Hanna's House

'Exploring a Feminist Analysis of Truth Recovery: Creating a Better Future': 

Our fourth seminar 'Exploring a Feminist Analysis of Truth Recovery: Creating a Better Future'  took place on Thursday 11 February 2010 in the Guinness Storehouse, Dublin. 

We asked: What has happened? Why do we need to know? How do we ensure it never happens again? How effective is truth recovery? How do you recover the truth from the past to create a better future?

The keynote address was given by Fionnuala Ní Aoláin, who is Professor of Law and Co-Director of the Transitional Justice Institute, University of Ulster, and Dorsey & Whitney Chair in Law, University of Minnesota Law School. Fionnuala was a representative of the Prosecutor at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia at domestic war crimes trials in Bosnia (1996-7). In 2003, she was appointed by the Secretary-General of the United Nations as Special Expert on promoting gender equality in times of conflict and peace-making. Read Fionnuala’s biography. 

Fionnuala began by asking ‘What do we mean by ‘truth’?’, and emphasized that there are many truth(s). She pointed out the importance of talking about what has happened during conflict to reveal the truth and that much of these truths come from victims.  There is harm in the erasure of truth, and this often happens after a conflict to fit in with the political process of building ‘peace’. She pointed out that ‘peace talks’ are typically made up of men, elite men, and they work with truth in a particular way to move the peace process from A-B. We need to think about a ‘gendered telling of truth’*. She asked us to consider ‘what experience of previous truth recovery processes tell us about women?’ She noted that women are largely absent from truth processes, however, UN Security Council Resolution 1325 puts additional pressure on the international community to include women. 

So why are women absent? When the processes map bodily harms for women they map sexual harms. There is a preoccupation with the sexualized woman as victim, which replicates hierarchies of male control and patriarchy. She gave an example of the South African Truth & Reconciliation Commission which excluded social and economic harms experienced by women. This meant they missed a very important piece of the story leaving women deeply vulnerable in a post-conflict world. For example, most refugees are women, women often have few or no property rights, inheritance laws often work against women, and women have extra financial, emotional and physical burdens as carers of the sick, wounded and dying; often without support from men, who may have been killed or imprisoned as a result of the conflict.

Fionnuala talked about the very particular intimate connections between women through their caring roles in society that means women feel each other’s harm. Even if it has not impacted directly on their bodies, it impacts on them emotionally, spiritually and psychologically. It really does matter that truth gets narrowed and specific – not just because people need to tell their stories - but because the telling of those stories and the truth(s) that are revealed are linked to practical and legal consequences.

Fionnuala spoke about how the privileging of victimhood is also gendered and that there are hierarchies of victimhood that emulate the patriarchal society’s norms before the conflict. The function of the truth commission is to make sure the ‘Deal’ sticks, and complex narratives can undo the Deal. They don’t want agreement about what the story is, to be challenged. 

She goes on to ask, where does the story of women who are involved in violence fit? How do we include more complicated stories?  How do we start to integrate as feminists? What does it mean to be ‘an acceptable victim’? 

She then asked ‘What do women who come to truth processes say?’ 

She says they talk about men.

They don’t talk about themselves.

That tells us about the questions they are being askedand the social and cultural forces at play. Who is taking the testimony?  How are the questions being answered? Certain speech modes which are highly masculinised exclude the way women tell their stories.

Fionnuala recommends reading Fiona Ross’s book on ‘Women’s Silence’. In it the author highlights how when women give their testimonies it is not written into the testimony when the woman was silent, when the woman could no longer speak, when the woman wept. She says the truth recovery process may work for some women who are articulate and can speak in words that fit the political process, but what about the woman who can only cry?

Transitional justice presumes a movement from ‘A’ to ‘B’, and can be transformative for men but deeply backward looking for women.  There is a shift in society’s gender roles during conflict which can make conflict an enabling space for women, however the transition usually creates a re-entrenchment of conservative norms often cited as ‘a return to normality’ by the patriarchy.  Therefore, a moment of transformation is often a moment of conflict and great paradox for women.

Finally, Fionnuala asks, 'What would a feminist version of truth recovery look like?'

*Fionnuala also recommends reading books/papers written by Priscilla Hanor who has mapped the truth recovery process.  

