Irish Redress Board Condemns Innocent Men

The Irish Residential Institutions Redress Board Condemns Innocent Men.

The Irish Redress Board was set up under The Residential Institutions Redress Act 2002. This Board was put there to deal with issues of alleged abuse made by claimants who had lived as children under the care of the state in industrial schools many years ago. Such was the level of complaints of mistreatment and assault inflicted on children for generations, that special action had to be taken.

The Irish Government brought in legislation to fast track the complaints. There would be no need for a court hearing. All the complainant had to do was to name the alleged abuser, and his case was processed. Substantial awards were made on this basis. The accused would not be prosecuted, but his name and reputation would be tarnished. That is, if he was guilty in the first place.

But what if the accused person was innocent ? What if he had been in the wrong place at the wrong time, and met the wrong people ? Just imagine a situation where your good name had been used to justify a claim, and you being listed as a child abuser to secure a fraudulent claim for someone else. A horrific situation, but one that is not all that uncommon.

Faced with a situation where your name is being used to justify a false claim, what would you do ?

Would you sit tight and hope that the whole thing would blow over, and maybe hope that nobody would hear about it. After all, if there was no prosecution it would not become public. But what about your reputation and your legacy. Things have an unhappy knack of turning up in the most peculiar forms.

One man in the South East of Ireland made a decision. He was not happy. His name had been used by a claimant. A substantial amount of money was awarded on foot of a false allegation, and this innocent man was pilloried as a result.

The fact that this named victim was not prosecuted by the state offered little solace. His reputation and his family life were in tatters. He complained to the Health Services and other state bodies. That’s when the real trouble began. He obviously had walked in on something that was sacrosanct.
It looks now as if the whole thing was a set up.

The claimants could name anyone. As long as they had a name listed, they got their award.

Guilt or innocence had nothing to do with it. The objective was to indemnify those that had suffered in the industrial schools. By hook or by crook, they were going to get their award. When they listed a name, that was it. Everyone then rolled in behind the presumption of guilt.

Priests, Nuns and other parties must have known that innocent men were being condemned.

Did they willingly collude in the whole charade ?

It was one way of getting off the hook. Get someone up to take the hit, and everyone else is purged of guilt. Abuse in the industrial schools was systematic. The authorities must have known what was going on. It suited them to do nothing. If the truth were known, guilt would be spread out to include a wider circle. The Redress Board put a halt to that. It suited the establishment to contain the problem.

All that was needed was a fall guy, a sacrificial lamb to absorb all the guilt. A man in the South East of Ireland can testify to this. He lived to tell the tale.