Sir, - As a lawyer acting for several men who were abused as children while in the care of the Christian Brothers at Artane Industrial School, I feel compelled to write to you to raise issues of pressing concern with regard to current Government proposals designed to address the needs of victims of childhood physical and sexual abuse.
The Statute of Limitation (Amendment) Bill of 1998, introduced by Ms Jan O'Sullivan TD, was a very welcome piece of legislation. The reported proposal of the Minister for Justice, Mr O'Donoghue, to introduce amendments to the Bill to confine its effect to actions arising from sexual abuse only is to be deplored.
The effect of Ms O'Sullivan's Bill was to broaden the definition of a disability under the provisions of the Statute of Limitations Act to allow persons to take actions outside the three-year or six-year time limit where a disability arises from significant emotional or mental injury caused by acts of physical or sexual abuse.
I believe that the exclusion of victims who cannot claim specific sexual abuse, but who have suffered significant physical abuse during the course of their childhood while in care, will work a very significant injustice. It will introduce a form of arbitrary and invidious discrimination between victims of childhood abuse which can have no basis in principle or in terms of the constitutional guarantees to protect and vindicate the personal rights of the citizen. In passing I might say that the literature indicates that physical abuse meted out to children often has a sadistic-sexual motivation.
Among my own clients are men who when young children suffered repeated outrageous administrations of corporal punishment and wanton physical abuse which was calculated to induce terror and which produced lasting, possibly irremediable, psychological scarring, which may well be as far-reaching as that caused by the sexual abuse also suffered by these vulnerable children. I would call upon the Minister to immediately re-examine his proposed amendments.
I believe a great deal of the current difficulties in this area could and should be addressed in the context of a statutory compensation tribunal. As the law stands, individuals seeking compensation for personal injuries in the courts, no matter what their personal circumstances, may not avail of any anonymity, and such cases are required to be heard in public open court.
The only recent exception to this process has been the tribunal established under the Scheme and later the Act to compensate those who contracted the Hepatitis C virus.
I can testify that for the men who have consulted me, the very act of relating to me as their solicitor the detailed circumstances of the abuse they suffered as young children has caused them particular emotional upset and has itself accelerated the urgent need for counselling. The prospect of them being required to expose their lives and their stories to the public gaze, as part of the process to win some compensation for the terrible damage to their lives, is quite appalling.
I call on all those who are connected in any way with advising or counselling the victims of child abuse in institutional care to lobby their public representatives and the Minister for Justice to ensure that Ms O'Sullivan's Bill becomes law without the retrograde amendments proposed, and further that steps are immediately taken by the Government to establish on a statutory basis a compensation tribunal to address the needs of the victims in a caring and appropriate manner. - Yours, etc.,
Greg O'Neill, Brophy Solicitors, Parliament Street, Dublin 2.