Woman's claim of sex abuse upheld after 25-year wait

A WOMAN whose allegations of sexual abuse as a child 25 years ago were forcefully denied by the institution where she was being kept has received one of the highest awards yet made by the Residential Institutions Redress Board. Neither the woman nor the institution can be named for legal reasons.

She was awarded €173,331. Just 224 of the 13,486 people who have received compensation to date from the board have been awarded €150,000-€200,000.

A 1985 report in The Irish Timessaid the then seven-year-old girl gave evidence of several instances of sexual abuse by an adult care worker, which allegedly occurred while she was in care at the institution. Management there denied the allegations and expressed full confidence in staff.

In a subsequent interview with The Irish Times, the care worker concerned said allegations by the child had been misinterpreted by the Rotunda hospital's sexual assault unit. A social worker had referred the child to the Rotunda, which the care worker did not see "appropriate".

He and management at the institution where he worked “would have preferred the child to attend the Mater [hospital], which we were familiar with and had good previous experience of”.

He claimed the child had been subjected to sexual interference by another child and believed this confused her when she was investigated at the Rotunda. Shortly after his interview with this newspaper, he resigned his job voluntarily.

Subsequently, management at the institution concerned commissioned a psychiatrist “to carry out a thorough investigation”, as they said in a statement.

Dr Paul McQuaid, consultant child psychiatrist at the Mater, found “no evidence to corroborate the allegations of the children that a pattern of physical and sexual abuse by staff existed in . . . ”, management said in a later statement.

Dr McQuaid’s findings were passed to the Eastern Health Board (EHB). Its view, the management statement said, was “that the conclusion reached by the [McQuaid] report was correct”, and, it said, “the Minister for Health and his department had also accepted the findings of the report”.

Its statement concluded: “This ends a most unfortunate and unnecessary era in our 100 years of existence, and thankfully we can now once again turn our full attention to those children placed in our care.”

Journalist Mary Maher, who wrote about the case for this newspaper at the time, recalled that reaction to her reports was “tumultuous” and “uniformly hostile”.

Then editor Douglas Gageby “received outraged calls from people who objected to it being published at all, as it could not possibly be true”. Ms Maher was visited by neighbours of the institution, who objected strenuously.

She said the redress board award “vindicated the decision of Dr Maura Woods, then director of the sexual assault unit at the Rotunda, to report the child’s allegations to gardaí at the time”.