Dawn Purvis,  leader of the Progressive Unionist Party in the North talked about her earliest childhood experiences of conflict and violence and the impact it had on her and her friends and family. She spoke about Jean McConville’s murder by the IRA in 1972 as one of those memories, and her sadness at thinking of the impact this had on her children, who watched their mother being dragged away. She remembered the murder of Ann Ogilby by women who were members of the UDA, because Ann was supposed to have had an affair with a married loyalist leader. It was important to remember that women could be perpetrators also. On a more personal level, she recalled that the man who killed her friend’s mother during a loyalist feud was only fined £50 and that the truth of that killing was not reflected in the ‘Lost Lives’ chronology. Dawn referred to a paper written by Sandra McAvoy on women combatants, stating that she believed it over-estimated the numbers of women who were members of loyalist paramilitary organisations. The UDA disbanded their women’s section after the Ogilby murder and while women did support the UVF it was not as combatants, they were involved through their men, that is, husbands, brothers, fathers, friends, and they believed their input was as valuable as the men’s. She did emphasize however that Loyalist women were instrumental in building peace through community education and development and relationships within and between communities. But, she maintains, there are still too few women involved in the peace process. She said that the role of victim, combatant and peacemaker are not necessarily separate and that very often they overlap throughout the conflict and reconciliation process. Read Dawn's biography.

Andrée Murphy, assistant director of the Relatives for Justice organisation in the North, stated that there has to be an element of safety and trust in the truth recovery process, and commented on the particular difficulties around this when the State has been implicated in the violence.  She pointed out that hundreds of killings are unaccounted for by State actors in the North. She quoted the European Court of Human Rights which found in 2001 that in the cases brought before the Court where the State was involved or implicated in deaths in the Northern jurisdiction, there were ‘significant and serious failings in remedy’. Andrée described how many families affected by State violence believe they will never get justice. They believe investigations into deaths lacked rigor and there were no proper forensics, and yet the families want their truth acknowledged.  She also talked about the many people affected by the conflict who still remain voiceless: women who were injured or bereaved; members of An Garda Siochana and their families; women incarcerated in prisons in the UK and their experience of abuse in the prison system; the experience of women and children who visited friends and family in prison; women who were attacked and murdered in their own homes; women living in working class areas who experienced raids as an almost daily occurrence; children who were abused but who cannot speak out about it as it would add to the family/community trauma;  sexual violence towards women and men in prisons. Andréé said that it was significant that the Quaker House and visitors block in the Maze/Long Kesh site had been demolished even though this was the major site of women’s experience of the prison. In conclusion she emphasized the importance of including the worse affected into the truth recovery process. Read Andrée's biography.

To access her full paper click here.

Questions & Answers:

After the first panel one of the key questions asked was ‘If you were involved in setting up a Truth Recovery Commission what would you include from a woman’s perspective?'

Andrée said the current debate is too legalistic and has lost sight of real people and real experiences.

Fionnuala said that we need authenticity and that means multiple victim views need to be heard – so we have to create a space for those voices to emerge.  In South Africa they used radio broadcasts as part of the truth recovery process. She highlighted three main necessities as being:

1.      Terms of reference

2.      Inclusion of sufficient numbers of women

3.      Inclusion of most vulnerable as the starting point

Dawn said she would start with a blank sheet and a question, what are we trying to achieve?

Margaret commented on how the Bloody Sunday hearings were very lawyer led and that it was difficult to get at people’s own experiences.  She commended the Patten Commission on Policing as a model for future hearings because it went out to the community to find out what people wanted in a new police service.

Another participant asked where is the incentive for people to come forward and tell the truth, especially women’s side of the truth process?

Fionnuala said that the Law is a very utilitarian and limited tool and that we expect too much from it!  She highlighted the importance of truth(s) and that there are many depending on the perspective of the question, that is, are we questioning from a political, legal or personal angle?  Our truths may be different but that doesn’t mean we can’t connect with one another.

Andrée said that there was a great burden on individuals to tell the truth whereas organisations must account for violations that occurred, not the individuals.

Dawn said that it would be impossible to get everyone’s story, but that the question must be asked: what are organisations prepared to do to meet a human need?  Small steps are needed.

Margaret said that we won’t have a healthy society until we deal with women’s experiences and truths.

After lunch the second panel focused on ‘truth recovery and institutional abuse’.  The first two speakers were Ger Moane, Psychologist, and Olive Wilson, an activist and researcher, both working in UCD.

Ger Moane outlined the weaknesses in the Redress Board and the Commission of Inquiry into Child Abuse, in particular she emphasized the re-victimization of survivors of institutional abuse through the truth recovery process and the absence of the women from the Magdalen Laundries in the process.  She pointed out that the particular truth recovery process used protected the perpetrators of violence in institutions while re-traumatizing victims of abuse. Read Ger's biography.

To access her full paper click here.

