HISTORICAL JUSTICE THROUGH REDRESS SCHEMES?

Figures & data

TABLE 1 Redress schemes for historical child abuse in residential settings ³⁰

Country	Number of applications/cases resolved	Proportion of rejection/dismissals (%)
Ireland (RIRB)	16,648	6.6
Australia (Redress WA)	5,768	9.7
Norway	3,375	22
Canada (IAP)	23,661	23
Sweden (RB)	5,285	58

TABLE 2 Criteria for rejecting applications to the RB

	(n = 704)	Per cent
The custody criterion	187	26.5
The credibility criterion	73	10
The conjunction with care criterion	161	23
The severe abuse criterion	464	66

TABLE 3 Applications awarded compensation reported physical abuse alone (no sexual abuse, work exploitation, detention, discrimination, violation, or neglect reported)

Summary of abuse	Length of placement and abuse	Age at which abuse began	Other notes
Foster home 1: Often given a hard beating for any minor offense. Punished with fist, ears boxed, hair pulled, arms twisted, thrown down stairs, and throttled. The child told the welfare board, but nothing happened. Foster home 2: Beating with open hand, pulled hair often when the applicant grew older.	Foster home 1 (most serious allegations of abuse): 16 months. Foster home 2: 20 months. Placement continued after 31 December 1980.	12 years old	Awarded compensation is explicitly related to the fact that the abuse occurred ‘late in time’. Child welfare records document that the child reported having been physically abused in foster home 2.
Children’s home: force-feeding, forced to eat vomit, beaten every morning for wetting the bed. Was put on a table and beaten with birch whips or carpet beater on his/her naked body. Hair was pulled often.	Length of placement not known, but decision is based on 10 months documented in child welfare records.	Not indicated
Children’s home: Force-feeding with coarse tube down the throat three times by three personnel; this was extremely painful. Applicant believes he was close to dying, woke up, and had vomited. Once punished by being forced to put hand in a mouse trap that slammed shut. Hard beating a couple of times: beaten with whips or sticks over ‘bare’ body, ears boxed.	12 months.	9 years old