9781910820896
Distributed for University College Dublin Press
REDRESS
Ireland’s Institutions and Transitional Justice
A clear-eyed examination of Ireland and Northern Ireland’s efforts to provide justice for victims of institutional abuse.
REDRESS explores how Ireland and Northern Ireland have dealt with the past century’s legacy of institutional abuse, focusing on those who suffered in Magdalene Laundries, industrial and reformatory schools, homes for unwed mothers, and in the two countries’ closed and secretive adoption system. The authors of the essays collected here interrogate the structures that perpetuated widespread and systematic abuses in the past, and consider how political arrangements continue to exert power over survivors and their relatives, as well as controlling the remains and memorialization of the dead. The collection forensically examines both Ireland and Northern Ireland’s so-called “redress” schemes and investigations, and the statements of apology that accompanied them. With diverse and interdisciplinary perspectives, this collection considers how a survivor-centered approach to transitional justice might assist not only those personally affected by institutional abuses, but also policymakers, scholars, and the public at large. The editors of REDRESS are donating all royalties in the name of survivors and all those affected by Ireland's carceral institutions and family separation to the charity Empowering People in Care (EPIC).
REDRESS explores how Ireland and Northern Ireland have dealt with the past century’s legacy of institutional abuse, focusing on those who suffered in Magdalene Laundries, industrial and reformatory schools, homes for unwed mothers, and in the two countries’ closed and secretive adoption system. The authors of the essays collected here interrogate the structures that perpetuated widespread and systematic abuses in the past, and consider how political arrangements continue to exert power over survivors and their relatives, as well as controlling the remains and memorialization of the dead. The collection forensically examines both Ireland and Northern Ireland’s so-called “redress” schemes and investigations, and the statements of apology that accompanied them. With diverse and interdisciplinary perspectives, this collection considers how a survivor-centered approach to transitional justice might assist not only those personally affected by institutional abuses, but also policymakers, scholars, and the public at large. The editors of REDRESS are donating all royalties in the name of survivors and all those affected by Ireland's carceral institutions and family separation to the charity Empowering People in Care (EPIC).
550 pages | 10 halftones | 6 1/4 x 9 1/4 | © 2022
History: British and Irish History
Law and Legal Studies: Law and Society
Reviews
Table of Contents
Contents
Acknowledgements
Editors’ Introduction REDRESS: Ireland’s Institutions and Transitional Justice
Katherine O’Donnell, Maeve O’Rourke and James M. Smith
Truth-Telling
Mary Harney, Mari Steed, Caitríona Palmer, Terri Harrison, Rosemary Adaser, Conrad Bryan, Susan Lohan and Connie Roberts
Testimony
Anne Enright
Antigone in Galway: Anne Enright on the Dishonoured Dead
Dan Barry
The Lost Children of Tuam
Clair Wills
Family Secrets
Emer O’Toole
The Mother of Us All
Irish State (In)Justice
Maeve O’Rourke
State Responses to Historical Abuses in Ireland: ‘Vulnerability’ and the Denial of Rights
Máiréad Enright and Sinéad Ring
State Legal Responses to Historical Institutional Abuse: Shame, Sovereignty and Epistemic Injustice
Colin Smith and April Duff
Access to Justice for Victims of Historic Institutional Abuse
Conall Ó Fátharta
State’s Reaction is to Deny, Delay and to Buy Silence
Transitional Justice: Opportunities, Limits
Ruth Rubio Marín
Reparations for Historic Institutional Gender Violence in Ireland: Learning from Transitional Justice
Fionnuala Ní Aoláin
The Inner and Outer Limits of Gendered Transitional Justice
James Gallen
Transitional Justice and Ireland’s Legacy of Historical Abuse
Motherhood and Adoption
