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	Victim Anger As Brothers Claim Abuse Conspiracy Inquiry Hears of Big Increase in Compensation Bids after Apology By Conor Feehan and Frank Khan Irish Independent May 23, 2006 http://www.unison.ie/irish_independent/stories.php3?ca=9&si=1618621&issue_id=14083 ABUSE victims reacted with fury last night to claims by the Christian Brothers that former inmates of an industrial school conspired with lawyers to claim compensation. The startling assertion was made at the Child Abuse Inquiry by Brother David Gibson, the Provincial of St Mary's Province. He said claims against former members of the congregation at Letterfrack, Co Galway, had spiralled after groups of solicitors spread the word that inmates could be due financial redress. In dramatic evidence, Brother Gibson told the inquiry that claims mushroomed from an initial three after the Order apologised to former students in 1998; to 449 after Taoiseach Bertie Ahern made their apology known and announced the Redress Board a year later. Brother Gibson said: "Evidence has come to our attention that some of the complaints may be motivated by the setting up of the Redress Board. "A lot of meetings were organised by solicitors in pubs in England and Ireland getting people together. We would have a strong suspicion of very big contamination of evidence." He claimed solicitors were copying RTE programmes and distributing them to former residents of Letterfrack around the time the Redress Board was set up. He also claimed lists of Brothers' names had been handed out by solicitors and gardai. "We could see the potential for serious complaints against staff, even if they had only been in the school for a year and then spent years teaching elsewhere," Brother Gibson added. In a stinging rebuke of the claims, victims support group, Irish SOCA, said it "unreservedly" denied what it described as "those fanciful suggestions". It called on the Christian Brothers to produce proof to support their allegations. "This odious attack on the integrity of the victims and their legal representatives is beneath contempt," spokesman John Kelly said. The allegations had come against the background of the public hearings chaired by Mr Justice Sean Ryan. He said the hearings allowed the religious orders to publicly refute evidence given by the alleged victims in closed sessions of the commission. Mr Kelly added: "We must surely be entitled to the same right to publicly air our complaints as the respondents have to deny them. We call upon the commission to allow the victims the same rights to public hearings as has been conferred on the religious orders over the past two weeks." The One-in-Four organisation said the Redress Board had received just under 6,000 applications between 2003 and 2004. Only one of these was alleged to have been fraudulent. A spokesperson said: "It is highly insulting to the men and women we support that their motives in coming forward were financial." It was "quite extraordinary" for Brother Gibson to try and minimise the extent of the abuse, given the evidence they provided to the inquiry two years ago of 30 church investigations over a 40-year period into sexual abuse perpetrated by Christian Brothers. "Where is his evidence?" the spokesperson demanded. John Barrett, another campaigner for victims, told RTE News the survivors had been looking for justice and not money. It was wrong for the religious orders to try and reverse what had happened for survivors over the past five years or so. He strongly denied victims were making their complaints for money or were lying. And he pointed out the law allowed for those found to be doing so to be prosecuted. He hadn't seen lawyers giving out information including copies of the of the RTE "States of Fear" video to survivors. The abused had spoken out to tell their stories.
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