A charity representing survivors of childhood sexual abuse has claimed compensating victims could cost the Scottish Government up to £450 million.
Alan Draper of In Care Abuse Survivors Scotland (Incas) was speaking ahead of the expected announcement by deputy first minister John Swinney of a reparation scheme for survivors of historic abuse in state care.
The Scottish Government is due to respond this week to a report from an expert group commissioned by Mr Swinney, which said ministers should put in place a system of financial compensation for people who were abused as children in settings such as residential children’s homes, foster care and homes run by charities and religious orders.
Read more: Scottish Government told to compensate victims of historic child abuse in state care
Mr Draper said that with an estimated 5-6,000 survivors, a scheme which offered average payouts of £50-75,000 could see the Government facing the multi-million pound bill. However he said inquiries, reports and ‘talking shops’ had already cost nearly £50 million, without survivors seeing a penny.
“It takes millions, but they’ve spent all this money on academics and reviews when they could have helped survivors,” he said. “It makes you angry when you think of all the people who have died without a sniff of justice or accountability.”
The expert group also recommended a system of interim payments be put in place for people who are sick or elderly and may not live long enough to benefit from any reparation scheme put in place.
The expected announcement will come just days after the Scottish Child Abuse Inquiry issued a damning report on the care provided to children by one religious order. The inquiry’s chair Lady Smith found that children in Smyllum Park in Lanark and Bellevue House in Rutherglen, both run by the Daughters of Charity of St Vincent de Paul, were abused almost daily, hit with hairbrushes, crucifixes and humiliated for faults such as bed-wetting.
Herald view: Time to end denials over child abuse in Catholic orders
The inquiry will now move on to consider abuses which took place within homes run by the charity Quarriers. However the listing of convicted abuser John Porteous as one of the witnesses was angrily criticised by a campaigner yesterday.
David Whelan, who was abused by Porteous – who has never admitted his guilt – said the decision risked allowing him to “abuse victims all over again.”
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