Beat Me Starve Me Abuse Me! And still you want to Control Me: Irish Victim Of State-Run Catholic Institutes Ignored By Caranua Board
Acting as a voice for the abused, the people who suffered a series of horrific abuses at the hands of the Irish state run catholic institutes of Ireland. On bahalf of one of the survivors, a man named Micheal forwarded his unanswered correspondence to the Caranua board, onto me for disclosure to the public. Before you is an unedited copy of his communication with Caranua. Let it be known, Caranua receives its funding from the Church.
What is Caranua?
Caranua has been established by legislation to ensure that the quality of life and wellbeing of survivors of institutional abuse in Ireland is improved. This will be done by providing eligible survivors with information, advice and advocacy, enhancing their access to their entitlements as citizens or providing grants to them to avail of services approved by Caranua.
Letter to the board members of Caranua, my name is Michael,
I as a survivor of sexual abuse from members of the church and part of the survivors group the shame of Ireland. I am entitled to access to our fund by virtue of my redress award.
I wish to let it be know that we have no confidence in your management of our fund, we also have no confidence in Mary Higgins the ceo of caranua in her job as day to day manager of the fund, for the following reasons,
As there are survivors on the board who know that no abuser was brought to justice, to court, to jail in fact all got away scot free for their serious crimes against children, so for the board to agree with the heavy handed wording of new guidelines which talks about, audits conducted on survivors by caranua, court proceedings brought against survivors by caranua and other such inflammatory words, this is insulting, degrading and an abuse of our human rights.
I am shocked to see data relating to up to 20k of survivors money being spent by you on just one meeting, so we of which we means several hundred have no confidence in you as a board, how can you reconcile the needs of survivors with your actions.
We also have no confidence in Mary Higgins as ceo and she needs to be replaced before she can cause anymore damage, it is within your power to have a vote of no confidence in her. No survivor would agree to the wording of the new guidelines and i know for a fact that certain staff in caranua do not agree with her notions relating to the insulting, discriminatory and abusive attitude to survivors.
Despite the huge wages staff take, the huge expenses eg costs and others, what has caranua achieved for survivors as a group, answer nothing, so while staff are living very nice lifestyles on our money, we continue to suffer, i have tried to engage caranua on these facts many times,
I was discriminated against by being refused housing help because of living in private rented housing, despite the fact the house is in a shocking state.
my human rights were abused because of the above and the payment process which was forced on us for two and a half years despite the very serious data protection and right to privacy issues involved.
I suffer a serious dental condition for which i was refused all help,
I was refused help when i was homeless despite suffering a serious mental health issue, while you were all treated to a nice hotel jaunt in london paid from survivors money to the tune of 20,000, how many more of these meetings will we find out about, not one advisor in 2 and a half years has offered me any help, i have been fighting these caranua abuses since early 2014, caranua affected my last appeal by providing misinformation to appeals officer, i have not got so much as an apology.
It is not a survivor agenda running caranua, it is the ceo’s personal agenda which runs caranua, i could add loads more stories, proved in writing about shocking dealings we as survivors have had at your hands, but then this letter would become a book.
Let’s take a brief look at how absurd and how out of touch caranua is with survivors,
I find it hard to believe that everyone in caranua believes these guidelines and the heavy handed wording used are in the best interests of survivors, unless the whole system is completely corrupt, they are not even in caranuas best interests, i also find it hard to believe that a board which contains survivors would approve this and they will be getting a letter from our group outlining this, here are the issues with the new guidelines,
The statements are very heavy handed and a lot of survivors will be intimidated by this, is this your intention?
Yet more survivors will see this as an opportunity to get caranua into open court which is a dream held by many survivors, to argue out our points and let a judge decide.
Surely you must understand that the people who committed these crimes against us have all gotten away with it,,never brought before the courts no jail time and now we have an absurd situation whereby caranua despite the fact that the dpp would never be stupid enough to give us our day in court, using this type of language in the guidelines.
caranua is going way beyond its remit by talking about audits on survivors, yet more absurd behavior, think about it a group as in caranua take a large portion of the fund to do with as they please ie wages and could yet end up taken the people whom the monies belong ie survivors to,court for,doing the same, it is hard for survivors to have confidence that our fund is being managed in the proper manner,
Mary Higgins is trying to intimidate survivors with the wording of new guidelines, i will not be intimidated and will use all avenues, legal, media, human rights commision to bring caranua to task, i will never stop, it is shameful that survivors on the board would allow wording like this in the guidelines, we stand together for justice for survivors if you had any sense you would join us, which is your job to look after our best interests not your own, not spend our fund on your own expenses and lavish wages, i have for years tried to engage caranua on these points and have been completely ignored, you are mismanaging our fund something which you will have to answer for in court.
Best regards Michael from the shame of ireland survivors group, we get no funding or want any, we have no vested interests or only interest is helping survivors and seeing that our human rights are upheld, which were supposed to be your interests.
End Letter
There has been no reply to Michael from the Caranua board to-date. In 2014 The Journal reported that the Caranua redress scheme was not working. Find out more on that article by reporter Christina Finn. Because of Michaels letter, he will now be blacklisted from receiving support under Caranua unreasonable Actions policy.
