Religious orders who ran orphanages face the prospect of a sharp rise in compensation claims from former residents following a High Court settlement in Dublin yesterday. The Sisters of Mercy agreed to pay £20,000, without admission of liability, to the parents of a baby girl who died in hospital some days after being placed in the Goldenbridge orphanage in Dublin in 1955.
Several dozen claims for damages for physical injury and mental trauma are already being processed by lawyers on behalf of former residents of Goldenbridge.
Claims have also been lodged by former residents of a Sisters of Mercy orphanage in Booterstown, Co Dublin, and of some other Sisters of Mercy establishments around the country.
Legal sources said last night they believed more people who had been in orphanages run by various religious orders would now come forward.
In the case settled yesterday, an 11-month-old child, Marion Howe, was admitted to the Goldenbridge orphanage for two weeks in 1955 while her mother recovered from an illness. Her father was in England. Her family has always maintained that Marion was in good health and cheerful when she was brought to the orphanage.
The child was certified as having died of dysentery, but her family has maintained that she had suffered burns and has demanded an explanation.
While the order admitted yesterday that there was a burn on the child's leg, it could offer no explanation for what happened.
The £20,000 payment to Marion's now-elderly parents, Mr Myles and Mrs Christina Howe, of Bride Street, off Kevin Street, Dublin, is being made as recompense for any distress they suffered but without any admission of liability, Mr Justice Kelly was told.
The Howes will also be paid their costs.
In a statement read to the court yesterday, the Sisters of Mercy said: "We, the Sisters of Mercy, accept that Marion had a burn to her leg at the time of her death and died of acute dysentery infection. We have been unable to establish how this burn occurred."
The statement continued: "We, the Sisters of Mercy, wish to express our deep sorrow to Myles and Christina Howe for the anguish and distress they experienced on and since the death of their baby daughter, Marion, while in our care in May 1955."
"We also wish to express our sorrow and regret if there was any lack of courtesy and compassion at that time," it added.
The Howes initiated proceedings against the Sisters of Mercy after seeing the Louis Lentin television programme, Dear Daugh- ter, last year. The programme examined the experience of some of the inmates of Goldenbridge orphanage during the 1950s when it was run by Sister Xaviera. She has denied any wrongdoing.
A sister of Marion, Ms Christine Howe, yesterday said the family had had to settle because of the absence of witnesses to what had happened, the lapse of time and her parents' advanced age. Her parents, she said, were "very distressed."
"They got no justice 42 years ago and they got no justice today," she added.
Ms Christine Buckley, on whose experiences much of Dear Daughter was based, said last night that she was angry at the failure by the Sisters of Mercy to admit liability for what had happened to Marion Howe.
What she and other former residents who had suffered institutional abuse wanted above all else was for the Sisters of Mercy to say the abuses had happened, and that they were sorry they had happened.