Putting a price on childhood misery

Comment: Brenda Power:


A few months ago, an ATM in a country town took a bit of a funny turn. After someone mistakenly loaded ?20 notes into the ?10 slot, it began to dispense largesse to all and sundry at the bank?s expense.
Not surprisingly, word of this benevolence spread like wildfire. Suddenly, folk who?d had no plans to withdraw cash were waiting in line for the machine. People who would never dream of pinching a bar of chocolate from a shop were queuing up to rob the bank.

This they justified to themselves, and later on radio phone-ins, by reasoning that the banks make eye-watering profits and rob us blind. They can afford it, they owe us, so why not take some of it back? In the event, most of the money was returned ? CCTV and transaction records prompted some Pauline conversions ? but the moral of the story was clear: if you put up a pot of money and say ?help yourself to what you think you deserve?, even the most honest citizens will assess their entitlements very generously.

At a child abuse inquiry last Monday, a senior Christian Brother made reference to the avalanche of complaints that swamped the order after compensation was first offered to victims. In 1998, the brothers received 12 complaints of abuse in their institutions. In 1999, after the taoiseach apologised to victims and promised a redress fund, they got 449. Some of those complaints, Brother David Gibson suggested, might have been motivated by money. And this, he ventured, was ?probably not politically correct to say?.

If he had any doubts about the depth of that understatement on Monday, he can have few left now. His remarks provoked a predictable storm of protest from victims? representatives. The brothers were accused of trying to play down the gravity of the abuse, or to undermine public sympathy for the victims by appealing to the suspicion that shadows motivation wherever money is an issue.

Arguably, though, the shrill response probably did the real victims a greater disservice than Gibson?s accusation. Because there cannot be a disinterested observer who does not suspect that Gibson might be onto something. A giant crock of gold appears for the benefit of abuse victims and overnight their number swells by almost 4,000%. As Gibson put it: ?We must wonder at that.?

A blanket denial that there could be any bogus claims among the hundreds lodged stretches credulity. Of course there were. The former residents of these institutions may once have been the most vulnerable members of society ? poor, neglected children in loveless homes ? but they?re still only human. Maybe Mother Teresa might have been able to walk away from a wad of money if it were waved in her face and she were told to help herself, but she?d have walked away alone. Just like those ATM customers, most of us would have no difficulty finding perfectly good reasons to stuff our pockets.

When you get a few euros too many in your change at the supermarket, for instance, aren?t you more inclined to regard it as a windfall than a theft? We all know insurance claimants who have overegged the pudding to increase their payouts ? a current advertising campaign tries to unsettle the culture of complicity that surrounds such behaviour. Lots of the army deafness claimants had their hearing genuinely impaired, but many others suffered more minor damage and some may have suffered no harm at all. The ability to resist anything but temptation doesn?t make these people bad or dishonest, just human.

Unpopular as the suggestion may be, it stands to reason that there are some former residents of institutions playing up unhappy incidents to enhance their compensation claims. Unlike the customers of the faulty cash machine, though, they have strong grounds to justify it to themselves.

Instead of a wearying exchange of accusation and denial, the Christian Brothers and victims? groups need to acknowledge the gulf between them on the definition of abuse. Brother Gibson is not being mendacious when he suggests some claimants might have been prompted to come forward by the offer of money ? undoubtedly they were. And the victims? representatives are not being hysterical when they say all of the claimants suffered some form of injury ? they did.

The sticking point is that, in many cases, it wasn?t of the violent or sexual kind we have come to expect from the histories of ex-residents of orphanages and reform schools. Gibson is probably right ? not every successful claimant was actually beaten or abused by named brothers. But the victims are right too ? they did suffer injury and it is properly being acknowledged at last.

There?s a whiff of truth to the brothers? belief that evidence was ?contaminated? by shared and muddled recollections, and that victims were coached by others including successful claimants in the words to use and the incidents to highlight. Yet that doesn?t negate the fundamental honesty of their claims. If some had recourse to formulaic and enhanced set-pieces of evidence, it was only because they had no better means of explaining their pain in terms that would be heard and understood.

The brothers are angry and defensive because they truly doubt that all these people were beaten and tortured in the manner they claim. They were not. But all of these people, who spent their childhoods in institutions, suffered in a way that those of us lucky to have enjoyed normal family lives could not possibly understand. Not necessarily because of the cruelty of their carers, but because of the cruelty of their circumstances.

At one point in Artane, for instance, there were 12 staff for 400 boys. Imagine a little child of four or five with nobody to pick him up when he falls, nobody to cry to when he?s hurt or lonely, nobody in the world. Try, 40 years later, to explain how that felt without putting it in physical terms ? the pain must have been as acute as a kick or a blow, every day of their lives. That?s what they?re trying to tell us. They?re not lying, but it?s not always the strict, legal truth, either.

Of course there were brutes and bullies, dysfunctional people who vented their frustrations on the weakest in their care, and both sides need to work together to identify and punish those people. But many of the religious people who looked after these children did the best they could. They fed them and met their basic material needs. But they could never mitigate the cruelty of their loveless lives, and now they are the lightning rods for their pain and anger. Some are suffering unjust accusations as a result.

Some ex-residents are undoubtedly overstating their injuries, but, in the circumstances, it?s hard to blame them. A fistful of money and an official expression of sympathy feels like a caring gesture if you grew up never knowing what it was to be loved.