Historical Institutional Abuse Inquiry

Are effective apologies for historical institutional abuse possible?

Queen’s Policy Engagement on March 11, 2022, 11:36 am

| Readers 1373

Professor Anne-Marie McAlinden looks at some of the possibilities and challenges of constructing and delivering effective public apologies for historical institutional abuse. It has been said that we are living in the ‘age of apology’ where apology has become the customary response by political or public figures in times of scandal or crisis. This is evidenced, for example, by the abundance of apologies issued in the wake of the global #MeToo or #TimesUp movements. This broader trend has also been …

“we have stripped away the overgrowth of decades of ill-informed comment, half truths and deliberate misrepresentations which have all too often masqueraded as established facts.”

Pete Baker on January 22, 2017, 4:34 pm

| Readers 1791

Given the many lurid conspiracy theories that have been constructed over the years around the abuse at the Kincora Boys’ Home in east Belfast, it’s worth highlighting the findings of the Inquiry into Historical Institutional Abuse in Northern Ireland between 1922 and 1995 on that issue in particular. While the BBC mentioned it in a longer report, The Irish Times focused on this aspect of the Inquiry’s findings There is no evidence to support allegations that security agencies were complicit in …

Kincora: The heart of darkness

The Firemen on April 8, 2015, 7:58 pm

| Readers 2126

Last night’s powerful Channel 4 news report has led to fresh calls for Kincora to be included in the Westminster paedophile inquiry. Richard Kerr, a victim of abuse at Kincora told Channel 4 News that he was taken from the east Belfast home to London where he was molested by members of a VIP paedophile ring. Mr. Kerr alleges that he was abused by “very powerful people” at Elm Guest House and Dolphin Square – locations at the centre of the ongoing inquiry …

Kincora abuse case excluded from Woolf’s England and Wales Inquiry…

Mick Fealty on October 22, 2014, 4:57 pm

| Readers 673

I was never the greatest fan of The Historical Institutional Abuse Inquiry, though the proceedings at Banbridge do seem to have given some victims an opportunity to have their stories told in the public forum. Much judgement will have to be reserved for the effects of its final report. One of its limitations is that it can only compel witnesses to appear who are acting under devolved as opposed to reserved powers. Whilst comprises almost everyone anyone working or who …