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An inconvenient truth: barriers to truth recovery in the aftermath of institutional child abuse in Ireland

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2018

Anne-Marie McAlinden
Anne-Marie McAlinden*
Affiliation:
Queen's University Belfast
*
Anne-Marie McAlinden, Reader in Law, School of Law, Queen's University Belfast, 29 University Square, Belfast, BT7 1NN, UK. Email: [email protected]
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Abstract

Contemporary settled democracies, including the USA, England and Wales and Ireland, have witnessed a string of high-profile cases of institutional child abuse in both Church and State settings. Set against the broader literature on transitional justice, this analysis argues that there are significant barriers to truth recovery within the particular context of historical institutional abuse by the clergy in the Republic of Ireland. In the main, it argues that the frameworks of the inquiries and commissions into historical institutional child abuse are not conducive to truth recovery or the search for justice in dealing with the legacy of an abusive past. It is the Church–State relationship which makes the Irish situation noteworthy and unique. The Catholic Church and child care institutions are especially self-protective, secretive and closed by nature, and strongly discourage the drawing of attention to any deficiencies in organisational procedures. The nature of the public inquiry process also means that there is often a rather linear focus on accountability and apportioning blame. Collectively, such difficulties inhibit fuller systemic investigation of the veracity of what actually happened and, in turn, meaningful modification of child care policies. The paper concludes by offering some thoughts on the implications for transitional justice discourses more broadly as well as the residual issues for Ireland and other settled democracies in terms of moving on from the legacy of institutional child abuse.

Type
Research Article
Information
Legal Studies , Volume 33 , Issue 2 , June 2013 , pp. 189 - 214
Copyright
Copyright © Society of Legal Scholars 2013

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Footnotes

*

I am grateful to my colleagues, Professors Kieran McEvoy and Shadd Maruna, and to the two anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments on earlier drafts of the paper. Any errors are, of course, my own.

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104 I am grateful to an anonymous reviewer for Legal Studies for alerting me to this point/issue.

105 Ibid.

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107 See, eg, Article 42 of the Constitution on education which ‘acknowledges that the primary and natural educator of the child is the family’ and makes no reference to the rights of churches as educators.

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165 Raftery and O'Sullivan, above n 22, ch 5.

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167 Cohen, above n 24; Cohen, above n 72.

168 Cohen, above n 72, at 12–22.

169 Ibid, at 15.

170 F O'Toole ‘Our capacity for double-think allowed abuse to continue’, The Irish Times, 2 June 1999.

171 Waters, above n 19.

172 Cohen, above n 72, at 15.

173 Ibid, at 46–47.

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180 McAlinden, above n 33, p 353.

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182 Murphy Report, above n 17, para 1.28.

183 Ryan Report, above, n 16, vol IV, para 29.

184 Ibid, Executive Summary; see also vol III.

185 See, eg, Raftery and O'Sullivan, above n 22, p 33; see also Ryan Report, above n 16, vol III, ch 10.

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187 Ní Aolaín and Campbell, above n 86.

188 Ibid, at 194.

189 Cohen, above n 72, at 49.

190 Huyse, above n 77, at 53.

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194 The referendum is expected to take place in early 2012 and provisions inserted as the 28th Amendment to the Constitution.

195 Ruairí Quinn TD, speaking on RTÉ Six-One News, 5 July 2011.

196 I am grateful to an anonymous reviewer for Legal Studies for alerting me to this point/issue.

197 EA Posner and A Vermeule ‘Transitional justice as ordinary justice’, (2004) 117 Harvard Law Review 761 at 763, n 4.

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