The baby black market

Irish Times

Mike Milotte

Last Updated: Friday, June 27, 2014, 16:44

The National Archives of Ireland contain just a few snippets, but they are enough to make clear that State officials in 1950s Ireland knew the country was a centre for illegal international baby trafficking. The number of children involved can’t even be guessed at, but we can be sure they were all “illegitimate”.

Ireland was regarded as a “hunting ground”, in the words of a senior civil servant, where foreigners in search of babies could easily obtain illegitimate children from mother-and-baby homes and private nursing homes, then remove them from the State without any formalities.

There were both legal and illegal adoptions. During the 1950s up to 15 per cent of all illegitimate Irish children born in mother-and-baby homes each year were taken to the United States with the full knowledge of the State. In total more than 2,000 illegitimate children were removed from the country in this way. Most were adopted by wealthy American Catholics.

But it seems that hundreds, if not thousands, more children were taken from the country without sanction or public record-keeping. Many were handed to foreigners. On October 8th, 1951, The Irish Times reported that in the previous year “almost 500 babies were flown from Shannon for adoption”, a number that the paper said “is believed to have been exceeded” during the first nine months of 1951. In the first week of October alone, it reported, 18 “parties” of children departed from the airport.

These figures far exceed the number of official “adoption passports” issued to let adoptive parents take children out of Ireland. In the whole of 1951 only 122 such passports were issued, a fraction of the number of children actually taken from the State.

Some children were handed over to men travelling alone, as when a US businessman left, after a brief visit to Ireland in 1949, with two toddlers from the Braemar home in Cork. The New York Times called it “a surprise for the wife”. The same year a US airman was given two children to take home by the Sacred Heart nuns at Manor House mother-and-baby home, in Castlepollard. This was reported in three US newspapers.

On February 2nd, 1955, one American newspaper, the New Haven Register, carried a startling story under the headline “50 American couples buy Irish babies through international adoption ring”. Claiming a senior garda as its source, the article said the Americans paid between $600 and $2,000 per child. The children had reportedly come from private nursing homes around Ireland, including five in Dublin.

 

“Could not truthfully be refuted”

When the Department of External Affairs asked the special detective unit to comment on the article, the only claim it disputed was that the paper’s source was a garda.

Higher up the legal pecking order, the secretary of the Department of Justice, Peter Berry, advised that the story “could not truthfully be refuted” because there was “some basis for the allegation in question”.

Three years earlier a German newspaper, 8 Uhr Blatt, had carried a somewhat similar exposé headlined “1,000 children disappear from Ireland”. Many of the children, it was suspected, were destined to be sold on the United States’ thriving baby “black market”, where the going price was $3,000 a child, according to the newspaper. On this occasion the Irish chargé d’affaires in Bonn, Aedan O’Beirne, wanted to insist that the paper “publish a rebuttal of the story”, but his superiors in Dublin noted that “no action is required, especially as the article is largely correct”.

With the authorities determined to keep the scandal under wraps, the traffickers were pursued without vigour, and the children, whose welfare seemed of little concern to the State, were abandoned to their fate.

The scandal continued into the 1960s when a Garda investigation into another illegal adoption racket – one police believed was run by a prominent Irishman – led to the prosecution of a Dublin midwife, Mary Keating, who had also been involved in the 1950s venture. Keating was interviewed as part of a special-branch operation in the 1950s, along with birth mothers. At that time, special branch also communicated with adoptive parents in the US.

Keating owned St Rita’s nursing home in Ranelagh, and in 1965 she was put on probation for falsifying a birth record. But behind this seemingly technical charge lay an enterprise involving private nursing homes that ran a sideline business providing “illegitimate” babies, born in their homes, to people who, for whatever reason, couldn’t or didn’t want to adopt legally. Their modus operandi was simple. Instead of registering the baby in the name of its unmarried mother, as the law required, they registered it in the name of the couple to whom the baby was given, a serious criminal offence.

The falsification process is outlined in a letter from St Rita’s to a prospective adoptive parent in the US. It is also logged in detail in the Irish special-branch report. The New Haven Register article from 1955 describes the situation for US military personnel, who accounted for many of the adoptions. “To adopt a baby the American soldier and his wife would travel to Dublin, where the wife checked in to the nursing home as an expectant mother. An Irish woman would actually bear the child, but the birth would be registered in the name of the American.”

“The impact of this practice has been devastating for many people,” says Christine Hennessey of Barnardos, the children’s charity, because “it is almost impossible for them to find out anything about their background” – something many adopted people yearn for and the rest of us take for granted.

The Republic had about 40 private nursing homes at this time. Like St Rita’s, all are now closed. Clients of Barnardos know of other private nursing homes in Dublin that they say were involved in similar practices. “In total we have 96 people on our list who were registered as if born to their adoptive parents,” says Barnardos. “Ninety of these were born between 1940 and 1980. Legal adoption was introduced in 1952, and we have 43 on our list for the 1950s.” All of them were born in private nursing homes, mostly in the Dublin area, including St Rita’s.

And St Rita’s may have had friends in high places. At one point in the 1960s, when it seemed that Keating might lose her licence, a priest went to the Dáil to rustle up support. There he met Charles Haughey, then agriculture minister, who laughingly said “half the children born in St Rita’s” had been fathered by TDs.

This sounds like an exaggeration, but it could indicate that St Rita’s was a nursing home favoured by men of power for confining women they had got pregnant – but who weren’t their wives – and whose identities Keating permanently obliterated by falsely registering their babies’ births.

Priests, doctors, nurses, midwives and social workers are all suspected of involvement in arranging illegal adoptions. And where the adopters weren’t assessed to see if they were suitable “to have parental rights and duties”, as adoption legislation required, the consequences could be tragic.

In the 1960s a child died in the care of a couple who were too young to adopt legally but had been given a little girl by a Waterford priest, Fr Bobby Keane. The adoptive father was charged with murder.

But nobody apart from Keating was ever prosecuted for involvement in these illegal adoptions. Even today, official reluctance to acknowledge the existence of illegal adoptions, let alone the scale of the problem, is a cause of grief to people who believe they were victims of such practices.

 

The Adoption Rights Alliance has been calling for an inquiry into illegal adoptions for more than a decade. In 2010 it put 37 detailed questions on the subject to the Adoption Authority of Ireland. The authority didn’t answer them, but in public statements it claimed to know of only one illegal adoption in the previous 60 years, a figure it later increased to 50.

But at the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Health and Children on Thursday, Kiernan Gildea, acting chief executive of the authority, said “there must be thousands” whose births were illegally registered.

Theresa Hiney Tinggal says the 50 figure was laughable. She found out 12 years ago that she had been illegally adopted, in 1954, in a process that involved falsified birth records. When nobody in authority answered her questions she set up a website; in five years it has had more than 10,000 hits.

Minister for Justice Frances Fitzgerald, in her previous role as minister for children, declared that the State had no involvement in illegal adoptions.

But, as the State maintains that only where a legal adoption order exists can an adoption be said to have taken place, by its definition all adoptions are held to be legal. State agencies prefer to call the practice based on falsified birth records “informal” adoptions, a term that infuriates victims of these practices because, they say, it plays down the crimes that were committed.

 

Blanket denials

Blanket denials of illegality equally ignore evidence that crimes have been committed within the State adoption system itself. The Adoption Board, as the Adoption Authority of Ireland used to be known, has signed off on more than 40,000 legal adoptions in Ireland since 1952.

The great bulk of these were arranged by religious-run adoption societies – in most cases joined at the hip with the mother-and-baby homes that are now being investigated. At least nine religious-run adoption societies organised the export of more than 2,000 “illegitimate” children to the United States for adoption during the 1950s and 1960s. There were other adoption societies that appear to have had no involvement in this practice.

