RCNI Press Release 04 February 2009

Rape Crisis Network Ireland (RCNI) said they were worried and frustrated that the Hynes Report commissioned by Minister Mary Harney in 2008 and completed in October 2008 into the unacceptable 9 and a half year period of the flawed McCoy Report is now itself being kept from the public.

Fiona Neary, RCNI Director said, ‘Ireland is still learning the lessons of good child protection, in particular with regard to especially vulnerable children. We must continue to learn from past mistakes, be informed by them, and hold to account those who have failed in their duty of care. The Hynes inquiry was undertaken to investigate the inordinate and unacceptable delay by an important inquiry into multiple and serious sexual abuses experienced by children and vulnerable adults in the Brothers of Charity services in Galway between 1965 and 1998.

‘The Hynes report examines how a HSE inquiry into abuse, unraveled – given recent events in Roscommon we may have much to learn regarding HSE enquiries and their failings.

‘The refusal of the State to make public the Hynes Report when requested by Deputy Alan Shatter under Freedom of Information legislation does not fill us with confidence. The RCNI calls on the Minister for Health & Children, Mary Harney, the Minister for Children, Barry Andrews and the Ombudsman for Children, Emily Logan to attend to this issue as a matter of urgency.’

Notes:
• The RCNI is the national Rape Crisis Sector body, which provides a voice for survivors and is a catalyst for social change towards a society free from abuse.

Appendix:
RCNI Presentation to Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health & Children.

June 24th 2008.

Re: The Report of Kevin Mc Coy on Western Health Board Inquiry into Brothers of Charity Services in Galway.

 

Any inquiry into allegations of sexual abuse which occurred within an institutional setting must have certain critical features if the resulting report is to be of value and use, both in identifying any contributory factors to such abuse and informing us as to moving forward constructively. Those critical features must include: sufficient independence from the institute under inquiry, sufficient expertise and resources amongst the inquiry team including legal, sufficient capacity for a critical analysis and assessment of what is found such that the inquiry goes beyond the simply descriptive. The report itself must be unambiguous in its findings and recommendations, including the assessment of failures where these were found to exist. It must be timely. It is of further use if it includes reference to similar inquiries and their findings or legislation which could be relevant in future.

It is my opinion that the Mc Coy report fails when measured against any and all of the above critical features. Additionally, in its overall tone the Mc Coy reports seeks to minimise the failures of those responsible for institutions, within which at least 21 children were abused.

A report of some 176 pages, which documents examples of multiple child sexual abuse, appears to me to include only one comment on the manner in which allegations, disclosures and general child protection was dealt with by the religious order responsible. On page 152 the report states “Arrangements were far from ideal”. This is the only assessment or analysis I can find in this 176 pg report. This report is far from ideal.

Since the 1990s Irish society has had increasing evidence of the role that religious orders have played in colluding with abuse within institutions they ran, to the extent of repeatedly moving known sex offenders such that an offender was enabled to perpetrate further child sexual abuse. We have known for sufficient time that religious orders in Ireland elevated the protection of their religious order and its members above the protection of children in their care from sexual abuse. It further damages the credibility of this report, written in 2007, that it fails in any assessment of a religious order presiding over child sexual abuse in this regard. The report singularly fails to comment on the appropriateness or otherwise of the response of the religious order to disclosures and allegations of abuse, and entirely fails to examine whether or not collusion by the religious order protected abusers and enabled further abuse.

I have to stress that this assessment is absent in a report which clearly records intentional interference in and perversion of the course of justice by this religious order when one sex offender is about to be apprehended by the Gardaí. The report fails to identify these, and other, actions as criminal offences on the part of the Brothers of Charity. The report further fails to assess whether these actions resulted in further child sexual abuse at the location this sex offender was moved to, outside of this jurisdiction, so that he was beyond the reach of the Gardaí.
In attempting to “paint a better picture” the report is undermined even as a straight-forward description, as the report repeatedly confuses events and practice in the present and events and practice in the in the past. The continuous stressing of improvements in the present interferes with an appropriate recording of what is under inquiry.

The report claims it “has examined the situation around allegations of abuse” made by 21 children in the residential care of the Brothers of Charity. It has examined nothing; it has described, in an inadequate manner, a series of events, and provides neither commentary nor useful assessment.

The Mc Coy report makes no reference at all to the fact that an inquiry commenced in 1999 and failed to report until November 2007: 9 years and six months. It fails to comment on the fact that there appears to be a six year gap in any action having taken place during the lifetime of the inquiry.

The sufficient independence of the inquiry is undermined by the fact that the terms of reference were agreed with the institution to be investigated. From this point on, the involvement of the institution under inquiry in the inquiry is unclear.

The sufficient expertise and resourcing of the inquiry team is undermined by the fact that whilst dealing with crimes against very vulnerable minors it is not clear that anyone with legal expertise or any expertise in learning disabilities and sexual abuse was involved.

At no point does the report name who was present at the inquiry hearings, how or in what circumstances these were carried out. The report does not consider the appropriateness of these circumstances.
Finally, the report could, in keeping with its terms of reference, have made recommendations regarding legislation, legal reform and child protection in Ireland. It could have made a strong recommendation that Offences relating to Abuse of Position of Trust, where a child is in the residential care of an institution, as per the UK Sexual Offences Act 2003, be enacted and implemented in Ireland.

Fiona Neary

Executive Director

Rape Crisis Network Ireland.

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