On November 1- 2, 2018, scholars, activists, and survivors gathered at Gasson Hall for a major international conference, “Towards Transitional Justice: Recognition, Truth-telling, and Institutional Abuse in Ireland.” Associate Professor James Smith of Boston College, with co-organizers Katherine O’Donnell of University College, Dublin (who earned her MA at BC’s English Department and Irish Studies Program in 1991), and Maeve O’Rourke of NUI-Galway, planned this two-day of exploration of institutional abuse of Irish citizens throughout much of the twentieth century. The Boston College conference elicited international media attention—in Ireland, Europe, and the United States. In August, 2020 its proceedings were published in a special issue of Eire-Ireland: an Interdisciplinary Journal of Irish Studies.
The framework of “transitional justice’” has been employed in many countries—for example, in South Africa and Rwanda— to offer victims a measure of accountability and reparation after widespread political repression and violence. The organizers of the Boston College conference contend that the principles of transitional justice have much to offer Ireland in dealing with its history of human rights violations. Researchers estimate that approximately 100,000 children born to unmarried mothers in Ireland were adopted and boarded out between 1922 and 1998, most often without their mothers’ permission. By 1951 more than 1% of the Irish population was incarcerated in Magdalene Laundries, County Homes, Mother and Baby Homes, children’s institutions, and psychiatric hospitals.
The systematic sexual, physical and emotional abuse and the labor exploitation that occurred in Church-run Irish institutions have been the subject of several State inquiries over the past twenty years. However, many of the abused and their family members contend that the State still imposes secrecy over the administrative records relating to this dark legacy; thus survivors remain unable to access their personal records or to discover the whereabouts of graves. The Boston College conference and publication of its proceedings offer a series of proposals that apply the tenets of transitional justice—particularly truth-telling mechanisms and the provision of access to records and archives— to bring justice to survivors of Irish institutional abuse.
To support scholarship and teaching on related topics, the university’s John J. Burns Library has acquired a collection of more than 150 books documenting Irish institutional maltreatment, sexual violence, and domestic abuse. The items include accounts written by victims, journalists, and researchers in the field, reports from several of the official commissions of investigation, as well as responses by or on behalf of the Church. Along with the publication of the Boston College conference proceedings, such materials will support graduate and undergraduate interdisciplinary research in Irish history and culture.