BishopAccountability.org
	State's Indifference to Victims One in Four [Ireland] March 29, 2007 http://www.oneinfour.org/news/news2007/indifference/ There is something particularly unedifying about the spectacle of a Government Minister slithering away from responsibility. When that responsibility involves the duty of the State to ensure the safety of children, it is especially reprehensible, writes Mary Raftery Minister for Education Mary Hanafin attempted last week to defend the legal tactics of the State, which has recently threatened hundreds of victims of child sexual abuse in national schools that if they did not immediately drop their cases against her department, they would be actively pursued for enormous legal costs. It was all the lawyers, she said in an interview on RTÉ news. She claimed to know nothing about the threatening letters, nor did she sanction them. "It was very much a legal letter going to other lawyers. It wasn't in any way intended to upset or to offend . . . It was never sent to the clients themselves," she said. What a relief! It will be a great comfort to victims of abuse that all this business about them having to pay huge costs was merely a housekeeping matter between lawyers, "a legal response to a legal question", according to the Minister in charge. It is difficult to know what kind of a world Mary Hanafin inhabits. It must be a happy clappy sort of a place, where no one need bother their fluffy little heads about lawyers or letters or costs or anything nasty like that. To most people, who incidentally have a somewhat firmer grasp on reality, notification from the State (whether sent to them or their lawyers) of a determination to come after them for hundreds of thousands of euro in legal costs is a terrifying threat. It is not the first time a government has engaged in this kind of legal intimidation of victims. Describing similar tactics 10 years ago, the following statements were made in the Dáil: "the government has been involved in covert and ruthless campaigns to frustrate the victims . . . Is the minister [ and government colleagues] asking the people of Ireland to accept they were doing their job properly by trying to suggest they were in blissful ignorance of the way the case was being handled?" This was the current Minister for Finance, Brian Cowen, quite properly excoriating the then coalition government for its vindictive handling of the case of Brigid McCole, a victim of Hepatitis C. Its excuse at the time, that its actions were for legal reasons, is strikingly similar to the defence now being trotted out by Mary Hanafin for her treatment of another set of victims of State indifference. It would be hard to better Brian Cowen's trenchant criticism of a politician who hides behind lawyers in this way. "Such legal fictions will not wash. Political responsibility cannot be abdicated away with fanciful legalisms which portray the political master . . . of this tragic case as if it were somebody else's business. Even the Minister would have to concede that that falls far short of the most minimalist definition of political accountability." It is interesting in the light of the above to note that Brian Cowen himself may have played a role in the settlement of one of the earlier national school abuse cases against the State. Aiden O'Brien, a constituent of his, appealed to him for assistance when difficulties arose in terms of the State defendants paying out the full amount of damages agreed on in his case. Liability for the sexual abuse suffered by Aiden as a young child had been jointly accepted in 2005 by the State and by the religious order involved in the Co Offaly primary school concerned - in which incidentally Brian Cowen himself had been a pupil around the same time. A dispute then arose between the State and the religious order. Compensation to Aiden and other victims was put on the long finger. Almost immediately after his appeal to Brian Cowen, Aiden received his compensation, paid out in full by the State. This is an example of a government and a minister behaving properly, responsibly and with the kind of humanity one should expect in the context of their historic and clearly sincere apology in 1999 to victims of child abuse. It is, however, in sharp contrast to what is happening now. During the research for the Prime Time programme which I made on the subject last week, I came across a number of cases of individuals raped and sexually abused as children in national schools who have been forced to abandon their cases against the Department of Education out of fear that they could face bankruptcy - simply for seeking justice and accountability from the State, which, after all, compelled them to go to school in the first place. Others are literally risking everything they have by fighting on. They have been shocked by Ms Hanafin's description of them last week as pursuing their cases for reasons of "retribution". The despair they feel at the Government's refusal to take responsibility for what happened to them in what is officially a "national" school system is something we should all feel ashamed of.
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