older but we ended up with no pensions,” noted one respondent.

A large majority felt that the fund should apply to those who had been placed in laundries, a group excluded from the Redress Act 2001.

More than 22% said they were receiving ongoing therapy.

Of those, 44% have been receiving treatment for up to 10 years and 7% for even longer.

Nearly half categorise themselves as disabled, 62% of whom say they need further help with mental health needs.

Accommodation requirements also featured strongly in the findings. Nearly half of those in the sample were in social housing and a quarter said they would welcome financial assistance to return to Ireland.

October 31, 2010

The Sunday Times, February 1, 2004

The head of one victims’ group has accused others of being more interested in state funding than supporting the people they are there to help, write Siobhan Maguire and Dearbhail McDonald
It was the last meeting before Christmas of the National Office for Victims of Abuse (Nova) but the final item on the agenda struck an unseasonal note.
The leaders of victim support groups had been discussing routine matters with officials from the departments of health and education at Nova’s office in Ormond Quay in Dublin. But, clearing his throat, Tom Hayes, the secretary of the Alliance Victim Support Group, said he had one last issue to raise.
The Northern Ireland civil servant said he had a question “about the west of Ireland”. He wanted to discuss “a rumour” that Aislinn, a support group headed by Christine Buckley, had been sending members on free weekend breaks to the city. Hayes wondered how people were selected for these trips and if they were funded by government money.
Buckley, who was abused by the Sisters of Mercy at the Goldenbridge orphanage, was not present at the meeting. But a representative rebutted Hayes’s accusation, and said the drop-in centre for victims was not getting government funding for any such trips.
Hayes’s claims, which he later accepted were based on a misunderstanding, surprised most people at the meeting. Some believed it was a veiled attack against what is considered to be the leading Irish support group for victims of institutional abuse.
Last week Hayes, who spent eight years in an industrial school in Limerick, went public with other reservations he has about the plethora of groups that help victims. Institutional abuse had created a “cottage industry” of support groups, he said. Some of these groups “appeared more interested in receiving state funding than in helping victims”.
The remarks lifted the lid on a simmering dispute. For months, Hayes, whose group claims to represent more than 300 abuse victims, has been making criticisms in private to government officials. He has, in particular, challenged the quality of service offered by state-funded victims’ groups.
Two weeks ago Hayes complained to the departments of health and education — which both fund survivors’ groups — that some victims had claimed they were badly treated at certain groups. He told officials he was concerned about the “volume of complaints” he said he had received about the Cork-based Right of Place, which has assisted 1,800 former residents, and Aislinn, which says it has helped more than 3,500.
Survivor groups reacted angrily when Hayes went public last week. “Tom Hayes is wrong,” said Tony Treacy, the housing officer for Right of Place. “What he has said about us is totally unjust and untrue. He has never even been to see us in Cork.”
Buckley, whose harrowing account of the abuse she suffered featured in the 1996 documentary, Dear Daughter, reacted even more strongly. She instructed solicitors to issue letters warning against any defamatory allegations being made against Aislinn. Through her solicitors, Buckley said that, as far as she is aware, Hayes had no issues with her.
“The Department of Education and the Department of Health have excellent relations with Aislinn, and Buckley has no intimation that any complaint has been received from either,” her solicitors said.
Whatever the truth of Hayes’s charges, his characterisation of a “cottage industry” hit a raw nerve. Why are eight groups, most in receipt of public money, involved in counselling victims? Couldn’t Nova, the government agency, do the job? “It’s about compensation. It is about how much you will get and how long you have to wait for it,” says a victim who was counselled by one group. “The institutional mentality still reigns among survivors, they can’t move on.”
IN MAY 1999, two weeks after RTE screened States of Fear, a documentary detailing the horrors of institutional abuse, Bertie Ahern, the taoiseach, apologised to victims.
Ahern established the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse, chaired by Justice Mary Laffoy, who resigned last year in a row with the government. The government also set up the Residential Institutions Redress Board — a compensation fund — and told former inmates of industrial schools who suffered physical or sexual abuse they were entitled to damages.
The final bill could be €1 billion, according to John Purcell, the comptroller and auditor general. The average payment to each claimant so far is €80,000.
The extent of the abuse case-load emerged last Friday when Laffoy reported that 4,128 allegations by 1,712 complainants have been brought to the commission.
The united front presented by victims in 1999 soon dissolved. Natural leaders such as Buckley, Hayes and Mick Waters quickly emerged and each set up their own groups.
“All the groups have their own voice, all have their own opinions, and they all see things differently,” says Waters of Survivors of Child Abuse (Soca) UK.
Last year Waters appealed to victims’ groups to unite or face exclusion from the consultation process on the future direction of the child abuse commission. John Kelly of Irish Soca — which has no connection to Soca UK — says groups “have to have a united approach”. But competition between the groups is now more vigorous than ever.
Last year, following huge payouts by the Catholic church to Mervyn Rundle and Colm O’Gorman — victims of paedophile priests — Buckley claimed survivors of institutional abuse were being treated as “third-class citizens” compared with those abused by diocesan priests.
Complicating the matter further, Let Our Voices Emerge (Love), a group of people with positive memories of institutional care, stepped into the arena to defend the religious orders. Buckley branded them “teacher’s pets” and Love retaliated by calling for better auditing procedures for victim support groups.
The Department of Education, which funds Nova, concedes there is no “formal quality control process” to assess the level of services, and “no formal complaints procedure” for dealing with complaints against support groups.
Senior officials privately admit they know all about the fighting. One official says it was “widely known” that conflict and personality clashes had started even before Laffoy was appointed. “This is an all-out turf war,” the official says. Each group “has its own agenda” and is interested in “feathering its own nest”.
“The groups are always having a go at each other and it has been like that for as long as I can remember. We have a remit to work with the support groups and make sure that we meet regularly to discuss any concerns. Of course, if allegations are being made we have to look into them.”
The comptroller is already reviewing a number of victims’ groups’ accounts. But the in-fighting is likely to worsen. Patrick Walsh of Irish Soca has branded Hayes’s comments “irrational” and “offensive”. Hayes remains defiant and believes his claims are being taken seriously by the government.
He also says “a culture of dependency” has engulfed the support groups. “What we have are organisations run for victims by victims, and it is like a vicious circle because victims end up in an environment where the past is always present,” he says.
Patricia Casey, a professor of psychiatry at University College Dublin, agrees this is a possibility. “The inherent danger with self-help groups is that unless they are headed by skilled and qualified facilitators, dependency can be induced and reinforced, rather than healing encouraged,” she says.
Hayes and his supporters want thorough reform. They are not calling for victims groups to be disbanded, but to be managed by fully qualified, independent professionals. But is the government likely to act, or is it still too wary of victims and too embarrassed about its role in turning a blind eye to institutional abuse?
LAST week Christy Mannion, an adviser to Micheal Martin, the health minister, held an informal meeting with Hayes and his wife Ruth, also a member of the alliance group.
The three met in Buswells hotel in Dublin and Hayes outlined his proposals for a uniform, professionally led victims’ group. The civil servant left an impression on Mannion, who found him “very sincere” and promised to raise his concerns with the minister.
The alliance group wants the centre to be under the control of the Department of Health. “It must be open to all victims of institutions and should be aligned to the national office with the overall responsibility vested in professionally trained personnel,” says Hayes. “It would be reasonable to expect that all other issues to do with the smooth running of a government centre such as health and safety, fire, security, confidentiality and a complaints procedure would be established as a matter of form.”
Martin and Noel Dempsey, the minister for education, will soon be briefed by their officials on the conflict between the groups and on ideas to reform the “cottage industry”. But discussions will not begin until the government deals with the criticism contained in Laffoy’s third interim report. Published last Friday, it again castigated the government for its failure to co-operate with the inquiry.
In the meantime, Hayes faces a chilly reception when Nova meets in two weeks. “I have no axe to grind but it is time to see some changes in the way victim support groups are managed and the quality of services being offered to survivors. I’m not going to be quiet. It’s a matter for the government now to step in and take control.”
Fighting for funds
Nova: the government agency established in 2000 to deal with the support groups. Nova got €460,000 from the Department of Education in 2001-2003
Aislinn Centre: Set up in 1999 by Christine Buckley. Since then it has received €184,279.56 from the state
One in Four: Set up by Colm O’Gorman. It received €504,000 in 2003
Right of Place: Since it was formed in 1999, Right of Place has received €1,422,476.91 in government funding
Le Cheile Eile: A small, Navan-based support group, it has received €4,000 in government support
Irish Soca: A support group run by John Kelly, it receives no public funding
Soca UK: (No link with above). Led by Mick Waters, it has assisted 1,500 Irish victims resident in Britain and received €162,382
Alliance for the Healing of Institutional Abuse: Led by Tom Hayes, it represents over 300 victims and has received €49,288 in government funding
Right to Peace: A Clonmel-based support group chaired by Michael O’Brien. It has received funding of €35,000
Outreach: A British-based support service which has received €1,357,696

