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RUAIRI QUINN wrong to deny redress to Bethany Home survivors - here is the evidence
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Friday June 24, 2011 17:58 by Derek Leinster - Bethany Survivors Group derek.linster at talktalk dot net 42 Southey Road Rugby CV22 6HF Warwickshire 00 44 1 788 81731
Minister for Education ignores evidence given to him at meeting
In letters to Joe Costello TD and Bethany Home Survivors Chairperson, Derek Leinster (attached), Ruairi Quinn TD, Minister for Education, turned down the survivors' request to have the Home included in the Schedule to the Residential Institutions Redress Scheme.
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'In his reply to me and to Deputy Joe Costello, Minister Quinn ignored the arguments we put to him. Letter from Derek Leinster and Niall Meehan to Minister for Education, Ruairi Quinn Dear Minister for Education, Ruairi Quinn, Thank you for your letters of 17 June 2011 to Joe Costello and to Derek Leinster in response to points put to you by Bethany survivors, Níall Meehan and Joe Costello TD, who met you on 24 May last. Bethany Home, a Protestant evangelical institution, was, to cite the statutory basis for insertion into the Schedule to the Residential Institutions Redress Scheme, a ‘children’s home… in which children were placed and resident… in respect of which a public body had a regulatory or inspection function’. You have decided not to include Bethany Home, though it meets the stated criteria. Possibly, this is because your letter does not address the reasons put by the Bethany delegation for inclusion within the Schedule. Your letter raises issues that, while important, did not constitute the basis of the argument put to you and which, consequently, your reply has failed to address. Since 1917, according to Mary Raftery (writing in 2004), ‘Protestant children in need of care’ were ‘essentially dealt with by private institutions’. She suggested that the state’s attitude was one of ‘hands-off’. As a result, she went on, ‘It is difficult to find any State records relating to the Protestant children's homes’. Our research into Bethany Home indicates that it is precisely this policy decision not to interfere which is the reason for neglect and death in the Bethany Home and the reason why the state is culpable. There are in fact state records explaining why the state decided not to interfere when confronted with evidence of severe neglect in the Bethany Home. We supplied these records to you and you have not addressed them. We summarise them here. Record numbers of children died in Bethany between 1935-39, buried in unmarked graves in Mount Jerome cemetery. Over a third of the 219 unmarked graves discovered for the period 1922-49 originated in this period. Statutory inspection of maternity homes began in 1934 and Bethany registered in 1935. In January 1939 specific criticism of Bethany’s standards of care was reported within the Department Local Government and Public Health. In August 1939 public criticism of Bethany was raised at a meeting of the Rathdown Board of Guardians and published in the Irish Times and Independent. The Board of Guardians asked the Minister to report back to them on sick children removed from Bethany who required hospitalisation. The Deputy Chief Medical Adviser, Winslow Sterling Berry, entered Bethany once in February and twice in October 1939. The evidence shows that he engaged in a damage limitation exercise. In February he dismissed criticism from a departmental inspector who wanted a Bethany nurse mother prosecuted for severe neglect. In October, after the August meeting of the Rathdown Board of Guardians, Sterling Berry entered Bethany twice. He wrote in relation to criticism of standards of care in Bethany, ‘it is well recognised that a large number of illegitimate children are delicate’. He then went on to assert that Bethany’s problem was that it was a proselytising institution and that he proposed, as Deputy Chief Medical Adviser, to end the practice of attempting to convert Roman Catholics by banning their presence. On his third and final visit he reported being present at the special meeting he initiated, where it was agreed to cease admitting Roman Catholics. You, as Minister in this Republic in 2011, must address the Deputy Chief Medical Advisor’s use of his statutory power in this manner in 1939. It is regrettable that you have not done so in your reply. Our conclusion, which the evidence shows to be irrefutable, is that in southern Ireland’s sectarian welfare system state officials were concerned to regulate sectarianism but not welfare. Leveling the playing field in this way gave prejudiced officials an easier life. It also fatally compromised the inspection regime in Bethany. Children continued to die and to become ill in significant numbers. Nearly two thirds of the 219 unmarked graves originated in the 10 year 1935-44 period. This needless slaughter ended when Bethany was given a Maternity grant in 1949, something originally expected by Bethany’s management in 1940, after the Catholic ban. Sterling Berry’s exercise in prejudice was as illegal in 1939 as it is today. What should have happened? On one other documented occasion a senior medical adviser entered a mother and babies home. Newly appointed (in 1944) Chief Medical Adviser James Deeny visited Bessbrook, Cork, arising from reports of unusually high mortality. Just as Sterling Berry said of Bethany, Bessbrook seemed ‘clean’ and ‘well run’. However, unlike his deputy, Deeny physically examined a number of children. He found them to be suffering from a range of preventable conditions that were causing the unnecessarily high mortality. According