What would you pay for oral sex? Nova Scotia considers isolated acts of oral intercourse as "minor sexual abuse", ranked fifth in a hierarchy of offences against innocent children. You win promotion to the top of the abusers' league if you commit it repeatedly, with other non-consensual intercourses such as anal rape. Some people do. The difference is multiple dollars.
It isn't easy to calculate the damage done to victims of child abuse, and it's worse to imagine it. But money matters. Last summer, Judge Sean O'Leary thought it was "grotesque" that former school principal Noel Conway retained his £1,200-amonth State pension after being found guilty of abusing many children in his care. The judge ordered that the pension be withheld for two years, paid as a fine and used to help Conway's unfortunate victims. They haven't received a penny yet.
The State did, of course, promise to help victims. When Christine Buckley told Gay Byrne of her experiences in Goldenbridge and then featured in Louis Lentin's documentary Dear Daughter, it undertook that the Department of Health would pay the salary costs of the Aislinn Centre she set up for survivors of abuse. But neither Ms Buckley, a former professional nurse, nor her administrator has been paid a penny for their full-time work since last December. The various Departments now say the salaries ought be paid by NOVA, a national organisation. No one told NOVA, however, or gave it the money to pass on.
The Government and its Departments have dawdled and delayed on almost every matter related to child abuse since the 1960s. This week is no exception. With only eight days to go until the revised statute of limitations expires, the Government finally announced how it proposes to set up a compensation board for some abuse victims.
The bill effectively puts a legal gun to victims' heads, as Bishop Eamonn Walsh pointed out. It obliges those compensated to waive their right to separate legal redress, and it refuses to include all the children abused in day schools, as well as those confined in psychiatric and other hospitals because the State provided nowhere else to put them.
The State has got off lightly, financially and morally. So much attention was focused on the role of religious orders that not enough has been given as yet to the State's way of exercising its duty of care. That duty puts down markers for how children in residential and other care, including schools, are treated now.
There's a dangerous perception that because the influence of religious orders is fading, the problem of abuse, and the conditions in which it can flourish, have now been put to rest. The Taoiseach said sorry, Michael Woods published his Bill, so society is now "all right Jack", and moves on.
The Tanaiste is no exception. Mary Harney attended Goldenbridge as a day pupil and saw no evidence of abuse as a child. Without taking the advice of the specially constituted Laffoy Commission, she decided to announce recently that day pupils would be excluded from the compensation tribunal. But the State has long asserted its primary responsibility for both schools and institutions, despite what some politicians and officials would now prefer people to think.
An inspector wrote to the Secretary of the Department of Education as long ago as September 26th, 1969, to say that a newly appointed resident manager ". . . will have to be told firmly that policy-making and major decisions in matters that concern the welfare of committed children will have to have the approval of the Minister, who alone is the responsible authority in the area." Just as it was in day schools.
In a landmark judgment, the British House of Lords recognised six weeks ago that employers are liable in abuse cases, even where there is no evidence to show negligence in the vetting procedures used. Were this judgment applied in Ireland, victims might legitimately sue Departments of State directly because they exercised the level of control of employers. This could happen no matter what individual politicians or officials claim not to have seen with their own eyes.
The Nova Scotia compensation tables were circulated informally while this Bill was being drawn up. They caused widespread alarm. Although the neat boxes tabling acts of abuse made them look like a bureaucrat's dream, they were a one-stop shop that minimised the horror by minimising the human consequences involved.
The new Bill was supposed to publish detailed criteria for awards, giving survivors an opportunity to evaluate whether to take a case through the expensive and more adversarial courts system. But it has not done so. Victims now have no option but to initiate legal proceedings. And why not? Noel Conway's victims are still awaiting justice, and Christine Buckley, who broke the deadly silence, hasn't even been paid. The State broke its word again to people who are still awaiting a good reason to trust it.
mruane@irish-times.ie