By David Hennessy
In her role as the newly appointed special advocate for survivors of institutional abuse, Patricia Carey has been listening to survivor’s stories and aims to address the ‘mistrust’ survivors feel towards the government.
The post was created as part of the Government’s response to the final report of the Mother and Baby Homes Commission of Investigation.
Although it is a ministerial appointment, it is an independent role and Carey looks to amplify voices of survivors.
Her brief covers not just survivors of mother and baby homes, but also of the Magdalene Laundries, and industrial and reformatory institutions. The total cohort incarcerated in these various institutions between 1922 and 1998 numbers about 230,000.
Carey’s priority right now is to hear people’s stories and to build trust with the dispersed community she represents.
This includes the many survivors who are based here in the UK, Patricia has already visited with North West- based charity Fréa and other UK- based organisations who work with survivors.
Patricia Carey told The Irish World: “There was a lot of people very unhappy about the Mother and Baby Commission of Inquiry that reported in 2021.
“I would agree with a lot of the unhappiness.
“The Commission didn’t deliver what people thought it would.
“People who gave evidence to the commission were very unhappy that their testimony had basically been cut and paste, many people would say, to suit the narrative of the commissioners.
“Because of the outcry following that, the government came up with what they call a 22 point action plan to respond to survivors of mother and baby homes, but other survivors of institutional abuse as well.
“One of those was a recognition of the mistrust of formal central government.
“They agreed to appoint what they call a special advocate, my role.
“It’s to hear what survivors have to say and to bring that back to government.
“So since I started on 25 March, I think just about over 500 people have contacted me.
“Three key themes have been emerging.
“Survivors feel that they have been over consulted and under delivered.
“They’re sick and tired of surveys, sick and tired of being asked to go to meetings to express their views.
“They say, ‘We’re not listened to and the recommendations we make are ignored’.
“Second one is exclusion.
“This is exclusion at a broad level, people who were excluded from Irish society.
“We know that many thousands of those left and went to the UK.
“I was talking to a woman and her brother had been boarded out when he was 16.
“He just literally left, got on a boat to the UK and never came back.
“So those kinds of exclusions, but also then all the people who are excluded from this new redress scheme.
“Every day new things come to me.
“For example, there was a famous orphanage in Dublin called Temple Hill where children were sent after they were born in a mother and baby home before they were adopted.
“Effectively, it was a mother and baby institution that is excluded from the redress scheme.
“Obviously, 24,000 people who were in the mother and baby homes under six months are excluded.
“A really sad example: We know that over 40% of women had more than one child.
“One woman had two children, two completely different times. One was ‘65. One was 1972. Two different institutions.
“She applied for redress and instead of saying, ‘Well, that was one situation, that was the second one’, they basically rolled all the days together and said, ‘That’s what you’re getting’.
“Effectively, it meant she was getting way less than, as far as I’m concerned, she’s entitled to.
“Exclusion is a big theme.
“And then the third one, which actually surprised me, was the amount of people who want to tell their stories who haven’t spoken to people, who want to literally start at day one and tell me sometimes pretty horrific details of their lives. A real need for people to be heard.
“What has shocked me or taken me aback is just how lifelong the impact of early trauma, incarceration is, and then intergenerational stuff.
“All of those issues have really come to the fore.
“I suppose the key difference with this role is that I can criticise government independently.
“And I have done that.
“And I’ll continue to do that.
“So hopefully, we can bring some change for some of the people who are excluded, particularly from redress schemes.”
Carey will be closely involved with the shaping of the planned National Centre for Research and Remembrance on the site of the former Magdalene Laundry on Sean McDermott Street in Dublin 1.
But the big thing Patricia has to tackle is the mistrust she speaks of among the survivor community.
“When the Commission report started people had hope, ‘Well, maybe this will be a new era, the truth will come out’.
“I think 600 people gave evidence to the commission.
“A couple of people said, ‘Well, why should we trust you?’
“And I’m like, ‘Well, you shouldn’t because you don’t know me’.
“I need to earn that trust.
“I was talking to a woman yesterday who was trying to apply for redress on behalf of her mother and her mother was excluded.
“She just said, ‘I am so angry, I’m not going to let this go because of what my mother went through’.
“And, unfortunately, that anger and mistrust means that it’s very difficult to then reengage with survivors because they’re suspicious and they’re rightly suspicious because they’ve been legged over so many times by so many different actors in the state.
“That’s why my experience, particularly in the UK with Fréa, with the London Irish Centre is really important: Building trust really slowly and proactively is what you have to do. You’re not going to get quick results.
“In Ireland, we’re going to establish a National Centre for Remembrance and Research, which is going to be basically the state’s national response, museum and archive in the heart of Dublin City Centre.