to Deeny, ‘The deaths had been going on for years. They had done nothing about it’. He, ‘closed the place down and sacked the Matron, a nun, and also got rid of the medical officer’. Had Sterling Berry been less fixated on private denominational matters that were none of his statutory business, and more concerned with his statutory responsibility for public welfare, children’s lives might have been saved. Sterling Berry retired from the Department in 1946, while Deeny authored the 'Mother and Child legislation' that Noel Browne failed to have enacted in 1949-50. Doctors and the Church of Ireland Gazette saw it as ‘communist’ interference in the family. The Roman Catholic Church weighed in, condemned and effectively killed the legislation for similar reasons. Religiously and privately run welfare on the cheap continued. Raftery's conclusion from her analysis in 2004 bears repetition, 'The fact that the Government uses its past neglect of this section of the community to argue that it now has no responsibility to even hear their case for redress is shameful and unjust. The number of children in this category was always small. However, the abuse some of them suffered was no less real or damaging than that of their Catholic counterparts.' In relation to your point about ‘exclusion of the Bethany Home for religious grounds’, you fail to address the fact that originally in 2002, no Protestant institution was included in the Schedule to the Redress Scheme. Mary Raftery again, who also pointed out that the 2002 Redress scheme originally excluded mother and baby homes like Bethany. However, St Patrick’s, one of the State’s largest, was one of 13 institutions added in 2004. As it was Roman Catholic, she continued, ‘Consequently, the exclusion of similar Protestant institutions does indeed begin to appear worryingly sectarian’. Raftery went on: "A further Church of Ireland institution excluded is the former Smyly's Boys' Home... A number of ex-residents have alleged that they were severely abused there as children... this group feels that it has been sidelined because of its religion". As a result of this and of continuing pressure and complaints from Derek Leinster, Smiley's was then included. Also included was the Protestant run Miss Carr's home, said to have been one of the best run children's homes in the state. One puzzled former resident of Miss Carr’s home we have spoken to threw away his Redress Scheme invitation to apply for compensation. Yet Bethany Home, from which hundreds were sent to unmarked graves, was still not included. To paraphrase James Deeny, it had been going on for years and nothing was done about it. Now, today, you want to do nothing about it. Just as with the Magdalene laundry institutions, the state argues that women referred to Bethany by the courts from 1924 to 1965 (for crimes ranging from petty theft to infanticide), entered there voluntarily. Leaving that spurious argument aside, the point is that the state had a regulatory duty of care that it abandoned. It abandoned it in an institution where it was deemed acceptable to lock up women charged with infanticide and petty crime with unmarried mothers and their abandoned and then neglected offspring. The state’s washing of its hands of its responsibility is a further abandonment. That is not acceptable in this Republic. Please, in the name of decency and of justice, withdraw the letter issued in your name, possibly by a misguided civil servant, and get to the heart of this matter. Bethany survivors deserve redress. We would like you to address the points made here that are central to the case for including Bethany Home in a scheme of redress.
Extensive report to Ruairi Quinn on 24 May 2011- evidence that he ignored in his response 0.7 Mb
by Derek Leinster - Bethany Survivors Group Thu Jun 23, 2011 12:54
These are some more items of evidence that the Minister for Education failed to address.
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Jump To Comment: 5 4 3 2 1The Irish News July 4, 2011 Monday
Protestant home's survivors call for probe into abuse
By Sarah Stack
Survivors of a Protestant children's home where at least 200 babies and infants died have said they want their case included in an Irish government review. Former resident Derek Leinster has called on TDs to demand that Bethany Home form part of an investigation into the state's involvement in the notorious Magdalene laundries.
The Bethany Survivors' Group represents people who were infants at the home in Rathgar, Co Dublin, which was run between 1922 and 1972. The group was recently refused access to a state-run compensation fund for a second time.
Senator Martin McAleese was appointed to chair a committee that will report on the state's role in alleged abuse at the Magdalene laundries, operated by four Catholic religious orders. Mr Leinster was in Bethany Home from 1941 to 1945.
He wrote to TDs and Senator McAleese pleading that he extend his remit to include the Protestant home.
"There are similarities with the case put by successive governments in their refusal to add Magdalene laundries and Bethany Home to the schedule to the Redress Act," Mr Leinster wrote.
"It is to be hoped that you may be in position to address that historic wrong which is a continuing stain on the reputation of Irish society. I ask you to review this material and ask the ministers responsible to include Bethany Home within your remit. State neglect of Bethany Home residents is also a stain on Irish society."
The Bethany group claims to have documents proving that state officials ignored evidence of neglect and record numbers of deaths in the home in the late 1930s. The group also says the state ordered the home not to take in Catholic children.
