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Children's Minister rejects request from Bethany survivors group printable version

13 Nov 2014: posted by the editor - Ireland

Children's Minister James Reilly has rejected a request from survivors of children's institutions to include the Westbank Orphanage and other Protestant institutions in the proposed Mother & Baby homes inquiry following a meeting with representatives of the survivors.

Bethany Home is included and the Church of Ireland (CofI) Magdalen should be included, they say.

However, survivors' experiences after they left the gates of these homes are excluded from examination, said Mr Reilly.

Chairperson of Bethany Survivors Derek Leinster said the Minister's rejection meant the experiences of survivors who allege they were subjected to physical and sexual abuse in other State-used orphanages would not form part of the forthcoming Commission of Inquiry into abuse at such institutions.

He said it would also exclude the experiences of children who were sent across the Border to Northern Ireland and ended up working with families as labourers; his own experiences with a dysfunctional family in Wicklow, to which Bethany Home sent him. He said it also means that John Hill as an agricultural labourer from age five to 16 is excluded from examination. Only John's three years in the Cof I Magdalen home, where he suffered from rickets, will be looked at.

Westbank survivor Victor Stevenson, one of the very few to be adopted, said: "James Reilly's predecessor, Charlie Flanagan, said when we met him he was anxious to include Westbank and the other institutions besides Bethany Home. I asked if I could quote him on that and he said "yes". What has changed? Why are we out in the cold all over again".

"In other words", said survivors spokesperson Niall Meehan of Griffith College Dublin: "the state is not interested in what happened to Colm Begely after his first birthday."

He explained: "Colm was born in Bethany in 1966, but his real misery began when he was sent to the Westbank Orphanage in Greystones in 1967. He suffered injections for bed-wetting and beatings with electric flexes. He was sent to work as a child labourer on farms in Northern Ireland.

"At age 18 in 1984, Colm was sent with £10 from Westbank to a Salvation Army hostel in London. Colm ended up drinking on the streets for a year before gradually putting his life together. What extra would Westbank need to have done to Colm for the state to take an interest?

"The only reason Colm and the others suffered in this way is because the state refused to investigate Westbank when it was open. Physical and sexual abuse went on in a grossly dysfunctional home where few were adopted and where some lived on into their 20s," said Mr Meehan.

A pdf copy of the survivor's group's submission to the Minster is available here

Tags: Bethany survivors

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