The role of memorials as one form of remedy to historic child abuse – an ongoing dialogue

This presentation will consider the memorialisation of the historic abuse of children in care and discuss this in the wider context of transitional justice and commemoration and memorialisation of past injustices. After... [ view full abstract ]

This presentation will consider the memorialisation of the historic abuse of children in care and discuss this in the wider context of transitional justice and commemoration and memorialisation of past injustices.

After protracted lobbying for an inquiry into alleged historic child abuse in various institutional settings in Northern Ireland, the Historical Institutional Abuse Inquiry (HIAI) was set up in 2012 and given legislative effect under the Historical Institutional Abuse (Northern Ireland) Act 2013. This inquiry and investigation into institutional child abuse was established to examine if there were systemic failings by institutions or the state in their duties towards those children in their care.

Under the terms of reference a final report scheduled for January 2017 will make recommendations and findings, and this will include consideration of “recommendations as to an appropriate memorial or tribute to those who suffered abuse”.

This presentation will discuss the experiences of applicants to the Inquiry in relation to their testimony about a memorial or tribute. It will focus, in particular, on the experiences of 50 individuals who were child migrants and who applied to give evidence to the Inquiry. These individuals were in institutions in Northern Ireland from which they were sent to Australia, mostly in the years after the Second World War. The transcripts of the testimonies of these individuals were analysed with regard to their consideration of a state memorial as posed to them during their oral evidence sessions.

This paper has its theoretical basis in transitional justice and memory. In recent years, memorialisation and memory projects are viewed as part of the package of mechanisms for addressing wide scale humanitarian abuses, and have more recently been applied to the historic abuse of children in care. This presentation will develop these ideas based on the first-hand experiences of survivors of abuse giving evidence to a national inquiry.