Legal protection for abuse victims fighting for justice

Friday 18 January 2013

VICTIMS of historic sexual, physical and emotional abuse in children's care homes will be given legal protection from defamation when they take part in a new "acknowledgement" forum, according to a Bill to go before the Scottish Parliament next month.

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Kathleen Nutt

The measure will mean participants will have similar protection to those taking part in court hearings. Under the Victims and Witnesses (Scotland) Bill, the right will also be extended to employees and commissioners overseeing the project due to begin later this year.

The move was unveiled this month in the Scottish Government's responses to its consultation on the setting up of a National Confidential Forum, an independent body which will allow abuse survivors in Scottish orphanages to tell their stories.The proposal reveals a broadening of the expected scope of the project, as the forum will also be open to those who spent time as youngsters in secure homes, hospitals, psychiatric care and schools for children with special needs.Legal protection for participants, panel members and forum employees is being proposed on the recommendation of Tom Shaw, who chaired The Time to be Heard (TTBH), a pilot forum held in 2010 which heard from former Quarriers residents.Mr Shaw believed the fact that people taking part in the pilot had no legal protection restricted the ways the project operated. He said in his report: "The fact TTBH did not have statutory protection for confidentiality meant the chair and commissioners had to develop practices to mitigate risks that information provided in confidence might be required to be disclosed."This was done through minimising the amount of identifiable information held by TTBH, seeking to anonymise it as far as possible and as soon as possible."Chris Daly, 48, of Rutherglen, a former resident of Nazareth House in Aberdeen and secretary of the support group In Care Abuse Survivors (INCAS), welcomed the legal move. "I'm pleased to hear survivors will be given legal protection," he said. "It's something we've discussed at meetings when we were talking about the setting up of the national forum and I believe it will mean people will be able to speak freely about their experiences."The move is the latest response by the Scottish Government to calls by former residents of children's homes for action over widespread abuse which lasted decades.In The Time to be Heard project about 100 former residents of Quarriers were given the chance to tell their stories in confidence to a three-person panel and explain how what had happened to them in care had shaped their lives. The aim of the process was to allow victims to achieve closure through a truth-and-reconciliation type approach.That pilot was in turn part of the Scottish Government's response to a 2007 report by Tom Shaw on abuse in residential care homes in Scotland between 1950 and 1995. His study found widespread systemic failures in the country's network of children's homes and residential schools run by the state, charities and churches and recorded many first-hand accounts of children's experiences in homes.The Time to be Heard pilot was criticised by some because it only included children who had grown up in Quarriers, excluding those who had lived at homes run by the Catholic Church, for example. It has been estimated at least 1000 children were abused in residential care between the 1950s and 1990s.Mr Daly said he was pleased the new forum would be open to people who had been in the care of the state as children at a broad range of institutions.A spokeswoman for the Scottish Government said: "The Victims and Witnesses (Scotland) Bill will be introduced in the Scottish Parliament in February 2013. The Bill will set up the National Confidential Forum to give adults placed in care as children the opportunity to recount their experiences, in a confidential and non-judgmental setting, to an independent panel. The creation of the forum is a central plank of the Government's SurvivorScotland Strategy which seeks to improve the health and wellbeing of all survivors of abuse in childhood."She added: "The Bill will place the National Confidential Forum within a clear legal framework, enabling statutory protection to be offered to participants, commissioners and employees."

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Legal protection for abuse victims fighting for justice

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