A national conference in Dublin has examined the legacy of institutional abuse and failings in Ireland through trauma informed research. Hosted by Maynooth University Social Sciences Institute and the Irish Centre for the Histories of Labour and Class at University of Galway, the initiative brings together researchers, survivors, those directly affected, and policymakers who have addressed historical and contemporary institutional abuse or failings.
The conference questioned how historical research and survivor experience has been used in research and public policy making, and what lessons can be learned. The event crucially called for trauma-informed research and policy to further address or reconcile harms caused by human rights abuses in Ireland.
Professor Linda Connolly, Director Maynooth University Social Sciences Institute, said: “This symposium uniquely brought together survivors, cross party policy makers and researchers in conversation to discuss the relationship between trauma-informed research and public policy in Ireland, in relation to State inquiries, redress, abuse, historical accountability, and truth and justice.”
In recent decades, Ireland has struggled to come to terms with a harrowing legacy of abuse, failings and injustices uncovered in a range of institutions, organisations, and contexts. The symposium critically examined issues relating to religious and state-run institutions (including residential institutions and Magdalen Laundries); education and schools; health; sexual and gender-based violence; and reproductive injustice.
Government reports and inquiries into institutional abuses (such as, the Final Report of the Commission on Mother and Baby Homes 2021 and the McAleese Report 2013) have been undertaken, documenting and addressing profound trauma and failings. Survivor and advocacy groups’ perspectives have been incorporated or included as evidence in different ways, with varying outcomes and recommendations.
Dr Sarah-Anne Buckley, Associate Professor of History at the University of Galway, stated: “It is critical that those directly affected are more involved in policy development and that both policy and research must be ethical, trauma-informed and collaborative.”
Several methodological questions have been identified in recording, re-telling, and representing trauma in these reports, with implications for policymaking, redress, and survivor outcomes. This includes use of open and closed written archives; how to interpret and explain the difference between historical events and experiences as they occurred at the time; later traumatic accounts or memories of such events, and human rights abuses.
Several ethical and impact questions arise linked to evidence and survivor sources. For example, research for reports and inquiries, can pose a risk of re-traumatising survivors of past trauma by excluding or downplaying their voice and lived experience. These examples demonstrate the importance of developing ethical frameworks for researching, interpreting, writing, and speaking about traumas of the past, that also continue and sustain in the present.
The discussion featured a panel of cross-party policymakers examining the role trauma-informed research and policies might have in further addressing or reconciling the harms caused by human rights abuses in Ireland, in the past, present and future.