A woman has claimed before the High Court that, as a child, she was abused first in Goldenbridge industrial school and then by her father and stepmother after she was wrongly taken from Goldenbridge by him.
In judicial review proceedings, she is seeking a declaration that the abuse by her father and stepmother should form part of an award of compensation to her by the Residential Institutions Redress Board (RIRB).
Mr David McGrath SC, for the woman, told Mr Justice O'Higgins yesterday that his client, now aged 62, was detained in Goldenbridge by a District Court order made in March 1949.
The detention order was made on the basis that she did not have a home. Mr McGrath argued that the woman, being the subject of a care order, should not have been released to her father in 1952.
Mr Justice O'Higgins gave the woman leave to seek, by way of judicial review, an order quashing the RIRB decision to award her €70,000 compensation. The woman is seeking a declaration that she is entitled to €200,000. In an affidavit, the woman alleged she was abused by staff at Goldenbridge. She claimed she was taken from the school three years later by her father and brought to England to live with him and her stepmother. She claimed both had physically and sexually abused her.
In March this year, she began to give evidence to the RIRB in support of her claim for an award under the Residential Institutions Redress Act 2002. Although the function of the board was to conduct a hearing as informally as possible, her experience was that the hearing was anything but informal.
She believed the practice of the board was to strictly adhere to many of the Rules of Evidence and no leeway was given with regard to an applicant who might be nervous, embarrassed or simply forgetful.
When she reached that aspect of her case in which she alleged she had been sexually abused by her father, having been removed from the school without the District Court's consent, the RIRB chairman, Mr Justice Seán O'Leary, had interrupted and said: "Well, we don't need to know the details at all, other than general, that it was of a severe kind, included penetration, and it lasted."
She said that Mr McGrath, who had represented her at the hearing, had argued she was entitled under the 2002 Act to an award for the abuse she suffered at the hands of her father and stepmother on the basis that she was removed illegally from the school and because nothing was done to take her back into the nuns' care.
The woman alleged Mr Justice O'Leary had ruled the abuse by the father and stepmother was not abuse within the meaning of the legislation and that the nuns did not act unreasonably in discharging her to her father.
She estimated that if the abuse suffered at the hands of her father and stepmother were included in the redress calculations, it would have equated to an award of €200,000. Under the 2002 Act, the RIRB's primary function was to "make awards...which are fair and reasonable having regard to the unique circumstances of each applicant".
She had been awarded €70,000 and travelling expenses and she believed the awards made by the board were consistently lower than the courts would award.