Abuse victims' views are being callously ignored

AS A campaigner against all kinds of child abuse and as a survivor of sex abuse, I and the other survivors like me are very upset at the moment.

We went through hell on earth when we were children in industrial schools... We don't need to be abused all over again.

The Laffoy Commission was our only chance at facing our abusers, it was our chance to get a crack at those who stole our childhood from us.

What I am worried about is what will happen to the children in years to come.

Who is going to protect them if things are not nipped in the bud now once and for all?

Is the Government treating us like this because we don't matter?

It's like we don't exist, as though we are second class citizens. We don't have a say at all and if we do say something we are not listened to.

I want Judge Mary Laffoy to be reinstated.

The carry on of so-called religious orders in years gone by was absolutely disgraceful... young women in the prime of their lives incarcerated in convents and Magdalene laundries.

The Government of the day gave permission for the remains of young women, a lot of them young mothers, to be dug up and sent to Glasnevin to be burnt.

No death certificates are to be found on the remains of these unfortunate victims. No-one knows how they died, or why they died.

Out in the world today you will find hundreds of children who were born to these young women.

They must be pitied because if they ever decide to trace their mothers they will come up against a stone wall.

All of these religious orders who ignored children's rights used the names of charities and saints to take children from their mothers.

The time has come to take the skeletons out of the cupboard.

The Government should launch a full judicial inquiry into the whole Magdalene issue so we can discover exactly what went on.

So far all we have is the Redress Board.

To date the board has made a total of 108 offers following settlement talks and 25 following awards.

A total of 48 applications have been refused.

These applications have been refused as, on the face of the documentation, the application was made outside the board's term of reference as laid down by the 2002 Act.

In total 181 applications have been finalised by the board.

The awards made by the boards range in value from EUR10,000 to EUR200,400. The average sum to date is EUR84,000.

We would like to have a breakdown on these figures.

How much interference has the Government had on this issue?

There are other groups out there in our society who have been made substantial awards from religious orders with no government input.

I personally think that all victims of institutional abuse should deal directly with the Religious Orders themselves as we know the Residential Institutions Redress Act is being subjected to far to much interference from the Government.

They seem to have all the power.

A lot of the issues in the Redress Act are being blatantly abused by the Redress Board.

The Act promises not to apportion any blame to any of the victims of abuse that appear before the Redress Board.

It is actually written into the act that the victims of abuse will not be blamed or accused of anything - the act says: "The Board shall not address any issue of guilt or negligence arousing out of evidence given in an application under this Act."

We have spoken to some of our members who have been to the Redress Board and we find that this is not the case whatsoever.

Despite their promises the board is putting massive pressure on the people who appear before it - and we feel this is something the public needs to know.

The Act has been abused on many occasions.

Some of our members have actually had breakdowns after being to the Redress Board.

When one of our members called Sean heard about the Redress Board he hoped it would give him some kind of closure.

Unfortunately this was not to be, instead he was confronted by yet another harrowing nightmare.

The Government is using any means possible to keep the cost of Redress down.

It is even contradicting medical reports.

The board also penalises any victim who has managed to get their life back together because they get fewer points on the "loss of opportunity" section.

The biggest joke of all is that it states in the Redress Act that any person who has been made a settlement by the Board shall not disclose the sum to anyone, and if he does will be penalised by either two years in prison or a fine of EUR25,000.

The Government surely must know by now that abuse has no boundaries.

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