Last year the group, with the help of Griffith College Dublin lecturer Niall Meehan, discovered 219 unmarked graves in Mount Jerome cemetery, Harold's Cross, of children from the home. Records show more than one third of them died in the five years from 1935 to 1939.
The Irish Times - Tuesday, July 5, 2011
Quinn rejects Bethany survivors' call
Sir, – The refusal of Minister for Education Ruairí Quinn to allow Bethany Home residents access to the State’s redress scheme is insupportable (Breaking News, June 22nd). So too is the refusal by the Minister for Justice to allow Senator Martin McAleese to include it in his review of the State’s relationship to the Magdalene laundries.
The institutions are comparable in being denied access to the redress scheme. The Justice for Magadalenes advocacy group supports Bethany’s inclusion within Senator McAleese’s remit.
Former residents would have to show that the State was responsible for neglect, illness and death in order to become eligible for redress.
We are confident that we can show that the State neglected its duty of regulatory care in the Bethany Home. The State ignored internal and external warnings about conditions in the home. Its only substantive response in 1939 was to state that it was “well known” that illegitimate children were “delicate” and to force the home to stop admitting Roman Catholics. The State evenly regulated the sectarianism inherent within the welfare system, but not the actual welfare of residents of religiously run institutions.
It is singularly appropriate that Senator McAleese should be allowed to examine the Bethany case, given his sterling work in the peace process in Northern Ireland and given that many former Bethany residents either started from or ended up in Northern Ireland. Considerable amounts of money were raised in Northern Ireland, very little of which was spent on the intended recipients, poor Protestant orphans in Southern Ireland. I’m sure those who gave generously would like to know how the money was actually spent (as would I) and I’m sure Senator McAleese would be assiduous in finding out, if he was allowed.
What is the Government afraid of, the truth? It is time to evenly regulate redress for the victims of Ireland’s state-sanctioned sectarian welfare system.
– Yours, etc,
DEREK LEINSTER,
Chairperson, Bethany Survivors Group,
Why not let Senator McAleese look at Bethany Home as well?
What is the government afraid of, the truth?
Time to regulate redress for past sectarian wrongs
24 June 2011
PRESS RELEASE Justice for Magdalenes:
JFM supports Bethany Survivors in rejecting Ruairi Quinn refusal to include
Bethany Home survivors in redress scheme
[ENDS]
Contact Details:
Claire McGettrick [PRO], Ireland—353-(0)86-3659516, clairemcgettrick at gmail dot com
Mari Steed, Philadelphia—(00)1-215-589-9329, mari_tee at yahoo dot com
James M. Smith, Boston—(00)1-617-552-1596, smithbt at bc dot edu
Dr Winslow Sterling Berry, son of the Bishop of Killaloe, was a ‘patronage’ appointment, ‘nominated for his post by Lord Carson and the Protestant Archbishop of Dublin’. On his appointment, Dr Sterling Berry informed later (from 1944) Chief Medical Officer, Dr James Deeny, that ‘when he was appointed, Sir Henry Robinson, the Vice-President of the Local Government Board, our predecessor under English rule, sent for him and said, ‘Dr Sterling Berry, this is a gentleman’s service, keep it that way’. According to Deeny, Sterling Berry ‘liked ‘doing the files’ was very good at it and was meticulous in spotting irregularities and correcting them and always observed the protocol and etiquette in pushing the files around, [so] I left him to it. Sterling Berry was so honest as to be almost naive. He liked to impress his personality on the files by always writing in green ink’.
James Deeny, To Cure and to Care, Memoirs of a Chief Medical Officer, Glendale, 1989, pp. 71, 77 - see graphic above that contrasts Deeny's approach to high death rates in maternity homes with Sterling Berry's in Bethany in 1939.
Deeny, from Northern Ireland was appointed in 1944, and set about trying to reform the Irish maternity and welfare system. He wrote the 'Mother and Child' scheme legislation that Noel Browne failed have enacted in 1949-50. The legislation provided for free advice for pregnant women. It was killed by conservative doctors (Protestant and Catholic) and by the Roman Catholic Church, who saw it as creeping communism.
Deputy Chief Medical Adviser on why children born out of wedlock die
None of this material was considered by the minister in his response to me and to Joe Costello TD.
1936 - the year a record 29 children were buried in unmarked graves - no discussion - Bethany management had other priorities
Both of these Medical Advisers exceeded their authority - which one saved children's lives?
Ruairi Quinn letter to Derek Leinster 'I could feel [your] hurt and pain', but not enough to do anything about it 1.03 Mb
Ruairi Quinn letter to Joe Costello - 'My decision will come as a disappointment to you' 1.73 Mb