A terminally ill man, who says he was physically and sexually abused while in the care of religious, has called on the Residential Institutions Redress Board (RIRB) to change its rules on hearing evidence outside Ireland. The board travelled to Britain yesterday to hear his story.
The man aged 48, who was diagnosed with terminal pancreatic cancer six weeks ago, alleges he was abused while at St Joseph's Industrial School, Co Galway, in the late 1960s.
Now living in Coventry, he is too ill to travel to Ireland and had asked the RIRB to hear his testimony at his sickbed in England. The board initially turned down this request, offering instead to pay his air fare and that of his brother to accompany him.
However, following a meeting with his brother yesterday, the board agreed to take the unprecedented step of travelling to another jurisdiction to hear an alleged victim's evidence.
The man's brother, who was in Dublin yesterday, said the board had been furnished with letters from doctors in October, setting out the extent of his cancer and saying he would not be able to travel to Ireland.
"He has maybe days or weeks to live. It is so important to him because he has to close this before he goes. It's so important to him.
"They've agreed to come over and see Michael now after a very testing meeting - a testing one for me. This has been very emotional," he said yesterday. "And the only reason they're coming, I can tell you, is because I was on the radio this morning. You can be sure of it."
The four-person team - chair of the board, Mr Seán O'Leary, Mr John O'Donoghue SC, a doctor and a stenographer - travelled to Coventry last night and went straight to the ill man's home to hear his testimony.
The man said last night: "I feel my case now should go towards them changing their rules, so people can give evidence in their own country if they're not well enough to travel to them."
A statement from the RIRB said, while it welcomed "scrutiny of its decisions and criticisms of its actions", it could not comment on this or any case. The board was "obliged to structure reports and comments without identifying any party covered".
The ill man's brother said they were born in Britain and sent to live with their grandparents in Co Kerry when they were babies. They were "collected" by their parents, who he says were alcoholics, at the ages of five and six years but moved again by an aunt, who brought them to a convent in Athlone. "We were there for two years before we were moved to St Joseph's."
He said his brother had been "incarcerated in a mental institution" because "he was a threat to the brothers".
The RIRB declined to comment on whether it might change its rules regarding hearing evidence abroad from alleged victims who are too ill to travel here. The Laffoy Commission has travelled to the Continent and the US to hear evidence.
Last night Ms Christine Buckley, of the Aislinn Centre for healing of institutional abuse, called on the Redress Board to resign over its handling of the case. "I think this non-therapeutic approach to a terminally-ill patient beggars belief."
" I cannot believe a board that has four medical doctors on it were forcing a man to go over this morning to give evidence when they had letters from his doctors stating how ill he was. I could not possibly have faith in a board that could treat a person like that," she added.