“We’re going to do consultations and I’ve insisted that one of those consultations is in the UK.
“We need to do a few around Ireland and online but there’s no point in me saying how that story can be represented.
“And then even further afield so I’m going to the States in October because the two places that survivors went to were the UK and the USA and they still have a lot of things to say about what was done to them.”
Patrick Rodgers, Managing Director of Fréa, adds: “What you have is a feeling that the state let people down and then when they get that knocked back or excluded from applying to a payment scheme or their early life records can’t be traced, that reinforces that feeling of being let down, of not feeling like the state apology, really, really backs them or really applies to them.
“That can be very difficult.
“There’s also things like the length of time that people spent in institutions and that being a mark of how much money people get.
“That can be very, very divisive.
“It can be something that’s very disappointing to people because if someone was in a home as a mother for a limited amount of time and they were told at that stage that they were no good, that they were sinners, that they should give up their children, the impact of that lasts a lifetime and the impact is similar to a mother who may have been in a home for two or three years.
“It’s the psychological impact of being told you have to go to this institution because you’ve done something terribly wrong, you are going to be a burden to people.
“That is never properly addressed by the outcome of the payment scheme or the way the Irish government is dealing with it.
“That’s been very, very difficult for people to come to terms with.
“Patricia’s role is very important to us and to people who’ve been through the institutions.
“After Patricia met people over here, one of the survivors said they never thought that they would actually get an opportunity to talk to someone who could then represent their views directly to the Irish government so having that link and having that person there who can ensure they can get their voice heard at a high level is incredibly, incredibly important to people.”
Patricia continues: “The Taoiseach said when he made the state apology for the mother and baby homes, ‘Each of you deserve so much better’.
“And I’m now quoting that back to them.
“I’m saying, ‘You said ‘each of you deserve so much better’ and now you’re saying ‘each of you are not going to get redress’.
“Redress is only a physical manifestation of an apology.
“Some women have said to me, ‘I don’t need the money but I’m taking it and I’m giving it to charity or giving it to my grandkids or whatever’.
“But Patrick is right, it’s very divisive.
“I spoke to a woman who was adopted, her four brothers who were older than her (were also adopted). Her four brothers were boarded out so had terrible lives. Two of her brothers are entitled to redress because of the institutions they were in and two are not.
“Now, thankfully, they all get on and they’re gonna share the money between them but that in a family where it’s like, ‘You’re getting €20,000, you’re getting nothing’, what does that say?
“I honestly believe there should have been no exclusions.
“I think if it’s about money, give everyone a lower amount but to have a group of people sitting in a room and one person’s getting €10,000 and one person is getting zero.
“And I’ve said stage apologies are so hollow.
“That’s really what’s ringing true now, the Magdalene women got an apology.
“Everyone gets an apology but it doesn’t mean anything if the action following that doesn’t doesn’t ring true.”
Patrick Rodgers adds: “As Patricia said, a payment is a physical manifestation of that apology so if you’re excluded from that money, effectively you’re being told, ‘Well, we’ll say we’re sorry. We’re still sorry for these people but for you, we’re not really sorry because you being in an institution didn’t damage you as much as we feel it damaged someone else’.
“If you’re in a home as a child and you never get to meet your mother, you never had that chance to have a maternal bond with your birth mother, that can be a lifetime and then you’re told, ‘Because you’re in a home for four months, it’s not as bad for you’.
“That’s really important for people who were in them institutions and it hits them really hard.
“Again, it’s an idea that the state has almost let them down again, lets them down by standing over mothers being separated from their children.”
Patricia Carey continues: “I do think a lot of the exclusions are going to be challenged legally, maybe through the courts and through different systems.
“Because if you make an application to the scheme and you weren’t born in what they call an eligible institution, you have no right to appeal.
“If I apply for a driver’s license and I’m told I’m not eligible, I can appeal it.
“It’s almost like the state doesn’t want to measure all of the thousands of people who are not eligible.
“Therefore the statistics will come out and they’ll say, ‘Oh, we’ve had 7000 people apply’.
“And there’s no public acknowledgement that there was maybe 10,000 ineligible people.
“So that narrative for the government looks really positive and I think that, to be honest, is almost deliberate.
“I also think it’s deliberate that it was called a payment scheme, not redress,
“I find that absolutely reprehensible.
“I’ll pay you, David, to do a journalistic story but that’s for doing something, this was done to people so it is redress.
“I think there was probably legal advice to say don’t call it redress and a lot of people I’ve spoken to find just the word payment abhorrent.
“The other big exclusion, it was 14 mother and baby homes listed. Only two of them are listed for a work payment.
“I actually said to somebody in government, ‘Anyone think that there was only two mother and baby homes where people were working?’
