A woman who successfully took the State to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) for failing to protect her from she abuse she endured at a primary school in west Cork in the 1970’s has said that she doubts the State will live up to its obligations in the latest redress scheme.
Earlier this month a scoping inquiry revealed that almost 2,400 allegations of historical sexual abuse were recorded by 308 schools run by religious orders across Ireland. The report indicated that the inquiry found 844 alleged abusers in schools run by forty two religious orders.
Louise O’Keeffe was the victim of a series of sexual assaults in 1973 by the school principal at Dunderrow National School, Leo Hickey.
Mr Hickey was charged with 386 counts of sexually abuse involving 21 pupils of Dunderrow National School in Kinsale, Co Cork in 1998. He pleaded guilty to 21 sample charges and was sentenced to three years in jail. He was also ordered to pay Ms O’Keeffe damages in a civil action.
10 years ago, the ECHR determined that the State had responsibility for her protection from sexual abuse as a young child in school.
Judges at the ECHR said that the State failed to have measures in place which would effectively detect and prevent child abuse in schools. Ms O’Keeffe brought her case to the High Court and the Supreme Court prior to taking a case at the ECHR in Strasbourg.
Ms O'Keeffe said the State wrote to others who had cases pending after she lost her Supreme Court judgement in a bid to get them to abandon them.
In an interview with the Hard Shoulder on Newstalk, Ms O’Keeffe spoke of her scepticism around the latest redress scheme for abuse victims.
“The State will fight you tooth and nail, it will that it will not accept any responsibility for what was theirs to own up to.
"The fact that they were able to act so quickly when I last in the Supreme Court and they were able to write out so quickly to other people with civil cases pending proves that they can act quickly.
"Yet ten and a half years after my judgement they have been drawn to where they are now - literally by the scruff of their neck - they have not been willing at any stage to do what was right on a wholesome scale.
"It is only by somebody who is really strong enough to go and keep going and that is not easy."
Ms O'Keeffe said that several promises about probes and compensation have been made by the leaders of previous Governments.
"We heard it before from Taoiseach of the day Leo Varadkar in the Dáil, where he said, 'We let them down once, we let them down a second time, we will not let them down a third time' - but they did.
"They let them down very badly and even worse than ever the third time.
"It is past time to get it right - they must get it right.”
