Abuse

The news over the past week has been dominated by stories of abuse. Internationally, much space has been given to the tyrannical abuses of power of the new President of the USA. Locally, much space has been given to the corrupt abuses of power in the Renewable Heating Initiative, a scandal which precipitated the fall of the devolved government of NI. Both of these matters remain high on the news agenda and are sure to run and run. But only passing attention has been given to news of much greater abuse suffered by more vulnerable victims. On Friday, the Historical Institutional Abuse Inquiry reported that there had been widespread physical, emotional and sexual abuse in children’s homes in NI, taking place over decades. Today this story is nowhere to be seen on the news agenda. The rapid public forgetting of this inconvenient truth is a scandal in itself.

For three years the Historical Institutional Abuse Inquiry of NI took evidence from almost five hundred former residents of children’s homes in NI run by churches, charities, local authorities and the state. It investigated these homes over a period of seventy years. The survivors that came forward to tell the Inquiry their stories are to be applauded for their bravery. Not only had they suffered prolonged physical, emotional and sexual abuse from adults who were placed in positions of trust and responsibility for them, but when they plucked up the courage to tell other adults in authority of their suffering, they were not believed.

Those in authority either returned the children into the charge of the abuser that they had just complained about, condemning them to suffer further abuse; or moved the abuser to another position of trust and responsibility in another institution, enabling them to continue their abusing behaviour.  As has been seen in the findings of similar Inquiries in other places, the pattern of behaviour of the authorities in these matters continues to be one of denial and cover up.

Many of the survivors were frail and ill, testament to the extended suffering that they had received. Some were so unwell that they were unable to give evidence to the Inquiry in person. A number have died since the Inquiry began. The most complained about institutions were run by the Catholic Church, and in particular those run by the Sisters of Nazareth. Now that their misdeeds have been publicly exposed, the institutions involved have issued apologies. But surely this is far too little and much too late.

The Inquiry has recommended the payment of compensation to these abuse victims. But how do you compensate someone for a tortured childhood and a haunted adulthood? Survivors are not able to live their lives over again. They were forced to experience the unendurable, and found a way to live through it. Many victims did not survive to tell their stories. Can you put a price on survival?