“That’s just bonkers.
“They were scrubbing floors, they were washing nappies, they were peeling spots in every mother and baby home.
“So whoever came up with the stupid naming two of them, I think that’s definitely going to be challenged.
“I’ve spoken to women who were able to tell me exactly the work they were doing in the other institutions.”
Patrick Rodgers adds: “People have asked us about that very thing when we have been making applications.
“You explain to them and they look at you like you’ve got two heads, ‘From the moment I got up, I had to go to mass and then I had to work and I had to work hard. I was heavily pregnant, I had to work’.
“It’s a very bizarre exclusion.”
Patricia Carey continues: “It really is. I would understand that if they were to say no mother baby home got a work payment, but say two of them, it doesn’t make any sense at all.
“Again, I think that will be challenged.”
In spite of, or perhaps because of, how they were so let down, Patricia has found survivors desperate to tell her their stories.
“In Ireland, there’s a lot more openness now.
“Maybe 20, even 15 years ago, people wouldn’t talk.
“But there was nearly 60,000 women in mother and baby homes and about a quarter of million all the other institutions, so every single family in Ireland has a story. And if you don’t, you’re a liar because every family has a story.”
Patrick Rodgers adds: “When you speak to people, they still feel a huge stigma about growing up in a mother and baby home, entering a mother and baby home.
“We as a community need to work better to try and address that stigma.
“What you have is people who grew up in Conservative Catholic official Ireland.
“By us simply saying ‘you shouldn’t feel the stigma’, that doesn’t remove that formative experience of being in an institution.
“Of going to school and being excluded from playing with people, being marked out through your early life as being different to other people.
“But the Irish community in the UK and wider need to look at how we ourselves are looking at that stigma and how people need to address it.”
Patricia Carey continues: “I think Patrick’s right.
“People have been told, ‘You did something wrong’, particularly those who went to the UK.
“They just wanted to get away from Ireland and never come back, which is really sad.”
A fear for survivors as they advance in years is that they may require a residential care home which would be like being institutionalised again for them.
“That’s a big thing,” Patricia says.
“I can’t imagine the re-trauma of being in an institution where they think it’s going to happen all over again.
“That’s another reason why the state should be providing more support to survivors to stay in their homes for as long as possible.
“Everyone should be supported but survivors should be supported because of what they went through in their early life.”
Patrick Rodgers adds: “We were looking at ways as well of addressing that.
“Their only other experience of an institution is a mother and baby home, is an industrial school, it’s something like that.
“Having local authorities, having organisations who are willing to listen and prepare people for that in a culturally sensitive way is really very important.
“Again, it’s a message that we need to get out to local authorities, to care homes: It’s not a reflection of your work. It’s a reflection on people’s genuine lived experiences.”
Particularly horrific can be stories of those who were adopted to America.
“Here’s the real crime: The families in America, by and large, who got children from Ireland had been turned down to be adopters in America. What does that tell you?
“And there were children sent to other places, it wasn’t just America.
“It was open season on trafficking children from Ireland.”
Patricia will form a council of 12- 15 people and is keen to ensure all groups are represented.
“I certainly don’t want someone to say, ‘Well, you have nobody from the boarded out groups’.
“The other group I realised there was no named representation for was the large number of children who were born mixed race.
“They weren’t even eligible for adoption, they were deemed to be un-adoptable so they had really horrific outcomes in many cases, they were fostered out, they were put in really unsuitable homes.
“I’d rather have as broad as possible representation.
“It’s back to the whole thing of trust.
“I need to establish it in a way that is respectful, that doesn’t create more mistrust.
“What I hope is that we can do some good and make some changes.
“There’s no point in me talking about stuff until the cows come home, you have to actually affect some change.
“The proof of the pudding is in the eating, see if we can get some results within the first 12 months.”
Patrick Rodgers adds: “If people want to come forward, want someone to listen to them, come speak to us and never think that you’re wasting our time.
“If you come to see us and you decide after the conversation that you don’t want to pursue an application for your early life records or for the payment scheme, that’s fine.
“The whole point of mother and baby and county homes, the whole point of industrial schools was to remove agency from people.
“What we want to do is give that back.
“We’re always happy just to sit, put the pen down and listen.”
Patricia Carey will be at The Bluecoat 2pm this Saturday 2 November for a screening of Margo Harkin’s Stolen that will be followed by a Q and A.
Patricia Carey, Special Advocate for Survivors of Institutional Abuse, wants to hear from survivors and can be contacted on [email protected].
You can contact frea on frea.org.uk.
You can contact Coventry Irish Society at coventryirishsociety.com.
You can also contact London Irish Centre at londonirishcentre.org.
