MEDIA RELEASE
AUSTRALIAN VICTIMS OF IRISH INSTITUTIONS URGED TO APPLY FOR URGENT COMPENSATION
Up to 150,000 children who were neglected or mistreated in Irish institutions over the past 70 years have been urged by an Australian lawyer to make urgent applications for compensation.
Lawyer Dr Viv Waller, from Maurice Blackburn, said a scheme set up by the Irish Government to compensate residents treated harshly in Irish institutions was due to close before Christmas.
"We have handled a number of cases and have been contacted by support agencies who are keen for Australians who may have grown up in these institutions to come forward so they can receive compensation," Dr Waller said.
The Residential Institutions Redress Board was set up in 2002 to pay compensation to people who as children suffered ill treatment while living in industrial schools, reformatories and other institutions.
Dr Waller said people who had received compensation included those who left school illiterate, who were starved, or who were forced to work in harsh or unreasonable conditions.
"The Board has recognised that children suffered because of the general climate of fear and oppression which pervaded these institutions," she said.
The Board has received over 7000 applications for compensation.
According to its reports, it has already granted 282 million Euros in awards in 3665 cases.
Payments so far range up to 300,000 Euros, with the average payment being 80,000 to 100,000 Euros.
Dr Waller said up to 150,000 former residents of the over 140 institutions emigrated to countries including Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the United States.
"I am concerned that many of these former residents would not have heard of the scheme and may fail to make an application for compensation before the scheme closes," she said.
The deadline for applications is 15 December 2005.
"People are entitled to compensation if they were abused and suffered an injury. The definition of abuse is very wide and includes people who were neglected, were physically or sexually abused, beaten, suffered emotional abuse or a serious impairment to their physical or mental health or development," she said.
Dr Waller said family members of deceased former residents of the institutions were also able to make a claim.
"The process is confidential. The claimant is never identified. I urge the families of anyone who lived in any of these institutions to investigate whether they have a claim," she said.
Claimants have included people who were taken into the institutions from the 1930s until the 1970s.
Dr Waller said her firm had acted for a 55-year-old woman, now living in Melbourne, who wishes to remain anonymous. As a 10-year-old child, she was placed in a reformatory in Limerick in 1956 after the woman who cared for her became ill. She recently received a substantial confidential sum as settlement of her claim.
The woman said she should have been sent to an orphanage, rather than a reformatory.
She was told she was a "bad girl".
"I was told every day of my life that I was nobody and nobody wanted me.
"It takes a long time to get that out of your mind. I can forgive them for a lot, but not for that. The beatings were astronomical, but you don't feel it after a while. But the fact that nobody wanted me was pounded into my brain.
"They robbed me of my education, they robbed me of my future. They used me as free child labour in the big industrial laundries, in the kitchens, and as a cleaner. The day I entered there was the day my childhood ended," 'Mary' said.
She said for punishment the children were locked in the attics alone. She said the nuns who ran the institution were sadistic and barbaric.
'Mary' found out about the scheme through a relative in Ireland who tracked her down in Australia ten years ago.
*A complete list of schools and institutions is available on our website. Click here
Media inquiries: Kerry O'Shea at Maurice Blackburn
Cashman
Phone: (03) 9605.2856 or 0407 874024
