Lawyers turn up heat for prosecutions
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RESIDENTIAL abuse victims were prisoners in all but name and were denied the legal rights and protections afforded to criminal suspects, according to the editors of an influential criminal law journal.
The board of the 'Criminal Law Online Service' (CLOS) has also accused the State of failing to protect its own citizens through neglect and wanton disregard of the Constitution. And it said that despite the difficulties in prosecuting historic claims of abuse, fresh criminal charges against suspected abusers can not be "swept under the carpet".
"The final unresolved issue is the question of the identity of the abusers, whether the clergy are willing to disclose them, and whether they should face prosecution, as many will be of advanced age," said Bart Daly, one of the editorial's authors.
"The wrong message could be sent to current and future abusers by failing to prosecute on grounds of age. The promise of anonymity offered to those who testified to the Ryan Commission was necessary in bringing the scale of the abuses to light. An independent investigation by the gardai to bring those abusers to justice is now essential."
Nazi
The journal, whose editorial board includes solicitor Michael Staines and criminal law barrister Sean Gillane, said similarities have been drawn with the concentration camps under Nazi Germany in the wake of the Ryan Report.
"While the scale of what happened in Europe is beyond comparison, the common factors are: absolute power over their charges; total lack of respect for human value and intentional acts of violence with sole purpose of inflicting pain on their victims," the journal noted.
In a wide-ranging legal critique, the CLOS said that children incarcerated in homes run by religious orders were treated by the State as people without rights and were not treated as human persons by either religious orders or the State.
"How could the provisions of the Constitution be completely ignored by those in authority?" said Mr Daly, managing director of FirstLaw which publishes the journal.
"What is the point in having such grandiose provisions like Article 40 'All citizens shall, as human persons, be held equal before the law'?" Surely, children fall within the ambit of this provision? What is most distressing is that these vulnerable children were not afforded the rights and protections that accused persons and prisoners were and are in terms of due process etc. even though they were prisoners in all but name."
- Dearbhail McDonald Legal Editor
