A woman who suffered severe sexual and physical abuse as a child in a State-funded residential institution has brought a legal challenge aimed at overturning the Residential Institution Redress Board’s refusal to allow her bring a claim for compensation.
The board refused to allow the claim proceed on grounds it was brought outside the time limits for such claims but the woman said the delay arose because she was helping her mother, who she only learned in 2004 was abused as a child in another institution, process her redress application.
Mr Justice Michael Peart heard the woman, who cannot be identified for legal purposes, was abused at an institution in Dublin more than 40 years ago.
The abuse commenced when she was just three or four years old.
Dervla Browne SC, for the woman, said her client and her mother were very close and the effort of dealing with her mother’s abuse, about which her daughter first learned in 2004, was too much.
The woman was unable to tell her mother she too had been abused as she feared the detrimental effect such a revelation would have, counsel said.
The woman was aware of the December 2005 deadline for claims under the scheme but for emotional and psychological reasons was unable to bring her claim.
Her client eventually disclosed to her mother and husband in 2008 she was abused, counsel said.
They encouraged her to bring her own claim and she applied to the Board for an extension of time to do so but the board informed her last September her late application was refused.
This was an exceptional case and the board’s decision was wrong, counsel argued.
The challenge has been brought on grounds including the board failed to carry out a proper inquiry or to properly take into account the circumstances of the woman’s case.
The board failed to balance the serious nature of the abuse suffered against the nature of and reasons for the delay, it is claimed.
In arriving at its decision, the board failed to have any proper regard to the fact both the woman and her mother had been abused, a fact amounting to special and exceptional circumstance, it is also claimed.
Leave to bring the challenge was granted, on an ex-parte (one side only) basis, by Mr Justice Peart who has returned the matter to March.