|
|
Allegations
of Abuse in Institutions |
|
|
|
|
A woman suing Catholic
organisations alleging abuse and neglect unwittingly built a fiction around
remote, minor events, a lawyer says. In the High Court at
Wellington yesterday Chris Finlayson said a huge injustice would be done if
today's standards were applied to the care and discipline at St Joseph's
Orphanage, Upper Hutt, in the 1960s and 70s. He is acting for the
Sisters of Mercy (Wellington) Trust Board and St Joseph's Orphanage Trust
Board defending claims a former orphanage girl has made about her care from
1968 till 1973. She has claimed $550,000 from them and Wellington's Catholic
Archdiocese and its social services agency, Catholic Social Services. Mr Finlayson said only
two allegations against the sisters were serious – that one had slapped her
ear so that her eardrum burst, and that she was knocked unconscious several
times by blows to the head. Both claims were denied and the ear injury claim
was made too late to succeed legally. The case was really
about the woman's mistaken perceptions, Mr Finlayson said. Though some of what she
believed may have remote foundations in minor incidents, her psychological
disabilities meant she unwittingly constructed a fiction to explain her
distress about her early life. The woman and six
siblings were put in care when her parents' marriage broke up. The nuns' duty
was to give her food, shelter and clothing, and send her to school, and that
was done. Wider legal duties were denied, Mr Finlayson said. "On the facts of
this case, the Sisters at St Joseph's had no choice as to whether a child was
to be there at all, or whether the child ought to be cared for another way.
They were simply responding to the fact that this child, however unfortunate
she might have been, had simply been deposited with them by her mother."
He is due to continue
his final submissions today. |