Adoption societies were legally bound by the 1952 Adoption Act, which says among other things that, for an adoption to be legal, maternal consent is needed. And it must, by law, be informed consent and freely given. It is up to the adoption society to ensure consent is informed.

The society and “every person who takes part in its management or control” were potentially guilty of a criminal offence for noncompliance with this strict provision.

A mother whose baby was put up for adoption had to sign two documents, one consenting to the adoption of her child and another stating that she understood the nature and effect of the consent she was giving. Yet many women who went through this process say they had no idea what they were signing: pieces of paper were thrust before them with an instruction to sign where indicated. Some have no recollection of signing anything, and in some situations the signatures were forged.

For the Adoption Board of the time what mattered was that the requisite forms were signed. What lay behind the signatures was not looked into. The board seems to have relied on public notaries who “witnessed” the signatures, declaring in the process that they “knew” the person signing.

Few mothers questioned any of this at the time, because they could see no alternative to adoption. But one who did was Margaret O’Neill. She gave birth to a baby boy in Sean Ross Abbey, in Co Tipperary, in 1968. Adoption was never discussed, and she signed no papers, yet her son was taken and given up for adoption at six months of age.

When the Adoption Board finally acceded to her demands and investigated her claims – 21 years after the adoption – it found that signatures purporting to be hers were undisguised forgeries. In one her name was even misspelled. This blatant fabrication had been notarised by a solicitor and accepted by the Adoption Board. The adoption had been handled personally by the abbey’s head nun, Sr Hildegarde, and a Garda file went to the director of public prosecutions. He declined to prosecute, so Margaret sued and won. The nuns put up no defence.

Could Margaret O’Neill’s have been the only forged signature? In her case the crime came to light because of her astonishing persistence in the face of official indifference. How many more such cases would be brought to light by an official inquiry with the power to compel documents?

Then there’s the question of money changing hands. The Adoption Act of 1952 was clear that anyone who accepts payment for arranging an adoption, including for incidental expenses, could end up in jail for 12 months. Yet here again it’s evident that some adoption societies run by religious groups received considerable sums of money, especially in relation to the American adoptions that they facilitated.

A New York couple were asking about adopting a child from the Franciscan Sister of St Clare’s adoption society in Stamullen, Co Meath, when they received a bill equivalent to several thousand euro in today’s money for unitemised “expenses”. They paid without question and were sent a child they selected from a photograph. The couple filed away all their paperwork.

Sr Hildegard confided in a social worker shortly before her death that at one point income from American adoptions exceeded income from any other source, but the paperwork, she said, was destroyed when a Garda investigation into unrelated matters seemed imminent.

Signatures, too, were forged to facilitate American adoptions. Rather than go to court to obtain legal guardianship of the children they were sending across the Atlantic, the nuns relied on slips of paper, signed by the mothers, “relinquishing” their children to a senior nun, who then took control. No court was involved.

Thirty years after her son was sent to the United States from Manor House mother-and-baby home, in Castlepollard, Pat Thuillier (née Eyres) obtained the two “relinquishing” forms she had supposedly signed at the time. One had been used by the nuns to obtain a passport for her son from the Department of External Affairs and the other to convince an American court that she consented to her son’s adoption there.

But the signatures on the two forms were radically different. One, at least, was a forgery. Both were notarised, on the same day, by the same solicitor.

Campaigners such as the Adoption Rights Alliance suspect that illegalities in the adoption process that have come to light, often by accident, barely scratch the surface. They argue that to leave the matter of illegal and forced adoptions out of the forthcoming commission of inquiry would be a devastating blow to a vulnerable group of people whose calls for acknowledgment and support in the past have fallen on deaf ears.

In the 1950s the senior civil servant in charge of “adoption passports” and the man who called Ireland a “hunting ground”, Joe Horan, wrote, seemingly prophetically, that “we must be alive to the possibility that the name of this country might one day figure in one of those ‘exposures’ they have from time to time.” This could lead to “all sorts of undesirable prospects such as letters to the newspapers, parliamentary questions, and so on”.

But Horan didn’t need to worry. The Irish media, like the political establishment, showed little interest in what was being done to so many of its most vulnerable citizens.

 

A name but not an identity: One illegally adopted child’s search to find out who she is
Theresa Hiney Tinggal doesn’t know her birthplace or who her parents were. Born on June 11th, 1954, she believed for 48 years that she was the daughter of James and Kathleen Hiney, who brought her up. The register of births said they were her natural parents. So did the record kept by the midwife, Una Doody.

But 12 years ago her sense of identity was shattered when her uncle told her that Doody had given her to the Hineys when she was two days old.

Although the health board knew by 1956 that she had been illegally adopted, it seems never to have traced her mother or tried to correct the record.

Hiney Tinggal believes thousands of Irish people are in a similar situation. “Knowing where you came from is a basic human right. Without this, illegal adoptees live in a permanent limbo.” Tinggal says the State needs to put the issue on the agenda of the mother-and-baby homes inquiry.

Mike Milotte’s book Banished Babies: The Secret History of Ireland’s Baby Export Business is published by New Island

© 2014 irishtimes.com

Case 11 Day 1 Christian Brothers

bron

 

 

 

 “It is time for the Christian Brothers to be made accountable for the rapes, floggings,cruelty, neglect,brutality, child slave labour, inhumane treatment and lack of education of boys in their ‘care’. ”

CLAN will be holding a fortnight of rallies for the two weeks of the Royal Commission
public hearings outside the building, to make the general public aware of the
criminaltreatment of these boys and the legacy of abuse on these men

The rallies will be held each morning Monday 28th April–Friday 9 th May 2014
Outside the WA Industrial Relations Commission, 111 St Georges Tce,Perth, WA
Time: 7:30am

  CLAN is a support, advocacy, research and training network for people who grew up in the 900+ australian orphanages children’s Homes, foster care and other institutions.

 

Former child migrant tells harrowing tale of abuse as royal commission heads to Western Australia

By Jade Macmillan

 

 

  Photo: A group of child migrants sent from Britain to Western Australia. (Supplied)

The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse will begin two weeks of hearings in Western Australia today.

The focus will be on four institutions run by the Christian Brothers: the Bindoon Farm School, St Mary's Agricultural School, St Vincent's Orphanage Clontarf and Castledare Junior Orphanage.

Joanna Pennglase CLAN

John Hennessey, who migrated to Australia as a child, is one of a number of men set to give evidence.
Mr Hennessey was 10 years old when he was taken from his orphanage in Bristol, England, in the mid-1940s and sent to Western Australia.
He says the commission will open old wounds.
"I remember one day - it was a Sunday - these three Christian Brothers came to the hall and the nuns told us the Brothers are looking for children to go to Australia," he said.
"They said 'You go to Australia - kangaroos will take you to school, there's fruit everywhere'.
We were only little kids and this was music to our ears."

 

'A living hell': hard labour, savage beatings and sexual abuse

Mr Hennessey was among a group of children shipped to Fremantle and then taken to Bindoon, about an hour north of Perth.

"I remember Brother Keaney, he was a big man dressed in his black habit. He said: 'Welcome. We're going to make men of you, we don't want you to be little girls'," he said.

Video: Child abuse Royal Commission to hear from child migrants in Perth (7pm TV News WA)

In those days, we were little kids, we didn't know what paedophilia was.

John Hennessey

"The place was half built. Now you look at it, I can't understand why nobody checked out where we were going."

The boys were forced to help construct the property's Spanish-style buildings with their bare hands.

But Mr Hennessey says hard labour was not the worst of it, with savage beatings and sexual abuse making Bindoon a living hell.