Olive Wilson talked about how women’s voices weren’t heard as part of the Redress process and that the ‘gagging’ clause imposed on survivors when they accepted compensation left them vulnerable to criminalization if they speak out, while at the same time protecting the church. She highlighted how survivors of institutional abuse were excluded from the ‘Ryan Report’ press conference, thereby isolating and stigmatizing them once again. Olive made the point that disclosure about abuse must be chosen by the individual who was abused and that only they can decide who and when to tell. Survivors who are ‘outed’ by the media or other institutions are often left traumatized and revictimized. She pointed out that photographs of survivors printed in the media added a further trauma to them as many had not disclosed their story of abuse to friends or family.  Olive stated that ‘once you go public your life experience is no longer your own, it becomes public property and you have no control over how you are judged’,  thereby emphasizing the courage it takes to speak out especially when you have been made to feel ashamed and stigmatized for much of your life. She finished by highlighting the importance of solidarity amongst women to find their voices and to speak out. Read Olive's biography.

Bernadette Fahy is a psychologist and co-founder of the Aislinn Centre for survivors of institutional abuse. She herself is a survivor of institutional abuse and has written a book about her life, ‘Freedom of Angels: A childhood in Goldenbridge Orphanage. She has been recovering from her own experience of abuse for the past 25 years.

Bernadette began by saying ‘truth will set us free’ but that the evidence does not support the statement.  She suggests that most people do not like to hear the truth. Our conditioning stops us from becoming aware, and the prophet or truth teller in society is usually marginalised and isolated. She quoted Anthony De Mello saying, ‘most of us are asleep’. She says that ‘recovery is very painful, but somehow we have to accept what has happened to us, we have to live through the pain of the experience again to heal’. 

She briefly outlined some of her own story, she left the Goldenbridge orphanage at age 16, but she was depressed and suicidal and in and out of psychiatric hospitals.  Her lack of education was a huge stumbling block and she had no vocabulary to tell her story.  Unable to stick at any one job for very long, she felt utterly ashamed and stigmatized and therefore decided that education was the only way out of her difficult circumstances. She completed her Leaving Certificate and from there excelled in her studies, receiving first class honours for her BA Degree and Masters Degree in Psychology. Since then she has set up a tracing service for people who grew up in institutions to help them find their brothers, sisters, and parents. The truth was that many children didn’t know that the other children being raised beside them in the orphanage were their brothers and sisters.

Bernadette says that the Redress Board was a humiliating practice for survivors of institutional abuse, that there was a failure on the part of the religious orders to take any responsibility or to repent for the abuse. She doesn’t believe that they are truly sorry, other than being sorry to have to pay out compensation. She also maintains that it was the fact that men/boys were being abused that horrified the State more than the fact of women/girls being abused, and it is because men/boys were abused that the situation got so much attention, and that therefore the reporting of the abuse was along gendered lines. Read Bernadette's biography.

Questions & Answers:

The Final Question and Answer session of the day highlighted the following: Hanna’s house had succeeded in creating a space for very difficult and emotional issues to be talked about. It was agreed that HH would issue a statement against the gagging order. Agreed that the women of the Magdalen laundries needed support and their organisation would be included on the HH website. It was ‘still a very silent issue’.

On feelings about Truth Commissions:

Bernadette – It was a painful process, it is males who pose the questions to you, but it is worthwhile at the end because we were vindicated and our truth is out and people don’t have to be ashamed of their experience anymore.

Ger – We need to keep going on with this discussion and maybe from this day start thinking about how a truth process could be developed.

Catherine O’Rourke – This is a starting point for how we can begin to link the two experiences north and south is that there are several truths – truth in conflict, inequalities in institutional abuse – we need to focus on private harms, abuse of children, abuse in homes.

How do we harness all this energy and work in solidarity with each other?

The intergenerational exchange of experience and views today – and from a feminist perspective – has been very valuable.Participants mentioned that they were very moved by the day.

Finally, on the Redress Board – the point was made about the loss of potential earnings  as a result of the gagging clause – and how women are rated less by board.  Bernadette has not yet been called by the board although it is almost finished. She might challenge the gagging order then. She asked ‘When will women vote for each other?’ We need to come together and support each other. 

Claire Hackett, Board Director of Hanna’s House, summed up the day by thanking all the speakers and participants at the seminar, and acknowledging the courage of all to partake in such a discussion.  She pointed out the importance of feminist political movement in enabling the exposure of traumatic and abusive experiences. With this visibility we have more knowledge. Truth recovery is an active battle between knowledge and amnesia. How do we deal with the past?  Many people who say they want to move on and to forget about the past are on the side of denial and forgetting. It is not a question of whether we deal with the past, but how we deal with it. How do we change knowledge to ‘acknowledgment’? This needs to be understood as a process. It is a political process and it can move forward and backward. We need to look at how justice can be achieved in this process and what is the role of law and reparations in the achievement of justice. How do we hold people/institutions/organisations to account? 

In conclusion, she states that Truth Recovery is both about the past and the future. It is about working through the past to create the future. The past cannot be undone but by preventing the recurrences of the harms of the past, we protect people in the future.