Earlier this month the solicitor acting for a man severely physically and emotionally abused by his father and step-mother started legal action against the step-mother. The father is dead. Action against the official agencies which failed to act may follow.
The power and ability existed in the 1960s to intervene in this case, according to Mr Kieran McGrath, editor of the Irish Social Worker. "It seems the will didn't," he said, when informed of the circumstances of the case.
The relevant Act is the 1908 Children's Act, which was in operation in the State until 1996, when the 1991 Child Care Act was implemented. While the powers to protect children have been greatly enhanced under this Act, children could be and often were taken into care for their own protection throughout preceding decades.
The responsibility lay with the Irish Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children. The ISPCC had a system of inspectors, the "cruelty men", along with voluntary committees all over the country. The inspectors examined instances of abuse and neglect and, if they thought it necessary, went to the district court, swore "an information" and obtained a place-of-safety order for a child thought to be in danger. This responsibility passed to health boards in the 1970s.
"It happened all the time that the ISPCC went to court like this, except that in those cases the people were poor," said Mr McGrath. "There was no lack of power to do it. But the background of the children in this case did not fit the stereotype. The inspector should have gone to the district court."
A spokesman for the ISPCC in Dublin said it had no record of this case. It would appear that the inspector who noted injuries to this boy, the result of being beaten with an electrical cord and a broom-handle, either did not file a report of them, or the report was lost.
The spokesman pointed out that what has changed between the 1960s and the 1990s is not the law (which only changed in 1991), but the perception of abuse. "The onus was on people to prove something had happened," he said. "The 1908 Act specified `abuse and neglect'.
"The burden of proof was quite high, and it would apply to children left on the street. It would not necessarily include leaving them in a shed, or `discipline', unless there were clear physical injuries. Bruising itself alone would not have been enough to have a court order succeed."
ONE barrister who specialises in child care cases said it was much more socially acceptable to beat children in the 1960s than it is now. "The law was that parents were entitled to exercise reasonable physical chastisement on their children. There have been cases where children were beaten with instruments and the courts held it was lawful correction," he said.
Mr McGrath does not think this level of beating fell under the description of "chastisement". "Chastising your children is not the same as physical assault," he said. "The guards could have charged the father with physical assault. People were charged with those things in those days. If there was good visual evidence that it was not just a slap on the bum you could have got a conviction.
"The ISPCC inspector could have and should have sworn an information to the judge and got a place of safety order."
He also said that, while people did not realise it, any neighbour could also have gone to the local district court, sworn that the children were being abused and neglected, and sought a "place of safety" order.
It is clear that many of the neighbours were willing not only to seek to have the children removed from their abusive home, but to offer them a loving one. The tragedy is that they did not realise they could have done so under the law at the time, and they trusted the ISPCC and the Garda to save the children.