"In those days, we were little kids, we didn't know what paedophilia was," he said.

"You'd go to bed at night time fearing that someone was going to come to your bed and pick you up.

"We used to go to confessions and tell them all sorts of things. And we didn't know that the priest also was a paedophile."

Mr Hennessey was emotional as he recounted a particularly brutal beating he believes caused the stutter he has lived with ever since.

He said he was confronted by Brother Keaney in the dining hall after sneaking into his vineyard and stealing grapes.

"He lashed out with his walking stick, it had a metal bottom to it, and he belted me over the head and what have you," he said.

"Then he stripped me, put me over a chair and nearly flogged me to death.

"Abuse and bullying was just the norm."

'Extreme cases' of abuse to be put forward: commission

The royal commission will spend two weeks in Perth listening to the stories of victims from the four children's homes.

The commission's chief executive, Janette Dines, warned some of the evidence presented would be particularly severe.

"These stories are probably quite well-known to people in Western Australia because the Christian Brothers institutions have been the subject of a number of inquiries," she said.

"Certainly, from what we're aware, the stories of physical and sexual abuse are very confronting, and there will be some quite extreme cases of abuse put before the royal commission."

The Christian Brothers apologised to West Australian victims in the 1990s and reached an out-of-court settlement with some of them.

The stories of physical and sexual abuse are very confronting and there will be some quite extreme cases of abuse put before the royal commission.

Janette Dines, royal commission CEO

Ms Dines said the Perth hearings would look at that response, as well as the way the State Government handled complaints and compensation claims.

"This is the first time that the commission has really specifically gone into redress," she said.

"It can do so very effectively through this case study because there are so many different schemes featured.

The body set up by the Catholic Church to respond to the commission says it is expecting horrific stories of abuse and has called for full transparency.

"It's incumbent on the Christian Brothers to come forward again and explain themselves, to make sure the truth is revealed and demonstrate to the community the sincerity they hold for the victims," said Francis Sullivan, the chief executive of the Truth Justice and Healing Council.

"Whether it's the Christian Brothers or the State Government or any other element in how this was handled - how the legal, civil actions were handled - it all needs to be revealed."

Mother told child had died at birth

Mr Hennessey campaigned for the royal commission and says it is important for victims like himself to come forward.

He was reunited with his mother when he was 57 and spent six years with her before she died.

"She'd been told I died at birth," he said.

"I never told her of my childhood days because I thought it was enough what she went through and it would break her heart.

"I'm doing this for my mother. If I can only save one child from what I went through, it's all worthwhile.

"We will be washed clean but forever tortured. There's no way out of that one."

 The public hearing will focus on the cruelty and the crimes committed by the Christian Brothers to young boys in the Castledare Junior Orphanage, Clontarf Orphanage, St Mary’s Agricultural School in Tardun and Bindoon Farm School/Bindoon Boystown.

Lewis Blayse The Author’s Rebuttal To Mr. McClellan’s Reasons For Non-Permission To Appear At The Salvation Army Boys’ Homes Hearings And Present A Submission (Or: McClellan Rules, O.K.?)

January 27, 2014

lewisblayse.net

Now that it is official that I will not be permitted, by the chairman of the Australian royal commission into institutional responses to child sexual abuse, Peter McClellan, to give evidence on my old Boys’ Home, “Alkira” – otherwise known as the Indooroopilly Salvation Army Home for Boys – it is time to explain some things. (The commission has stated that my case fell within its terms of reference, so that is not a point of dissention.):


-It was the practice when I was in the Home for new boys to be put in the bunk next to mine, and I was to help them learn the Home routines, and help them feel a bit better (they usually cried most of the night for the first couple of days). In effect, I gave them “pastoral” care
-.Because of the above, the boys had considerable trust in me, and possibly some affection. They confided in me about the abuses they experienced.
 -When it was known that I would be leaving the Boys’ Home to go to my own home, at least twenty boys asked me to get their story out to the public and authorities.


-I have gotten my own story out on many occasions in the media and to other enquiries, so I was not intending to say much about my own case, except where necessary to make some sort of academic point, such as the officers having “sadistic arousal”, or the concept of “learned helplessness”.
-I wanted to tell the stories of those twenty or so boys, all of which I remember quite clearly after 50 years.

-I asked to have the floor “INTERRUPTED” (because I would need to take breaks because of a psychosomatic condition resulting from the violent atmosphere at the Home, whereby I can become physically sick if in the presence of strangers for more than an hour or so).
-The commission gave one of its reasons for the refusal as being that I had made the unreasonable demand that I be “UNINTERRUPTED”. That is a lie. (The relevant e-mail exchanges are available as proof).


-The commission made out I was asking to have the full first day for myself. This is also a lie on two accounts. As explained above, it was for the other boys. Secondly, most of the time of the first day is taken up by long-winded opening statements by Counsel Assisting and Salvation Army lawyers etc. and general procedural matters.

-Consequently, I would, (allowing for a ten-minute break to calm down every hour or so), have about ten minutes for each boy’s story, if that. Given what happened to them, and the fact that many are now dead, disabled, or incarcerated, that is not an overly long time to tell their stories.


-The commission said it was unreasonable that I would not agree to be cross-examined by $6,000 a day barristers. (The Northern Ireland Historical Institutional Abuse – HIA – enquiry does not permit this). I cannot agree that the victims should be subjected to a court procedure, which is sometimes abused, when a royal commission is not a court. Victims should not be subjected to further psychological abuse in that way. I remain adamant on this point.


-I did not say that I would not answer questions. I said that I would be available, later in the hearings, to answer specific questions FROM THE COMMISSIONERS, to elaborate on detail, or otherwise explain, some of the more academic concepts I may have spoken about, such as “learned helplessness”.

-The commission has chosen to hide behind technicalities of its terms of reference. However, these can be changed, and indeed have been changed already, to accommodate the State enquiries.
-Finally, it has been suggested that my appearance would mean that someone else would not be heard. The former Prime Minister clearly wanted us ALL to be heard, which is why six commissioners, rather than one, were appointed and such a long time allowed for its sitting.
-I am of the view that ALL who want to appear publicly should be able to do so (as is the case for the Northern Ireland HIA enquiry), not just three or four selected by the commission to meet with its own agenda, with no reasons given for the selection.

-McClellan is on record (see previous posting) as saying that private hearings were for people WHO DID NOT WANT TO GIVE EVIDENCE IN PUBLIC. This makes a mockery of the claim that I had been offered a private hearing. (Indeed, the final offer was only to talk over the phone with a lawyer from the commission to explain things about “sadistic arousal” and the voyeurism associated with shower time).

-The phone conversations with commission people stressed their authority, to the extent of addressing me as “sir” (as in a police officer saying “Would you please step out of the car, sir”). As any therapist would know, like most people, but especially for “Home” people, if asked nicely we will do anything for anybody, but if ORDERED to do something, we tend to get our backs up.

-The thought arises that, either the commission staff does not know such a fundamental aspect of victims of brutal uniformed Salvation Army men (or women), or it was done deliberately to set up a reaction in me that would make me appear unreasonable, and thereby provide an excuse for denying me my voice. This I cannot know.



I could say a lot more, but I do not want to bore the reader.


Finally, I would like to say to those, anonymous, people who sent e-mails suggesting I am being selfish etc: You should give thanks to your “God” that you were fortunate enough not to have ended up in a Salvation Army Children’s Home.

