Editorials

The Irish Times view on institutional abuse in Northern Ireland: an abject apology

The 2017 report of Northern Ireland’s Historical Institutional Abuse Inquiry found shocking levels of sexual, physical and emotional abuse

Margaret McGuckin (centre) stands with survivors at Stormont on Friday after hearing an apology for survivors of historical institutional abuse in Northern Ireland. Photograph: Paul Faith/AFP via Getty Images

Mon Mar 14 2022 - 10:15

In 2005, at a public hearing of the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse, the late Christine Buckley asked a question which has yet to receive a satisfactory answer. Herself an abuse survivor of the Goldenbridge orphanage in Dublin, she became exasperated as a nun giving evidence was asked to explain why children in institutions run by her congregation were subject to abuse. The nun replied that they had no training in caring for children. Buckley interrupted proceedings to demand "What training do you need to hug a child?" There was no answer.

The past may be a foreign country but, certainly when it came to the treatment of women and children, they did things differently there. The tragedy is that it can never be the past for people who lost their childhoods to such institutions. The abuse remains central to their injured lives.

This cannot be undone by statutory and religious institutions, but they can ease the suffering for survivors by acknowledging the great wrong done to them and by making decent restitution through compensation and care as required.

It is why public apology by statutory authorities and the relevant institutions is so important. Emotionally and psychologically, it is crucial to whatever healing can take place among survivors.

READ MORE

In the Republic the first was made 23 years ago, in May 1999, when then taoiseach Bertie Ahern apologised to people who had been in Ireland's residential institutions for children. The latest was delivered last Friday at Stormont by representatives of the five main political parties and those who ran the relevant 22 institutions.

It was as recommended in the 2017 report of Northern Ireland's Historical Institutional Abuse Inquiry, which found shocking levels of sexual, physical and emotional abuse at the institutions between 1922 and 1995. Involved were five local authority homes, five juvenile justice institutions, two secular voluntary homes, nine Catholic homes and one Church of Ireland home. The apologies were as abject as they ought to be. By coincidence, last Friday also marked the eighth anniversary of Christine Buckley's death.

LATEST STORIES