The Department of Justice has sharply criticised a
submission by the Justice for Magdalenes (JFM) advocacy group to the
McAleese committee on the extent of abuses in the Magdalene laundries.
The
group had claimed that the McAleese report, published last February,
minimised the physical and psychological abuse suffered by women in the
laundries, as reported in its submission.
The McAleese report was also criticised by Felice de Gaer, rapporteur to the UN Committee Against Torture (Uncat), who wrote to the Government on May 22nd last on the issue.
She said Uncat had received information that
the State was presented with extensive survivor testimony by the group
“and was aware of the existence of possible criminal wrongdoings,
including physical and psychological abuse”.
In
its response to Ms de Gaer, the Department of Justice has acknowledged
that JFM “did present a great volume of material purporting to point to
the existence of possible criminal wrongdoings, including systematic
physical and psychological abuse”.
However, it
says “many of the general allegations relied on reports unsupported by
any direct knowledge and were not supported by the facts uncovered by
the McAleese committee.”
It continues: “As regards
‘survivor testimony’, we understand that JFM had to rely on a
relatively small number of accounts. The testimony of 10 women was
provided [by JFM] to the McAleese committee.
“Seven
of these were identified – three were anonymous. This contrasts with
the much larger sample of the testimony of 118 women available for the
McAleese report.”
It says that “of these 10
accounts provided by JFM, none described systematic physical abuse or
torture, although four referred to isolated incidents of physical
punishments. The remainder made no reference to physical abuse. None of
the testimony has been ‘tested’ in civil, criminal or other
proceedings.”
It recalls that “in the JFM
submission to Uncat dated May, 2011, there is reference in appendix II
to ‘Selected witness testimony’ included in the 2009 Report of the
Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse.”
It says
the testimonies“are from women who had transferred to residential
laundries from industrial or reformatory schools. The reference by JFM
to testimonies given to the commission by these women could be
interpreted as meaning that there is evidence regarding the Magdalene
laundries that has been subject to cross-examination and whose
credibility has been tested and given appropriate weight by a tribunal.
That is not the case.”
“There were many
residential laundries that were not Magdalene laundries and it could not
be assumed that the witness testimony does refer in fact to Magdalene
laundries.”
Last June, Claire McGettrick of Justice for Magdalenes said it shared many of the concerns raised by the UN committee.
The
group had submitted 796 pages of testimony to the McAleese inquiry
team, but “not one syllable” drawn from those documents appeared in the
final report, she said.
“The McAleese report
should not have gone as far as alleging that there was little abuse in
the laundries because that’s simply not true.”
In
a follow-up statement on June 18th, the group said it was “deeply
troubled that the IDC final report [McAleese report] ignored the 793
(sic) pages of transcribed survivor testimony submitted on behalf of 11
women, four daughters, three family members and four additional
witnesses.”
It continued: “In the process, we
contend that the IDC final report marginalises the women’s lived
experiences in these institutions, minimising the physical and
psychological abuse suffered, while evading the human rights
violations.”