[Postscript: “The royal commission’s public hearings will be formal. When you enter and exit the hearing room, it is customary to pause and bow your head towards the Australian coat of arms above where the Commissioners sit. When a Commissioner enters or leaves the hearing room [Ed.: perhaps to go to the bathroom?], it is customary to stand and bow your head. You should remain standing until each Commissioner has entered the room and been seated or has left the room, or until the Presiding Commissioner indicates for people to be seated.” Source: Royal Commission Protocols].

TOMORROW: Who cares?

That’s all I can say

Lewis Blayse (né Lewin Blazevich)

Warum die Versorgung einer "Realsatire" gleicht Psychiater Professor Jörg Fegert will sich von einer Kasse verklagen lassen.

Ärzte Zeitung.de  22.10.2012

Jörg Fegert ist Ärztlicher Direktor der Kinder- und Jugendpsychiatrie/Psychotherapie der Universität Ulm.  Fegert ist Mediziner und Soziologe.

Stolperfallen bei der Behandlung von Missbrauchsopfern: Die Anfragen von Kassen nach den Tätern bringen Ärzte in Gewissenskonflikte, kritisiert der Ulmer Psychiater Professor Jörg Fegert. 
Jetzt will er sich von einer Kasse verklagen lassen.

bron foto

 Ärzte Zeitung: Herr Professor Fegert, warum wollen Sie sich von einer Krankenkasse verklagen lassen?
Professor Fegert: Natürlich wünscht man sich als Klinikdirektor eigentlich keine rechtlichen Auseinandersetzungen mit den Kostenträgern.
Wir Kinder- und Jugendpsychiater und Psychotherapeuten, aber auch viele Fachärzte in der Erwachsenenpsychiatrie, Psychosomatik oder auch die psychologischen Psychotherapeuten bemerken aber zunehmend, dass die Kostenträger, wenn Diagnosen wie posttraumatische Belastungsstörung gestellt werden, automatisch an die Ärzte und Therapeuten Anfragen stellen, Hinweise zum möglichen Täter oder Verursacher zu geben.

Ärzte Zeitung: Kann man ihnen das verdenken?

Fegert: Diese Anfragen sind deshalb in der klinischen Praxis äußerst problematisch, weil die Krankenkassen, um den Täter zu finden, sich eigentlich nur auf die Ermittlungstätigkeit der Staatsanwaltschaften stützen können.
Viele Opfer von Gewalttaten, auch bei häuslicher Gewalt, viele Betroffene von sexuellem Missbrauch sind aber zum Zeitpunkt, wo sie sich erstmals in Krankenbehandlung geben, weder willens noch in der Lage, Strafanzeige zu stellen und die Folgen auf sich zu nehmen.
Sie erschreckt die Vorstellung, dass Krankenbehandlung oder Psychotherapie mit diesem Vorgehen der Krankenkassen verbunden werden.

Ärzte Zeitung: Üben die Kassen Druck aus?

Fegert: Wir haben im stationären Bereich sehr schlechte Erfahrungen gemacht. Diese Schreiben werden den Patientinnen direkt ans Krankenbett zugestellt. Das hat schon Panikreaktionen bis hin zu suizidalem Verhalten ausgelöst.

Deshalb bin ich aus meiner ethischen Verantwortung für die Patienten heraus nicht bereit, diese Anfragen zu beantworten, obwohl ich gesetzlich dazu verpflichtet bin. Dies führt oft zu langem Schriftwechsel mit den Kostenträgern.

Nun hat ein Kostenträger den Weg direkt über meine Klinikverwaltung gewählt, um doch noch an diese Information zu gelangen, obwohl ich die Herausgabe ärztlich nicht verantworten kann.

In diesem Fall wünsche ich mir fast, dass die Krankenkasse versucht, mich mit rechtlichen Mitteln zur Herausgabe zu zwingen.

Ärzte Zeitung: Was versprechen Sie sich davon?

Fegert: In diesem Fall könnte man dann klären lassen, ob die grundrechtlichen Garantien für körperliche Unversehrtheit nicht vor die prinzipiell berechtigten Ansprüche zur Refinanzierung fremdverursachter Gesundheitsschäden der Kassen gehen.

Ärzte Zeitung: Schildern Sie doch einmal einen konkreten Fall.

Fegert: Typisch ist, dass ein Mädchen nach einem Suizidversuch mit Symptomen einer schweren Depression aufgenommen wird. Im Laufe der ersten Gespräche stellt sich heraus, dass es durch ein Familienmitglied sexuell missbraucht wird.
Es mag den Mann eigentlich, will aber, dass es aufhört, es will die Beziehung der Mutter nicht gefährden, will geschützt werden, ist völlig verzweifelt. Eine Strafanzeige gegen den Mann kann sich das Mädchen nicht vorstellen.
Sie zeigt immer mehr Symptome einer posttraumatischen Belastungsstörung. Diese Diagnose wird gestellt.

Daraufhin schickt die Krankenkasse ein Schreiben mit ungefähr dem Wortlaut: "Uns liegen Hinweise darauf vor, dass bei der Patientin ein drittverursachter Gesundheitsschaden zu vermuten ist. Sie sind als an der vertragsärztlichen Versorgung teilnehmender Arzt beziehungsweise als Krankenhaus nach Paragraf 108 verpflichtet, die erforderlichen Daten, einschließlich der Angaben über Ursachen und den möglichen Verursacher, der Krankenkasse mitzuteilen. Bitte machen Sie entsprechende Angaben."
In diesen Fällen versuche ich dann höflich zu begründen warum dies für die Patientin eine aus meiner Sicht nicht verantwortbare Belastung darstellen würde. Denn oftmals dauern solche Vorgänge auch administrativ relativ lange, das heißt, das betreffende Mädchen kann schon mehrere Wochen aus der akuten stationären Behandlung entlassen sein.
Erst dann taucht plötzlich die Staatsanwaltschaft in der Familie auf, ohne dass jemand damit rechnet. Wir müssten die Patientin also über die Weitergabe der Daten informieren. Dies führt meist zu einer starken Beunruhigung und Belastung und dem Wunsch, dies bitte, bitte nicht zu tun.
Häufig reagieren Krankenkassen auf meine Schreiben gar nicht, sondern man versucht es direkt bei den Versicherten, oder wie in dem bereits geschilderten Fall bei der Klinikverwaltung.
 
Ärzte Zeitung: Sind Ärzte wirklich verpflichtet, Hinweise auf mögliche Täter zu geben?

Fegert: Nach dem geltenden Recht im Sozialgesetzbuch V ausdrücklich ja. Bei dem jüngsten Hearing des Unabhängigen Beauftragten für Fragen des sexuellen Missbrauchs in Berlin haben viele Fachkollegen aus ganz unterschiedlichen Tätigkeitsbereichen, zum Beispiel der Kinderheilkunde, der Erwachsenenpsychosomatik und niedergelassene Psychotherapeutinnen sich dafür eingesetzt, dass sich dringend etwas ändern muss.
Der Gesetzgeber müsste der an sich sinnvollen Norm, die zum Beispiel dafür sorgt, dass bei einem Schulunfall nicht die Krankenkasse belastet wird, sondern die Schulunfallversicherung bezahlt, einfach einen Zusatz mit einer Ausnahmeregelung hinzufügen, dass diese Verpflichtung bei Verdacht auf sexuellen Missbrauch, Misshandlung, Vernachlässigung und anderen interpersonellen Traumata wie auch häuslicher Gewalt nicht gilt.
Nur dann hätten wir auch die Chance, ähnlich wie allen anderen zivilisierten Ländern dieser Welt, über die medizinischen Daten einen Überblick über das Ausmaß von traumatischen Belastungen in diesem Bereich zu bekommen.

Ärzte Zeitung: Gibt es denn Daten, was dies die Kassen kosten könnte?