Paul Michael Garrett
Creating ‘Common Sense’ Responses to the ‘Unmarried Mother’ in the Irish Free State
Mary Burke
‘Disremembrance’: Joyce and Irish Protestant Institutions
Claire McGettrick
‘Illegitimate’ Knowledge: Transitional Justice and Adopted People
Caitríona Palmer
‘It Steadies Me to Tell These Things’: Memoir and the Redemptive Power of Truth-Telling
Children in State Care
Rosemary Nagy
Transitional Justice, Trauma and Healing: Indigenous Residential Schools in Canada
Patricia Lundy
‘I Just Want Justice’: The Impact of Historical Institutional Child-Abuse Inquiries from the Survivor’s Perspective
Emilie Pine, Susan Leavy and Mark T. Keane
Visualising the Transfers of Abusers in the 2009 Ryan Report
Knowledge, Memory and the Magdalene Laundries
Katherine O’Donnell
Official Ireland’s Response to the Magdalene Laundries: An Epistemology of Ignorance
Laura McAtackney
Materials and Memory: Archaeology and Heritage as Tools of Transitional Justice at a Former Magdalene Laundry
Truth-telling and the Archive
Shurlee Swain
‘Finding the me who I truly never quite knew’: Lessons from Australia’s Find & Connect Project in Facilitating Records Access
Gordon Lynch
Transitional Justice, Non-Recent Child Abuse and Archival Research: Lessons from the Case of the UK Child Migration Programmes
James M. Smith
Knowing and Unknowing Tuam: State Practice, the Archive and Transitional Justice
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Acknowledgements
Editors’ Introduction REDRESS: Ireland’s Institutions and Transitional Justice
Katherine O’Donnell, Maeve O’Rourke and James M. Smith
Truth-Telling
Mary Harney, Mari Steed, Caitríona Palmer, Terri Harrison, Rosemary Adaser, Conrad Bryan, Susan Lohan and Connie Roberts
Testimony
Anne Enright
Antigone in Galway: Anne Enright on the Dishonoured Dead
Dan Barry
The Lost Children of Tuam
Clair Wills
Family Secrets
Emer O’Toole
The Mother of Us All
Irish State (In)Justice
Maeve O’Rourke
State Responses to Historical Abuses in Ireland: ‘Vulnerability’ and the Denial of Rights
Máiréad Enright and Sinéad Ring
State Legal Responses to Historical Institutional Abuse: Shame, Sovereignty and Epistemic Injustice
Colin Smith and April Duff
Access to Justice for Victims of Historic Institutional Abuse
Conall Ó Fátharta
State’s Reaction is to Deny, Delay and to Buy Silence
Transitional Justice: Opportunities, Limits
Ruth Rubio Marín
Reparations for Historic Institutional Gender Violence in Ireland: Learning from Transitional Justice
Fionnuala Ní Aoláin
The Inner and Outer Limits of Gendered Transitional Justice
James Gallen
Transitional Justice and Ireland’s Legacy of Historical Abuse
Motherhood and Adoption
Paul Michael Garrett
Creating ‘Common Sense’ Responses to the ‘Unmarried Mother’ in the Irish Free State
Mary Burke
‘Disremembrance’: Joyce and Irish Protestant Institutions
Claire McGettrick
‘Illegitimate’ Knowledge: Transitional Justice and Adopted People
Caitríona Palmer
‘It Steadies Me to Tell These Things’: Memoir and the Redemptive Power of Truth-Telling
Children in State Care
Rosemary Nagy
Transitional Justice, Trauma and Healing: Indigenous Residential Schools in Canada
Patricia Lundy
‘I Just Want Justice’: The Impact of Historical Institutional Child-Abuse Inquiries from the Survivor’s Perspective
Emilie Pine, Susan Leavy and Mark T. Keane
Visualising the Transfers of Abusers in the 2009 Ryan Report
Knowledge, Memory and the Magdalene Laundries
Katherine O’Donnell
Official Ireland’s Response to the Magdalene Laundries: An Epistemology of Ignorance
Laura McAtackney
Materials and Memory: Archaeology and Heritage as Tools of Transitional Justice at a Former Magdalene Laundry
Truth-telling and the Archive
Shurlee Swain
‘Finding the me who I truly never quite knew’: Lessons from Australia’s Find & Connect Project in Facilitating Records Access
Gordon Lynch
Transitional Justice, Non-Recent Child Abuse and Archival Research: Lessons from the Case of the UK Child Migration Programmes
James M. Smith
Knowing and Unknowing Tuam: State Practice, the Archive and Transitional Justice
Notes
Bibliography
Index