Gary Gannon: State failed survivors - apology must mean action
Gary Gannon addressed the chamber to deliver an apology to survivors of abuse connected to Bill Kenneally saying the state failed them and must do more than offer words. He condemned institutional failures, the re-traumatisation of victims and called on institutions to listen and act.
Gary Gannon dedicates the speech to the survivors in the Distinguished Visitors Gallery and to those unable or unwilling to attend. He stresses that the apology is owed to everyone who endured abuse and then spent decades pursuing justice.
Gannon argues the failures were not inevitable: children showed courage and created chances to intervene, but those chances were discarded. He accuses parts of the state of appearing more concerned with protecting the authority of the abuser than protecting children, and says survivors were forced into roles they never should have had to assume.
Gannon outlines how repeated delays, closed doors and the need for survivors to retell their stories inflicted further injury. He contrasts restorative justice with the re-traumatisation survivors experienced and says an apology must be followed by action when survivors say what justice should look like.
The speech concludes with a warning: the measure of today will not be the words spoken in the chamber but whether institutions respond differently when another child or survivor comes forward. Gannon thanks survivors for carrying the burden of truth and says history will remember who had the greater courage.
Who the apology is for
Gary Gannon dedicates the speech to the survivors in the Distinguished Visitors Gallery and to those unable or unwilling to attend. He stresses that the apology is owed to everyone who endured abuse and then spent decades pursuing justice.
State failures and lost opportunities
Gannon argues the failures were not inevitable: children showed courage and created chances to intervene, but those chances were discarded. He accuses parts of the state of appearing more concerned with protecting the authority of the abuser than protecting children, and says survivors were forced into roles they never should have had to assume.
Re-traumatisation and the meaning of justice
Gannon outlines how repeated delays, closed doors and the need for survivors to retell their stories inflicted further injury. He contrasts restorative justice with the re-traumatisation survivors experienced and says an apology must be followed by action when survivors say what justice should look like.
Measuring this moment
The speech concludes with a warning: the measure of today will not be the words spoken in the chamber but whether institutions respond differently when another child or survivor comes forward. Gannon thanks survivors for carrying the burden of truth and says history will remember who had the greater courage.
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Transcript
Last Ciann Comhairle, today belongs to the survivors. To those remarkable people sitting in the Distinguished Visitors Gallery and to those who simply could not or chose not to be here today, this apology belongs to all of you. It is impossible not to reflect upon the enormity of what you have had to endure, not just as children, but as adults. The abuse stalled your childhood, but the pursuit of justice took decades of your adult lives. You should never have had to become investigators of the crimes that were committed against you in the past. You should never have had to become campaigners for the dignity that should have afforded you from the moment you stepped forward. You should never have had to persuade the state to investigate the crimes that were committed against you by the evil paedophile Bill Keneally. That was the state's responsibility. It wasn't yours. I have sat through and watched so many state apologies from this chamber and afar. Every commission of inquiry, every report into institutional failure, begins with the same uncomfortable truth. Someone, oftentimes many people in the architecture of this state, knew enough to act and they chose not to. The failures in this case were not inevitable. The courage of children brought the opportunity to intervene, opportunity to investigate, opportunities to protect other children. Those opportunities were purposely discarded, and the wrongs you suffered at the hands of an evil man were compounded by the complicity of this state in the indifference to these crimes. The greatest failure revealed by this report is that too often institutions appeared more concerned with protecting the authority of this vile person than with protecting children. I've often spoken in this house about restorative justice, but the absolute antithesis of restorative justice is the re-traumatisation of victims. Every time survivors had to tell their story again, every delay you've experienced, every door that was closed upon you, every year spent fighting for an investigation that should have happened decades earlier, that wasn't justice. That was the opposite of it. That was another injury inflicted upon you. Today's apology is the state's acknowledgement of that. When you needed it most, it failed you. I know some survivors have said today's apology should not be the only one. Their voices deserve to be heard, because if today teaches us anything, it is this, when survivors tell us what justice looks like, our first instinct must be to listen and to act. The measure of today will not be in the words spoken in this chamber. It will be in whether another child, another family, another survivor gives a different response from the institutions of this state when they come forward to tell their story. To every survivor, we say thank you. You carried the burden of truth while institutions and individuals within this state chose to burden themselves with protecting the reputation of a loyal paedophile instead. History will remember which burden required the greater courage. Thank you to all of you.