Fegert: Nein. Manchmal wirkt die widersprüchliche Situation in Deutschland an diesem Punkt wie eine Realsatire der Bürokratie. Im derzeit geplanten Abrechnungssystem sollen die Ärzte unterschiedliche Formen der Misshandlung und des Missbrauchs mit den üblichen internationalen Codes dokumentieren.
So sehen es die Vorgaben einer dem Gesundheitsministerium nachgeordneten Behörde, des DIMDI, vor. Gleichzeitig gibt es, ebenfalls von einer nachgeordneten Behörde des Ministeriums, dem INEK, eine Kodierrichtlinie, die die Anwendung dieser Codes im Krankenhaus verbietet.
Nun hat sich das Ministerium erfreulicherweise entschlossen, bei der Vorbereitung der OPS-Codes für das nächste Jahr für die Abklärung von Verdachtsfällen der Kindesmisshandlung, der Vernachlässigung und des sexuellen Missbrauchs zum Beispiel in interdisziplinären Teams in Kinderkliniken eine OPS-Ziffer einzuführen.
Aber auch diese dürften wegen der paradoxen Regelungen nicht verwendt werden. Offensichtlich sind hier sich widersprechende, zum Teil gut gemeinte Regelungen deutlich im Widerspruch zu dem, was das SGB V will.

Ärzte Zeitung: Mit welchen Folgen?

Fegert: In der Praxis führt dies dazu, dass die Ärzte, um ihren Patienten nicht zu schaden, eher keine Angaben machen. Deshalb befinden wir uns in Bezug auf schwere Misshandlung und Missbrauch im Blindflug.
Es ist klar, dass diese Patienten in der Behandlung häufig mehr Aufwand verursachen. Deshalb ist es sinnvoll, solche Faktoren in der Abrechnung zu berücksichtigen. Dies darf aber für den Patienten nicht die Folge haben, dass er sich einem Strafverfahren aussetzen muss, das er nicht will und das ihm nicht gut tut.

Ärzte Zeitung: Was bleibt zu tun?

Fegert: Hier können eigentlich nur der Gesetzgeber und das Bundesgesundheitsministerium den gordischen Knoten zerschlagen. Ein Zusatz in Paragraf 294 a SGB V muss eingeführt werden, der die angesprochene Ausnahme regelt. Dann könnten die Ärzte die vorgesehene Kodierung zweifelsfrei anwenden.

Die Fragen stellte Anno Fricke

Lesen Sie dazu auch:
Missbrauch: Ärzte im Blindflug

 

Anhörung ehemaliger bayerischer Heimkinder "Was mit uns gemacht worden ist, das wünscht man keinem"

Suddeutsche
von Dietrich Mittler 
13-6-2012

 Sie wurden geschlagen, im Keller eingesperrt und mussten Erbrochenes essen: 80 ehemalige Heimkinder berichten im bayerischen Landtag von ihrem Martyrium. Sie werfen den Behörden vor, versagt zu haben, Hilfe aus der Politik lasse noch immer auf sich warten.

Die Anhörung von ehemaligen Heimkindern im bayerischen Landtag hat am Dienstagmorgen noch gar nicht begonnen, da unterbricht eine Frauenstimme das Gemurmel im alten Senatssaal. "Wir wollen endlich für voll genommen werden, wir lassen uns nicht länger an der Nase herumführen." Es ist die Stimme von Marie-Louise Weinhold aus Oberstdorf, die demnächst 70 Jahre alt wird. Als sie als Vollwaise ins Heim kam, war sie drei Jahre alt.

 "Wir wurden von Anfang an terrorisiert", sagt sie so laut, dass es niemand überhören kann, "wir wurden geschlagen, wir wurden in den Keller eingesperrt, wenn wir das Bett nass gemacht haben, und wir mussten Erbrochenes aufessen." Wenn sie ihre Hausaufgaben nicht habe lösen können, dann habe man ihr auf die Ohren geschlagen, deswegen braucht die 69-Jährige heute ein Hörgerät. War ein Kind krank, so sei der Arzt erst geholt worden, wenn die blauen Flecken verschwunden waren. "Was mit uns gemacht worden ist, das wünscht man keinem", sagt Weinhold.

Viele um sie herum nicken - 80 Betroffene sind in den Landtag gekommen, um an diesem Tag endlich Gehör zu finden. Auslöser der Veranstaltung, so sagt Brigitte Meyer (FDP), die Vorsitzende des Sozialausschusses, seien zwei Petitionen. Auch in bayerischen Heimen sei es von 1949 bis 1975 zu eklatanten Rechtsverstößen gekommen, und fraktionsübergreifend sei klar, dass diese Übergriffe endlich aufgearbeitet werden müssten.
Dem 79-jährigen Richard Sucker aus Nürnberg, der als uneheliches Kind geboren wurde und in verschiedenen Heimen gelebt hat, treiben Meyers Worte die Zornesröte ins Gesicht. "Vor vier Jahren schon habe ich meine Petition eingegeben, und heute erst ist die erste Anhörung", sagt er. "Wenn ich gewusst hätte, wie lange das hier beim Landtag dauert, hätte ich gleich geklagt." Er frage sich, ob der Landtag wirklich so viel Arbeit habe - oder ob das Gleichgültigkeit sei.

"Das Land Bayern hat einen großen Anteil an den damaligen Erziehungsheimen und hat sich dieser Aufarbeitung zu stellen und anzunehmen", heißt es in Suckers Petition. Die Behörden seien damals ihrer Aufsichtspflicht nicht nachgekommen, sie hätten "versagt". Noch nach Jahrzehnten würden die einstigen Heimkinder unter den Misshandlungen leiden.

Die Liste an Demütigungen, die Sucker aufführt, ist lang. Er schreibt von Schlägen mit Fäusten und Gegenständen, sexuellen Übergriffen, Bestrafung bei unerlaubtem Lachen, erzwungener Arbeit und entwürdigenden medizinischen Untersuchungen bei den Mädchen auf dem gynäkologischen Stuhl. Die Petition - sie ist eine einzige Anklageschrift.

 "Unschuldig von der Kirche eingesperrt"

Eine Aufarbeitung des Geschehenen sei schier unmöglich, sagt Sucker. Die Herausgabe von Heim-Akten werde mit Hinweis auf die Verjährungsfrist verweigert. Und von den Schwestern, die eines der Heime betreiben, in denen Sucker zeitweise untergebracht war, habe er lediglich zu hören bekommen: "Wir hatten einen Erziehungsauftrag." Sucker sagt, er sei mehr als 17 Jahre lang "unschuldig von der Kirche eingesperrt worden".
 
Das schlimmste Heim sei das der Rummelsberger Anstalten in Naila bei Hof gewesen, wo er die Jahre von 1946 bis 1952 verbracht habe. "Bei jeder Nichtigkeit gab es Prügel, wenn beim Schuhappell etwa Nägel an der Schuhsohle fehlten, dann gab es so viele Schläge, wie Nägel fehlten", sagt Sucker, "Kopf zwischen die Beine geklemmt, Füße untern Stuhl, und dann drauf auf den nackten Hintern."

Der Berliner Sozialpädagoge und Universitätsprofessor Manfred Kappeler, der sich intensiv mit dem Leid der Heimkinder im Nachkriegsdeutschland auseinandergesetzt hat, bringt die Schilderungen der Betroffenen auf eine politische Formel: "Diese Kinder und Jugendlichen wurden zu Ausgelieferten. Sie hatten keine Chance, sich zu wehren." Applaus brandet auf, als er ausruft: "Und es gab keine Instanz, keine Person, die ihnen zugehört oder gar geglaubt hätte."

