THE UNITED NATIONS is arguably the last resort for people seeking justice for violations of their human rights.
When a person has not been able to achieve justice or adequate redress from domestic bodies or courts, they may turn to an international court or a UN committee.
The latter route was taken by Elizabeth Coppin, a Magdalene laundry survivor who brought her case to the United Nations Committee Against Torture (UNCAT).
Elizabeth was born in St Columbanus’s county home in Killarney in 1949 to a teenage single mother. Aged two, she was taken from her mother and a judge sent her to an industrial school.
As a teenager, between 1964 and 1968, she was held in three different Magdalene laundries. During this time she said she was detained against her will, subjected to forced labour, neglect, unsanitary living conditions, denial of identity, denial of privacy and ritual humiliation.
In her complaint to UNCAT, she argued that Ireland had violated her rights under articles 12, 13, 14 and 16 of the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment.
Elizabeth argued that Ireland had failed to undertake a prompt and impartial investigation into her allegations of abuse and had not ensured that she could obtain full redress, and also failed to act to prevent cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.
However, as reported by The Journal during the week, UNCAT ruled in favour of the Irish State.
The committee found that the State took the “necessary measures” to conduct an objective and timely investigation into Elizabeth’s claims.
UNCAT published its decision on 31 October 2022, but Elizabeth did not comment on it until this week.
In a statement issued on Tuesday, Elizabeth said she was “deeply disappointed that the Committee found the State did all it could to investigate the violation of my human rights”.
In a sit-down interview with The Journal, Elizabeth expanded on her thoughts. She recalled being informed of UNCAT’s decision by one of her barristers over the phone.
She was told that, as the UN committee had ruled against her, there was essentially nowhere else she could turn to in her bid for justice and accountability.
“I wept. I could feel the blood draining from me. She phoned me up to tell me, and she said she was sorry. And I went, ‘Oh my God, no, you’re joking, you don’t mean it’,” Elizabeth said.
I felt deflated. Life, it just slipped out of me. I was in tears. And then I found myself sobbing. I was sobbing for myself but also – and I still feel so emotional about it – for the other women.
“I know this [case] was about me and the State. But it was about more than that – it was for every person who passed through one of these institutions.
“I was very low. I was very depressed. I had a miserable Christmas. I went through different emotions like anger, rage, hurt.”
She said the decision sets a “very frightening” precedent and could have a chilling effect on other survivors who want to take their own case against the State.
“They’ll think ‘What is the point?’ Where do people who were abused now by the Irish State turn to? Who do they turn to?”
Ultimately, UNCAT agreed with the State’s assertion that Elizabeth’s treatment in the laundries has “been fully investigated by appropriate agencies” such as An Garda Síochána.
The State also noted that Elizabeth was granted redress from the Residential Institutions Redress Scheme (for her time in an industrial school) and the Magdalen Restorative Justice Ex-Gratia Scheme (for her time in the laundries).
In its decision in October 2022, UNCAT noted the State’s argument that Elizabeth initiated civil proceedings before the High Court “but failed to submit an appeal” against the decision to strike-out her case.
The committee also noted that the State “initiated criminal investigations which could not establish accountability as the alleged perpetrators passed; and that the complainant received two awards of compensation and signed two waivers from further claims”.
“In the circumstances, the Committee considers that the State party undertook necessary examinations of the complainant’s claims by competent authorities, even if not fully conclusive, and that the acceptance of the two awards against the signature of waivers, preceded by establishment of facts, led to a partial admission of responsibility on part of the State party,” UNCAT said.
However, in 2011 and 2017 UNCAT stated that Ireland had not conducted an independent, thorough and effective investigation into allegations of ill-treatment in Magdalene laundries.
Elizabeth said she does not understand why UNCAT has changed its stance on this particular issue.
In 2011, following a recommendation by UNCAT, the Irish Government set up a committee chaired by then-Senator Martin McAleese to examine the State’s involvement in Magdalene laundries.
In his final report, published in 2013, McAleese noted that State officials oversaw committals and transfers to the laundries; the State passed legislation facilitating the delegation of a range of criminal justice and social care functions to the laundries; State agencies failed to adequately regulate the laundries; and State agencies entered into service contracts with the laundries.
In June 2013, UNCAT criticised the report, saying “despite its length and detail, [it] did not conduct a fully independent investigation into allegations of arbitrary detention, forced labour or ill-treatment”.
There has also been much criticism of the redress scheme founded on foot of McAleese’s report.
Coppin, who now lives in England, lodged legal proceedings against the State and relevant religious orders, but the case was struck out in the High Court in 2000 due to “inordinate and inexcusable delay”.
This phrase is often used in cases where legal action is brought such a long time after the original injury that a fair trial is deemed impossible, for instance because perpetrators have since died.
Discussing her failed bid to seek justice in the Irish courts, Elizabeth said: “It was too late [to take a case]. We weren’t educated, that’s the thing and it needs to be put out there.
How would we – who were not educated at that time – know and understand about the statute of limitations? How would we know we had rights then? We knew they were wrong, but we didn’t know the first thing about civil rights.
