The Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission (‘the Commission’) notes the announcement by Minister McEntee of a new Commission of Investigation into the handling of child sex abuse in schools. It is imperative that this new Commission learns from the mistakes and limitations of previous inquiries and investigations.
Meanwhile, there are still far too many survivors of abuse in Irish schools who have been denied justice for years — survivors the State has been legally responsible for providing redress to since 2014. Minister McEntee states that “further work is being done to examine the matter of financial redress, and how any future scheme could be funded”.
However, no matter what the legal and moral responsibility owed by religious orders to individual survivors may be, the State already has a standalone legal responsibility to every one of them.
Following a case taken by Louise O’Keeffe eleven years ago, the European Court of Human Rights established beyond doubt that the Irish State had — and continues to have — a positive duty to take steps to protect children from abuse and to provide an effective remedy for those who have suffered sexual abuse in Irish schools.
However, despite numerous apologies to victims, the State continues to fail to implement the 2014 O’Keeffe v Ireland judgment appropriately. The State’s failure to provide a fair system of redress to abuse survivors is demonstrated in sharp focus by the experience of schoolmates of Louise O’Keeffe, women who also attended Dunderrow National School (the ‘Dunderrow women’). Like Louise O’Keeffe, these women were sexually abused by the same paedophile teacher.
The Dunderrow women are known to the State for decades because, like Louise O’Keeffe, many of them provided statements to the Garda Síochána – the very statements that led to prosecution and conviction of their abuser. However, due to the discriminatory and flawed pre-conditions imposed by the State’s two previous redress schemes to date, they were not eligible for redress.
The experiences of the Dunderrow women is representative of the experiences of survivors throughout Ireland who for the past 11 years have been denied redress. The Government’s statement of intent about righting the wrongs of the past will ring hollow if it continues to deny its own legal responsibilities by failing to provide survivors with the redress they are owed and to which they have a legal entitlement.
The Commission is of the view that the lack of coherence in the State’s approach to survivors of sexual abuse in schools shows a discriminatory and arbitrary approach to survivors. We are not alone – as recently as this week a United Nations Committee has highlighted the need for Ireland to remove arbitrary barriers to redress for survivors of historic abuse and to fully implement the O'Keeffe judgment, ensuring meaningful redress for all survivors.
Instead, questions about access to assets and disputes about the relative responsibility between State, religious, and individual offenders have all served to protect the powerful and to delay — and even deny — justice.
“Despite expressions of sympathy and contrition by each of the Taoisigh that have been in office since 2014, the legal and administrative steps taken by their successive governments have consistently frustrated victims’ rights. “The practical effect of the State’s delay and denial of redress to survivors of sexual abuse in schools forces elderly survivors to take legal proceedings to vindicate their rights. It is crucial that the Government ceases its delays and immediately complies with the rule of law and the judgment of the European Court of Human Rights and opens a fair and accessible redress scheme that — finally — provides redress to survivors.”