Kurz nach diesen Worten flüchtet ein weißhaariger Mann mit Tränen in den Augen vor die Tür. "Es kommt alles wieder hoch, es kommt alles wieder hoch", stammelt er. Er ist nicht der Einzige, der es während Kappelers Vortrag nicht mehr aushält. "Wer hat uns Kindern denn geglaubt? Keiner!", sagt ein Mann Mitte Sechzig, der für die Anhörung seinen besten Anzug aus dem Schrank geholt hat.

Psychotherapeut Kappeler setzt unterdessen seine Anklage fort: Die Heimträger hätten die ihnen anvertrauten Kinder und Jugendlichen durch Zwangsarbeit ausgebeutet. Dadurch seien in hohem Umfang Personalkosten eingespart worden - mehrstellige Milliardenbeträge auf Kosten der Schulbildung. Diese Ausbeutung sei die Hauptursache dafür, dass ein erheblicher Teil der Heimkinder keinen Schulabschluss habe. Nur ein Prozent der ehemaligen Heimkinder, so zitierte Kappeler aus einer Studie, habe eine weiterführende Schule besucht. Auch deren hohe Altersarmut erkläre sich so. Hier müsse endlich entschädigt werden - und das angemessen. Bayern, so fordert Kappeler, müsse sich im Bund dafür einsetzen, dass "das leidige Thema endlich vom Tisch" komme.

Dagegen klingt die von den Fraktionen einhellig vereinbarte Erklärung relativ harmlos. Das sei der Beginn eines Dialogs, heißt es. Und: Man bedauere "die Geschehnisse in den Kinderheimen und die damit verbundenen, teilweise lebenslangen Folgen für die Betroffenen zutiefst". Bei den Anwesenden weckt das Wut. Verbittert sind viele auch darüber, dass ihre Anhörung nicht öffentlich ist. So sagt die 61-jährige Hildegard Edwards aus Augsburg, die als 15-Jährige in ein Heim bei Schweinfurt gesteckt wurde: "Wer aufgemuckt hat, den steckten die Nonnen in eine Zelle ohne sanitäre Anlagen." Doch die Zeit des Schweigens und Sich-Duckens sei vorbei. "Ich will Gerechtigkeit", sagt sie.

And we're going to do a hell of a lot....Retired High Court Judge Sir Anthony Hart is to chair Northern Ireland's official inquiry into the abuse of children living in residential care dating back to 1945.

"Ik zou er haast emotioneel van worden, mijnheer de Voorzitter"

Added on May 31, 2012

Retired High Court Judge Sir Anthony Hart is to chair Northern Ireland's official inquiry into the abuse of children living in residential care dating back to 1945.

The inquiry will ask organisations that ran residential institutions to explain their treatment of young people

Organisations that ran the institutions will face pressure to explain the treatment of young people over the course of five decades.

They could include Catholic religious orders, state and voluntary groups.

There will be an acknowledgement forum for victims to tell their stories and an inquisitorial investigation of evidence and questioning of witnesses.


The inquiry is expected to begin its work in the autumn and will report in approximately three years' time.

Its findings and recommendations will then be considered by Stormont's ministerial Executive, which will decide the way forward.

  

orphan up your guard!

Over Owie1knowie's: 

 Joep Dohmen,  gespreksnotitie tbv. hoorzitting Voortouwcommissie 2e  Kamer:

"In het feitenverslag van prof. Bank staat immers dat Marijnen zich, volgens de notulen, bemoeid heeft met de vervroegde vrijlating. Hij had immers ,,een weg gezocht” voor het gratieverzoek. De betrokkenheid van de advocaat staat niet in het feitenverslag dat de krant heeft en ook niet in het eindrapport.
In het feitenverslag dat de krant heeft, gaat het over twee broeders, broeder Orentius en broeder Henricus. Beiden waren tegelijk veroordeeld door het gerechtshof Arnhem tot drie maanden onvoorwaardelijke celstraf. "

 

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Je zal het kind maar wezen....

Survivors call for reopening of Redress Board

"Ik moet eerst naar mijn 'werk' want hier zijn vreemde krachten bezig mij een kopje kleiner te maken. Ik moet werken in een productie bedrijf waar.... Dit is beleid hier wanneer je bijstand aanvraagt, ik heb al een maand gewerkt in ... en daar hebben ze me gisteren eruit geschopt en nu moet ik mij melden bij de ... Ik heb zo'n sterk vermoeden dat een netwerkje bij gemeente en wat lui mij via deze weg willen aanpakken.

Dus ik..."

30-4-2012
 by Rebekah Commane

Survivors of institutional abuse are calling for the reopening of The Redress Board and for more transparency on plans for a €110 million trust fund. The Right of Place/Second Chance Group believes that many people were not ready to come forward to the Board and apply for compensation while it was open, but they may now want to do so.

In its recently published annual report, the group also called on the government to publish plans for the trust fund contributed to by 18 religious congregations.
Right of Place/Second Chance Outreach Co-ordinator for HSE West, Val Groarke, said the group is worried that the government are dragging their feet in coming up with criteria for recipients of the fund.

He urged the government to supplement the fund on an annual basis to allow survivors who have not yet come forward, to access it.
“I believe that there are a lot of people out there who didn’t get the redress,” Mr. Groarke told the Limerick Post.
“Because the government had it shut down, we’re pushing for them to reopen it and leave it open for another few years.
“Just because some of us were ready, it doesn’t mean that everyone was”.
He said that while some survivors of institutional abuse in Limerick may have received compensation from the Redress Board, the damage inflicted continues to resonate.
Mr. Groarke also called for the children of survivors to be able to access the Trust fund, explaining that what happened to survivors also affected the quality of lives of their families.

The Galway/Limerick and western offices of the support group were contacted by clients 693 times from March 2011 to February 2012, and in one-fifth of these incidents, approaches were made by the dependent of a survivor.
“Money doesn’t give you back what you lost, like an education,” Mr. Groarke continued.
“A huge amount of our people have not worked for most of their lives and a lot would have got ‘low class’ jobs.
“A lot of survivors wouldn’t be able to read or write”.

Right of Place offers outreach and support to survivors in education, health, housing, employment, welfare, social issues and much more. “If they have a problem we want them to know that there is a service here. They can just lift the phone”.
The Right of Place Limerick office is based in the Friends of the Elderly premises Carey’s Road, and is open to anyone who wishes to avail of its support. Meetings are held on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday mornings and are open to all to call in for a cup of tea and a chat.

Fergus Finlay of Barnardo's speaks of abuse after Cardinal Brady revelations

3 May 2012

BBC

 

The head of Barnardo's in Ireland has spoken publicly for the first time about being abused as a child.

Fergus Finlay said he felt he had to speak out while taking part in a debate about the BBC's This World programme which found Cardinal Sean Brady failed to pass details of sex abuse by paedophile priest Brendan Smyth to police or parents in 1975.

Cardinal Brady said he accepted he was "part of an unhelpful culture of deference and silence in society, and the Church, which thankfully is now a thing of the past".
Mr Finlay said a changed culture was not a proper explanation.

"The only reason I raised this was in the context of a discussion where it was suggested when this happened it was a different time, it was dark and mysterious," he said.
"I think that's all rubbish."
Mr Finlay said he was abused in 1961 when he was 11 years old.
 
"I'm not trying to understate or overstate any of that, but I was lucky that I was able to tell my father and he instantly believed me and instantly acted on it," he said.
"Thousands of other children in those days were terrified to tell, and they may not have been believed if they did."

The former Irish Labour Party advisor said it was true that people were afraid of the church and those in authority.

"It would have taken a huge act of courage by my father to confront a brother or his superior," he said.
"I don't know what he did because I was 11, but he told me it would never happen again and it didn't. I don't think it happened to anybody in my class again either."