She said the Government and religious orders seem to rely on people not understanding their rights or not being able to afford to take legal action.
Another issue is the fact that survivors of institutional abuse who receive compensation via a redress scheme are usually required to sign a waiver preventing them from taking future legal action – Elizabeth herself falls into this category.
UNCAT comprises 10 legal experts from various countries. Its decision last October was not unanimous. In a somewhat unusual move, three members dissented.
In their joint dissenting opinion, Ana Racu (vice-chairperson of UNCAT) and Erdogan Iscan, legal experts from Moldova and Turkey respectively, wrote: “We disagree with the Committee’s conclusion under article 12, that the State party took the “necessary measures” to conduct an objective and timely investigation into the complainant’s claims.
“The record demonstrates that the State party, other than gathering information, has failed to conduct a prompt, independent and thorough investigation into allegations of arbitrary detention, forced labour and ill-treatment to which the complainant has been subjected. The Committee’s decision sets a discouraging precedent undermining the obligations under article 12.”
Racu and Iscan also noted that while compensation is an important form of reparation, it “never replaces a full rehabilitation”.
“It is not a formal acknowledgement of truth and harms suffered. Without truth and acknowledgement of what happened, no amount of money can be rehabilitative, or fix the pain and suffering inflicted.
Ex gratia payments and waivers prevent the survivors from ever seeking truth in the courts. This may amount to impunity. Denying access to justice and accountability leads to denial of the right to seek full rehabilitation.
Todd Buchwald, a professor of international law at George Washington University Law School in Washington DC, was the third UNCAT member to dissent. Outlining his reasoning in a statement, he noted that the committee’s overall decision in this case is at odds with its previous stance on the matter.
“Most significantly, this case does not come to the Committee on a blank slate. The Committee in 2017 concluded “that the State party has not undertaken an independent, thorough and effective investigation,” and explicitly reiterated these conclusions in the May 2019 letter of its Rapporteur for Follow-Up.
The Committee itself is formally on record that the State party’s investigations were insufficient to pass muster. One may ask what the Committee thinks has changed between then and now.
“To be clear, there are unquestionably situations in which it is appropriate for the Committee to modify or reverse previous conclusions.
“However, it is incumbent upon the Committee to offer some kind of genuine explanation of why it is reversing itself, and failure to do so risks undermining the respect for the Committee’s work that is essential for it to be effective,” Buchwald wrote.
A number of human rights experts criticised UNCAT’s decision this week.
Máiréad Enright, Professor of Feminist Legal Studies at Birmingham Law School, said the decision is “a shocking rebuff to a brave and dignified survivor of serious institutional abuse”.
Writing on legal website Opinio Juris, Enright noted: “The people who abused her may be long dead, and Mrs Coppin herself is no longer a helpless teenage girl, but the State, through its lacklustre investigation and redress, continues to debase and degrade her, keeping her original wounds alive.”
Enright said that CAT’s decision “suggests that when a child is abused by older people, her claims to investigation and redress will die with her abusers”.
“It is striking that the Committee does not consider how the State’s obligations to investigate acts of torture and degrading treatment, or to facilitate individual complaints, might be pursued otherwise than against an individual living perpetrator.
“Mrs Coppin, after all, was abused by members of religious orders to whom the State delegated key social functions, including the care and control of children. The religious orders who ran the laundries where Mrs Coppin was held still exist in Ireland today.
“The State institutions that funded those orders still exist today. They are possible defendants in any case Mrs Coppin might have been permitted to bring.”
Elizabeth said survivors should be able to take legal action against the State or religious orders regardless of whether or not individual perpetrators of abuse are dead, as they were one person in a wider organisation.
Elizabeth has suffered various health ailments over the years and believes she was subjected to a vaccine trial as a child. However, she has been unable to receive all her medical records to date.
She told us that while times have indeed changed since her incarceration, certain attitudes remain the same.
She said the current Government’s Mother and Baby Home redress scheme and the difficulties people face getting access to their records, indicate that survivors are still not treated with the respect they deserve.
“There’s a horrible attitude that still prevails today in the Government,” she said, noting how the scheme excludes many survivors such as those who were boarded out or spent less than six months in an institution as a child.
“A lot of the people who were fostered out, sent to county homes, mother and baby homes, every feasible institution, by the State are still being ignored.
“First of all, [the violation] their human rights has not been addressed. Secondly, most of us, if not the majority, have not got our birth certificates and also our medical records. Why haven’t we got our medical records?”
The Government has repeatedly defended the Mother and Baby Home redress scheme, saying it is the largest initiative of its kind in the history of the Irish State.
Addressing the Dáil earlier this month, Children’s Minister Roderic O’Gorman said he is “acutely aware” that no one scheme can adequately address the “pain suffered by survivors of these institutions”.
Defending the scheme, O’Gorman said it will be “non-adversarial” following learnings from previous redress schemes.
He said the Government is committed to helping survivors, noting that the redress scheme is one part of a wider response which includes granting adopted people and others access to their personal records.
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