A GROUP has called on the Government to include former residents of a Protestant-run home in the redress scheme for victims of abuse.The Bethany House Survivors Group represents people who attended two Bethany Homes in Dublin between 1921 and 1972.
The group was formally announced yesterday following the discovery last week of 40 unmarked graves of children at Mount Jerome Cemetery in Harold’s Cross, Dublin.
The children had resided in Bethany Home, a residential institution which operated in Blackhall Place, Dublin, from 1921-1934 and in Orwell Road, Rathgar, until it closed in 1972.
Derek Leinster of the group, who was born at the Orwell Road house in 1941 and now lives in Rugby, Warwickshire, says if the State has any compassion, it will include former Bethany residents in the redress scheme.
“We’re calling for the State to recognise the non-Catholic people who were buried and born in the same circumstances as a lot of the Catholic people that were compensated under the redress scheme.
“We want our home to be added on to the list of institutions in order to qualify for the scheme so that children who were buried here in 1935 can get the recognition they so richly deserve,” he said. Mr Leinster, whose book Destiny Unknown tells his personal story of his time at Bethany House, said plans are also under way to erect a memorial in honour of the children, many of whom were no more than six months old when they were buried in Mount Jerome.
“We also want to have a permanent memorial erected with their names on it. We have all their names although the State tried to stop us from getting them.”
More than 40 children were recorded as dying in a period when the home had 19 babies resident on average per month, according to Griffith College Dublin academic Niall Meehan. They were traced by Mr Meehan to Mount Jerome Cemetery.
The children had been buried at the cemetery between 1935 and 1936 when Bethany Home Dublin was required by law to register child deaths.
However, the Government last night said that despite €1.36 billion being allocated so far by the State and religious orders under the redress scheme, no additional expenditure is planned for new cases.
The Residential Institutions Redress Board, set up in 2002, is charged with compensating those who had suffered abuse in childcare institutions subject to State regulation.
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