He said Cardinal Brady had a "moral responsibility" to follow up on information given to him by 14-year-old Brendan Boland and "to break ranks if he discovered nothing had been done".
Mr Finlay said he believed Cardinal Brady should now step down as head of the Catholic Church in Ireland.
"There is no recovery of moral authority possible without new, clean leadership," he said.

In a statement responding to the programme, Cardinal Brady claimed the BBC exaggerated his authority at that time, when he was a priest and teacher in County Cavan sent by his bishop to investigate a claim of child sexual abuse by a fellow priest.
He said he had "absolutely no authority over Smyth" and had felt betrayed that those in the Church who had the power to stop Smyth did not do so.

Minister says orders can't pay their share of €1.5bn abuse bill

EDUCATION Minister Ruairi Quinn yesterday admitted publicly for the first time that religious orders don't have the cash or assets to pay their share of the compensation bill for abuse.
And he said he had no intention of bankrupting the orders -- which leaves him facing a massive battle to recover their half of a €1.5bn bill.

The taxpayer is already picking up €750m of the expected final cost but now faces having to pay far more.
In the place of previous offers, Mr Quinn now wants the orders to hand over the deeds of schools and medical facilities to finally settle the deal on compensating victims of abuse in residential institutions.
However, it may prove difficult to implement the handover of deeds as many schools controlled by the orders have been placed in trust and are no longer in the ownership of the orders.
Trusts are complex legal entities, and NUI Maynooth law lecturer Neil Maddox said that the Government was facing a "legal headache" on this front.

So far, the orders have paid, or are in a position to pay, about €200m -- although in some cases, over a longer timescale than originally planned.
Mr Quinn told the Irish Independent: "The property market has collapsed; the market value of capital assets has plummeted.
"Nobody wants to bankrupt the orders, who have made a positive contribution for generations to this country, for which this country is grateful, myself included."

But the Government is not backing down on its demand that 18 congregations covered by the Residential Institutions Redress Scheme split the cost 50:50 with the taxpayer.

The religious orders never accepted the principle of 50:50, and when they topped up their contribution offer in 2009, they did so on a "voluntary" basis.
As the Redress Board, which has made 14,000 awards to date, nears the end of its work, the figure being put on the final cost of the scheme and associated matters is €1.5bn.

The minister accepts the orders are not in a position to come "remotely close" to paying 50pc of the bill but, he said, "they can do something else".
He asked them: "Please give us the title deeds of your educational infrastructure."
The Government is also interested in medical facilities.
Mr Quinn said there was no question of requiring them to vacate properties, or hand over patronage of schools -- rather to make the Government, and ultimately the taxpayer, the "landlord" of the property.
Mr Quinn has met the orders in recent months and is in the process of sending letters to the 18 congregations setting out his position, in a bid to bring finality to the long-running saga.

Shortfall
He said he wanted a written response from them so that he could report progress to the Government. The letter states: "As there is a considerable shortfall to be overcome to realise the 50pc contribution towards the ultimate cost of the response to residential institution child abuse, I would request your congregation's views on how a sharing of the costs on a 50:50 basis will be realised."

The move comes as the Redress Board, which was set up in 2002, finalises its work. In another significant development, the Cabinet last Tuesday approved the shape of legislation to set up a trust, backed by a €110m statutory fund, to provide ongoing support for victims.

It has been generally welcomed, but religious orders and others are concerned that the proposed fund is restricted to those who have already been through the redress system.
The Oblates, one of the 18 congregations, welcomed the decision to establish a trust for former residents but said access to the trust should not be confined only to those who have received payments under the redress scheme.
"We have already emphasised to the Department of Education that access to the trust should be open to all former residents of these institutions, based on need and the fact that many are now elderly and in need of advice, counselling and other supports."

London-based emigrants' rights activist, Sally Mulready, recently appointed a member of the Council of State by President Michael D Higgins, said a small number of people who were among the most vulnerable of the survivors' population should not be excluded from the trust.
"Their failure to apply in time to the Redress Board is part of that vulnerability," she said.

- Katherine Donnelly

Heilige Maria redt ons; Gregory van Buuren, castratie The filth within the church en de Commissie Deetman met de platte plaat voor de kop

Alle ingrediënten lagen er, Deetman!
Er was niet alleen Ierland en de de hierarchische nachtmerrie over kapitalen.
Juist in dat bisdom. Raymond delaHaye toen hij zijn kinderporno handel overzee niet kon bedwingen was bezig met de kerkelijke excuses en het regelen van een forse schadeclaim aan misbruikslachtoffers , er lag Mount Cashel er lagen de Du Plessis nachtmerries !!

klik

Hoeveel wetenschappers heb je dan nodig?
Laat het parlement maar uitrekenen hoeveel bisschoppen je dan nodig hebt.

Verkeerd gegokt, Deetman!
strikkie d'r om en weg met die vuilnis

Want pedo's zijn één ding, en knap beroerd. Maar er is geen misbruiker die beslist of levens verwoest zijn of niet. Dat doet de overtreffende trap!

bron foto's:
een cadeautje van een eigenwijze vent uit dezelfde Congregatie
met een hele hoop kinderen
die wist dat archieven ooit belangrijk zouden worden, hij was dan ook taartjesbakker

En verder zijn ze ook te vinden in
In smarten geboren..., geschiedenis van een Broederscongregatie,
Broederscongregatie Onze Lieve Vrouw van Zeven Smarten
Amsterdam/Voorhout 1985
Edesius Boerrigter (Broeders van Dongen).


Moge de paus en Castro een mooie zwembroek hebben!

Quinn wants orders to pay more

The ministerfor Education is to write to the 18 religious congregations, which ran residential institutions where children were abused, asking them to contribute more towards the €1.2 billion bill for compensating victims.

The letter from Ruairí Quinn follows questions put to Taoiseach Enda Kenny in the Dáil yesterday about the status of the payment of compensation by the congregations.

In 2009, the Ryan commission published its finding that children put into State care in religious-run residential institutions had suffered systemic abuse. Under the 2002 indemnity agreement, the congregations agreed to provide a contribution of €128 million to those abused, comprising cash, property and counselling services.
The final cost of the response to residential institutional child abuse, however, has since been estimated to be in the region of €1.36 billion. The Government said last year that it believed this should be shared on a 50-50 basis, between the taxpayer and those responsible for managing the institutions where the abuse took place.

Last July, Mr Quinn expressed his disappointment at the level of contributions offered by religious congregations to meet costs of the compensation, saying that offers from the religious congregations to date had fallen far short of the amount needed.

The department said yesterday that the letter had already been in train, before the questions received by the Taoiseach, and that the correspondence was “the official expression” of what Mr Quinn had asked of the congregations last summer.
A spokeswoman confirmed that the letter would be sent in the next fortnight.

