JUSTICE, it is said, must not only be done, but be seen to be, done. So what meaning can justice have for people like the survivors of Golden Bridge children's home who have just been informed that the State does not feel it has a good enough case to proceed with criminal prosecutions against their alleged abusers?

Answers to this question are not only relevant to survivors of abuse from the 1950s and 1960s but to humane responses to present day victims of abuse. The concept of justice making must be at the centre of such responses, for there can be no healing without it. Fortunately, justice does not depend only on accountability through criminal prosecution, however important an aspect that is. There is still much that can be done to promote healing.

Firstly, there is truth telling. This aspect of justice involves breaking the silence that has invariably allowed the abuse to happen. Truth means more than establishing the facts of the abuse, but paying careful, attention to the emotional, psycho logical and spiritual dimensions of the victim's experience. Only when the victims are allowed to speak about their experience can the abuse lose some of its corrosive power.

But truth of itself is not enough. A second condition of justice must involve the victims feeling heard and believed. Full acknowledgment of the violation must be given and that the abuse shouldn't have happened.

At first, when the Golden Bridge, allegations were made public, this condition seemed to be firmly met, especially when the Mercy Order apologised publicly for what had happened. But in the weeks and months that followed, there has been a gradual clawing back from that position culminating in the order (and others) rallying around Sister Xaviera when she appeared on RTE's Prime Time - the television event of the year.

There were even suggestions that those making the allegations were not abused at all but experiencing false memories.

Perhaps the biggest obstacle to acknowledgment of the violation and, the search for justice and healing the powerful view that has taken hold, that before the 1970s when corporal punishment was allowed, people could do what they liked with children in the "harsh regimes of the time" and expect to get away with it. The nuns, to quote one commentator, were doing no different from families".

I HAVE made a careful examination of some of the records of the time and these show that a clear concept of child abuse did in fact exist. The 1958 ISPCC annual report, for instance, gives a detailed account of a case of "real brutality" to a seven year old girl.

A teacher reported having seen "marks and weals on her face and arms, and that similar injuries to the child had been observed on previous occasions". A medical examination found the girl to be "suffering from numerous bruises on the body, a festering sore on the finger, a black eye, cut on the nose, and sore knees". A second doctor also "attributed the injuries to beatings".

The mother denied the abuse, but admitted that "the child was troublesome and had even suggested the teacher should beat her" - a suggestion that horrified the professionals. The child accounted for the injuries to her teacher on this and other occasions "by saying she fell and hit her face against the door'." Following investigations by the gardai, the woman was prosecuted and much to the ISPCC's horror the court responded by simply "lecturing the mother, allowing her to take the child home".

Subsequently, however, the school again reported the case and when the child was admitted to hospital she was found to have serious injuries all over her body. This time the mother admitted beating the child with a strap and was convicted of cruelty and sentenced to three months imprisonment with hard labour.

The child was committed to "the care of the nuns", although it was remarked that "this can be no substitute for home life to which every child has a right". The child, who was illegitimate, had already spent some five years in an industrial school before being returned to her by then married parents in 1957. She had told the ISPCC inspector "she would like to go back to the nuns, whom she loved."

SOURCES such as old industrial school and ISPCC reports provide solid historical evidence that, even in a context where corporal punishment was practised a clear concept of physical ill treatment of children existed which was acted upon at the time.

Those involved in child protection clearly believed that, while you could never replace the family, they were handing children over to a caring residential regime.

Such records reveal that some children clearly had good experiences in the care of religious and the gratitude they felt towards the nuns.

When child abuse went on it was hidden and contained within a veil of terror and secrecy. The historical record supports the testimony of survivors of alleged institutional abuse in how its dynamics followed the classic pattern of concealment as children were coached to give false accounts of injuries the "children who walked into doors".

Thus, once the secret is broken and truth telling begins, the immediate and long term response to victims is fundamental to the healing process. The pain of not being believed is like further abuse.

A third condition of justice making arises from this restitution. This means both a symbolic restoration of what was lost, acknowledging the wrong and harm done and the provision of concrete means to bring about healing. It should include the institutions implicated in abuse covering the costs of therapy.

The costs of having been abused are, in every sense, huge. The Centre for the Prevention of Sexual and Domestic Violence in Seattle (whose excellent work in this area I have drawn on here) recently brought together a group of 20 survivors of abuse by religious who estimated that he had spent a total of 55 years in therapy at cost of $298,000 to try and come to terms with its impact on their lives.

Such restitution should also include the Government establishing a national children's archive which collates all the historical material available on childcare in State, Church and voluntary agencies and records the testimony of survivors and the accounts of former childcare and medical staff.

In making justice, our goal should not be to forgive and forget, but to strive to forgive and remember.