“”"Despite the fact that the above article appeared in the Sunday Times in 2004, I thought it worthwhile putting in on this website for information purposes.*** Paddy Doyle 29/10/2010

The church official who initially said it was his fault that a paedophile priest was given succour in Pope Benedict XVI’s former diocese has broken ranks, alleging he was bullied into taking responsibility to protect the pontiff.

Gerhard Gruber was Joseph Ratzinger’s general vicar in Munich during the 1980s, when Ratzinger, now Pope, was Archbishop.

Ratzinger chaired the meeting which decided to offer paedophile priest Peter H., a safe haven in Munich. The priest was also given further positions of trust in the church, and was later convicted of further child abuse.

Gruber’s friends have told Der Spiegel news magazine that when the story came to light last month, he was under immense pressure to take responsibility for the decision in order to shield the Pope from accusations of having helped a paedophile.

The magazine wrote that he was urgently “requested” to take full responsibility in order to take the Pope “out of the firing line.”

He wrote in a letter to a friend that he had been faxed a statement that he was to make, though he had been given the opportunity to suggest changes.

Gruber issued a statement in March which said, “The repeated employment of H. in priestly spiritual duties was a bad mistake. I assume all responsibility.”

The implication from the bishopric that Gruber had acted alone in offering help to the paedophile priest, and not turned him over to the police, has greatly upset him, the magazine wrote.

The Catholic church’s handling of repeated child abuse allegations in Germany and beyond has prompted repeated calls for bishops to resign for either not reporting claims to secular authorities, or for making light of charges made by victims.

The latest bishop under such pressure is Heinrich Mussinghoff, bishop of Aachen, whose handling of an abuse claim has been heavily criticised by a child protection group.

The Initiative Against Violence and Sexual Abuse of Children and Youths accuses Mussinghoff of ignoring claims made this January by a 19-year-old man that he was sexually abused as a child by the bishopric’s head of personnel.

Nothing has been done about the man’s claims, the initiative’s spokesman Johannes Heibel said.

“Those responsible should resign because the church has not met its own promises, despite a months-long debate over sexual abuse,” he said.

The accused priest, named only as Georg K., is said to have regularly abused the man and others, even making videos and photos of the abuse. The man’s family has not yet been contacted by anyone from the bishopric, having made the claims.

When Der Spiegel contacted the bishopric for a comment, it was told, “The boy should have contacted us, not us him.”

The Local (news@thelocal.de)