Echo van Tantetje van Tes; elkaars kopvellen

Niemand heeft het recht - om welke reden dan ook - zich een gezamelijk verleden toe te eigenen of -op welke manier dan ook - anderen de toegang daartoe te bemoeilijken of onmogelijk te maken.

soveel verwonding vir waarheid
soveel verwoesting
so min het oorgebly vir oorlewing

PATSY McGARRY and MICHAEL PARSONS
The Irish Times - Tuesday, December 20, 2011


LETTER OF COMMITTAL: A COLLECTOR who bought a letter relating to the committal of three young girls to a Cork industrial school a century ago has donated the document to abuse victims after they complained about the nature of the auction.
On September 24th last abuse victim and Aislinn founder Christine Buckley and colleague Carmel McDonnell-Byrne protested at an auction in Dublin that was selling documents related to the committal of three young girls to a Cork industrial school a century ago.
Ms Buckley said she found the sale of such documents “physically nauseating. I am so shocked. It is absolutely grotesque and completely dehumanising. That could be me in 100 years’ time. I was ‘found wandering’ . . .”
The documents were sold to an anonymous telephone bidder who, she assumed, lived abroad.
They referred to Mary O’Connor (6), Wellington Street, Dublin, “found wandering and not having a proper guardian”, Catherine White (8) of Henrietta Place, Dublin, “found destitute and being an orphan” and Kate Keohane (11), Ring, Co Cork, “found wandering”. The lot was offered for “€200-300”.
The three children were detained at Clonakilty industrial school. One document detailed how on June 29th, 1911, at the request of “Monsignor O’Leary of Clonakilty”, Kate Keohane was committed to St Aloysius’s industrial school “being a school conducted in accordance with the doctrines of the Roman Catholic Church”, to be detained until January 17th, 1916.
It was run by the Sisters of Mercy. So was Dublin’s Goldenbridge orphanage, where Christine Buckley was detained as a child.
But the anonymous bidder at the Whyte’s auction last September was a Dublin man who read of Christine Buckley’s distress in this newspaper. He has since presented the documents to her and to the Aislinn Centre for abuse victims on Jervis Street.
He found his visit there “very emotional” and has undertaken to supply it with computers to help its education programme. “It’s terrible how we let these people down so badly,” he said.
The man, a company executive who wishes to remain anonymous,recalled how on that Saturday morning in September he and his wife were so moved by what Christine Buckley had told this newspaper, they decided to buy the documents for her. He was not to know that, doing so, he outbid Brian Donnelly from the National Archives at the auction.
Working to a tight budget he bid to €320. The anonymous bidder paid €470. Ms Buckley now plans to present the documents to the National Archive. Mr Donnelly said they would be “delighted” to accept them.

Lota Brothers won't face new abuse inquiry despite revelations

By Breda Heffernan
Tuesday August 16 2011
Irish Independent

The Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse will not re-open its investigation into the Brothers of Charity despite new evidence of horrific living conditions at one of its children's homes.

The Irish Independent obtained hundreds of pages of documents detailing appalling conditions at Lota, a residential school for people with learning disabilities, in Glanmire, Co Cork.

The documents were not handed over to the commission during its investigation into residential abuse at Lota, which has been run by the Brothers of Charity since 1939.

A spokeswoman for the commission said it would not be seeking any more documents from the congregation.

"Our investigation was over in 2009 with the publishing of our report. Our remit was filled once we published the report," she said.

The Brothers of Charity were condemned in the Ryan Report for showing a "total disregard" for the safety of the children in their care by placing known child sex abusers at Lota.

However, Christine Buckley of the Aislinn Centre, and a survivor of institutional abuse, said she had always questioned whether the religious orders had handed over all the documents they had to the commission.

Disclosure

"I think some sort of inquiry needs to come about following the disclosure of these documents and the question needs to be asked to the other religious orders 'so have they anything that they have failed to disclose to the commission?'," she said.

She said any order found to have withheld documents should be "heavily penalised" and suggested they should pay a greater share of the €680m compensation bill.

The Brothers of Charity did not respond to requests for comment on why the documents were not disclosed to the commission.

Lota; Long battle for access to Lota records, Mother tells of guilt at putting son in hands of religious order

Irish Independent
- Brian McDonald
August 16 2011

MARGARET Best fought and won a long and arduous battle to get access to her son's records from Lota.

She initially sought them in the early 1990s in pre-paration for a court action against drug company the Welcome Foundation, which manufactured the three-in-one vaccine for infants. The damages claim was settled in 1993 for €3,492,500.

In 1999 she again applied for Kenneth's records but a list of documents supplied to her fell short of what she expected. She reapplied for all records under the Free-dom of Information Act.

But two years later she had received only partial records and sought an internal review under the act, seeking full records.

In November, 2001 she got the additional files and discovered for the first time, the distressing details of her son's life at Lota.

In 2003 Mrs Best applied to the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse to provide evidence of what occurred in Lota, but the commission also ruled that Kenneth, because of his mental handicap, was not in a position to recount any abuse he may have suffered.

Mrs Best said: "Kenneth has been both a silent victim and a witness to the appalling treatment he suffered at the hands of the Brothers of Charity in Lota. The records obtained from that facility ... speak for him and they also speak for the Brothers of Charity."


Mother tells of guilt at putting son in hands of religious order

A MOTHER has told how entrusting her son to the care of the Brothers of Charity was the worst decision she ever made.

Margaret Best was speaking after fresh evidence emerged about the horrific conditions in Lota House, a home for vulnerable children run by the religious order.

Now 42 and back with his family in Douglas, Cork, Kenneth Best cannot talk, read or write and still has the mental age of a two- or three-year-old.

His mother recalled how, as a young married woman, with a profoundly mentally handicapped son, she had to turn to "the professionals" for help.

"I have huge regret about putting Kenneth into Lota. I'll live with that guilt for the rest of my life, but I caved in to the pressure from the so-called professionals," Margaret said.

The Brothers of Charity told her Kenneth would have a special education programme designed to help him specifically. She didn't want to part with her six-year-old, but they dismissed her suggestion that she could perform the programme at home.

Kenneth was placed in the care of the Brothers of Charity at Our Lady of Good Counsel, Lota, Glanmire, Co Cork, on September 1, 1975, and remained there until 1984.

But more than 25 years later, when Margaret finally managed to win access to Kenneth's records from Lota, a staff member had written: "I feel we should at least go through the motions of being concerned, even if over a mother's trifle."

The records show Kenneth quickly developed a series of illnesses over the next year. Margaret was not informed that he was ill and was discouraged by staff from calling to see him.

Vermin

For at least seven of the nine years that he was resident in Lota the records show repeated references to vermin in the building, with mice, spiders, ants, beetles and cockroaches in several rooms.

Throughout 1976 Margaret had numerous meetings with staff about Kenneth's repeated diarrhoea. "But I never got a proper answer -- they regarded me as a troublemaker, I think," she said.

When Margaret took Kenneth home in September 1977, she was horrified to note his groin area was covered in white blisters. She told staff that it appeared they were not cleaning him, but was assured that he was well cared for.

Kenneth's records report him as being distressed and crying on several occasions in his early years at Lota. In addition, he had eye and tooth problems and by April 1978 his genital area was inflamed and swollen.

There is no evidence that Kenneth was seen by a doctor in respect of this problem.

By mid-1979 Kenneth's repeated eye problems were of such concern to Margaret that she had her own GP refer him to hospital. A consultant told her that if matters continued without proper treatment, there was a danger he would lose his sight.

Strictly against her wishes, Kenneth had also been taken for a polio vaccination. Margaret had told Lota management, before he entered the facility, that because Kenneth had acquired his handicap as a result of a serious adverse reaction to the 3-in-1 vaccine as a child, it was imperative he would not get any more vaccinations.

She only discovered he had been vaccinated when she won the right to get his records in 2001.

"When Kenneth was ill, I was rarely informed of this, despite asking to be told. There are numerous references in his records to him being given a drug called Mellaril which was not a treatment for swollen eyes, ear infections, diarrhoea or insect bites. It is an anti-psychotic," she said.

On September 13, 1979, the records note: "Found (name erased) in bed with Ken Best, nappy partly taken off again." Once again, Margaret was unaware of what was happening to her son.

"These are only the incidents that were reported. I dread to imagine what else was perpetrated against Kenneth, which was not witnessed or not recorded by staff," Margaret said.

In December 1984 she removed Kenneth from Lota.