Examination of Witnesses (Questions 80-99)
MS JO
DOVER
2 FEBRUARY 2005
Q80 Reverend Smyth: What sort of proportion
did you have responding, because I have discovered that when you
put an ad in the paper, many people do not see some of these ads,
so are we in danger of excluding some people and later on they
may feel even more victimised because they did not have an opportunity
since it was left to a public announcement?
Ms Dover: I think that is always
going to be a difficult. Again, for example, from needs analysis,
when we put our publicity out we did not have a huge response.
It was around the time of the Iraq war and it depends on which
papers carry it, whether people read it, all those kinds of things,
and you have to catch the right people at the right time. I do
not really know any answers as to how you can make any difference,
but I do really think that you have to try and encourage people
to come through those kinds of processes voluntarily. For example,
with our needs analysis, that has happened and it has now been
published, and I know there are more people who we know now who
may well have participated in it, and we are looking at finding
out from them in other ways. It is not going to come out in a
report like this, but we can still find out what their needs are
and help them through the other services that we are providing,
and some of those things may be in our story-telling residentials
that we hold, or through our advocacy group that we are setting
up to help people by offering more effective service provision,
all sorts of other ways; you cannot capture everybody, it is probably
impossible, but you can put some other things in place, however,
for maybe a later stage, other ways and means of people being
able to . . .
Q81 Reverend Smyth: Do you see any risks
in focusing on victims when looking at ways of dealing with the
past, and if you do see any, what are they?
Ms Dover: I think there are probably
risks in all of this in dealing with the past; one of the risks
with some of the people who have been most impacted is if they
have not had their needs met in relation to medical and psychological
needs, if the trauma itself has not been dealt with through identification
of things like PTSD, and there are other issues and things that
have compounded what is going on for them, and then you bring
them in without some of those things being dealt with, you may
get different answers or different needs coming up from people.
They may say they want the truth and then, when they get it, it
may traumatise them further. There are all sorts of possibilities
that can happen, so of course there are risks in looking at that,
but there are also measures that you can take to try and reduce
that by providing support for those kind of things, doing preparation
with people before they go into any of those kind of processes.
Does that answer your question?
Reverend Smyth: Yes. We have had one
piece of evidence which suggested that the victim-centred approach
is actually essential, but I want to argue that it is necessary
to ensure that the individual does not feel "objectified"
by government in a manner that recalls their victimisation.
Chairman: A terrible word.
Q82 Reverend Smyth: It is wonderful phraseology.
How can you deal with them, other than in that sense, by objectifying
them, when we talk about victims, they are the victims?
Ms Dover: I think the word victims
has got a lot of difficult connotations anyway in terms of general
public perception of what a victim is. I think it can be very
helpful for someone to be able to take a first step to identify
that they have been impacted, and I think where some of the dangers
are is if that then becomes their whole way of being, their whole
identity, and it can compound some of the trauma that they have
gone through. Certainly from some of the people who we work with,
on this island, they felt very left out of the peace process,
for example, because there was no negotiation or discussion with
victims here about things like the release of prisoners. So a
lot of those decisions had an impact on them, but they were not
even run past them. It is important to try and bring them into
these kinds of processes because the trauma can end up creating
more division and more difficulties in the future if they are
not involved.
Reverend Smyth: Thank you.
Q83 Mr Tynan: Jo, in your submission
that you have made to the Committee you say you believe that at
some point in the future there should be a process available for
people to come to terms with the past and what happened.
Ms Dover: Yes.
Q84 Mr Tynan: Would you view the Government's
initiative to deal with the past, which was announced by the Secretary
of State for Northern Ireland in May last year, that this is the
right time for that to happen?
Ms Dover: If it is coming from
the people involved that that is what is needed then maybe it
is an appropriate time, but my feeling personally is that that
is not where it is coming from initially. Certainly amongst the
people we work with there is a lot of scepticism about that kind
of process, and like I said in my paper those kinds of processes,
truth recovery processes, need to be when the conflict is agreed
to be over, and I am not sure whether that is the way that people,
not just in Great Britain, feel at the moment. In order for people
to feel safe to tell the truth there has to be a lot of work done
in relation to the recriminations and the consequences of that,
and I think that maybe we are not quite there yet because there
is certainly not agreement on all sides that the conflict is over.
Q85 Mr Tynan: What other pre-conditions
would you have in order to put this in order, to ensure success
of any inquiry?
Ms Dover: Again, I have said in
the paper that I think the most crucial thing for me is that everybody
who has been impacted in any way, whether they have carried out
atrocities or whether they have been impacted by atrocities, whether
they have made policy decisions or carried out jobs in relation
to any of the events that happened, everybody needs to be involved
in this and there has to be an agreement to be involved. I have
listed some of those people, I think they need to be involved
in the design of what the process will be like and also then be
involved in testifying, all those kinds of things. That includes
people not just in Northern Ireland, obviously—and I really
welcome the fact that you have invited us here from outside of
the geographical conflict—but people from the Republic of
Ireland, people from Great Britain and wider afield like you mentioned
in Australia and America, the British and Irish Governments, obviously,
all the parties in Northern Ireland, the British army/MoD, the
actual ex-soldiers who are now not members of the British Army
or part of the MoD, paramilitary groups from all the different
sides, the police and former police officers who are not part
of the policing structure now, and of course victims and survivors
from all sides in different jurisdictions as well. I think at
least all of those need to be involved and possibly more. We are
not experts in this, but I think that without representation from
all sides there is a potential for continuing conflict and people
not feeling part of the process. Of course, you cannot involve
everybody; in South Africa they had 22,000 people, I think, in
the TRC, but they were only scratching the surface of the amount
of people who were actually impacted. It is some kind of public
recognition for what has happened that is needed, and I think
it is important that all of those people need to be involved in
the process and have a stake in it because they are more likely
to feel that they can be participate in any kind of process in
that sense.
Q86 Mr Tynan: Do you think all those
conditions would have to be in place before the inquiry could
be a positive contribution to the healing process, or could it
be done before all the different steps had been taken?
Ms Dover: I think one of the biggest
issues or barriers against this kind of process is trust, and
I think there are a number of ways in which that trust can be
built up. I have also included in the paper the information around
story-telling because I see that as a long term, useful thing
for addressing the past, but it is also work that is happening
now that can be built on. Somebody mentioned An Crann, there is
Towards Understanding Healing, Glencree, all sorts of organisations
who are providing opportunities for people from all sides to have
contact with each other and hear the stories from each other,
and maybe in some cases from people who were victims of the conflict
or combatants of the conflict, having the opportunity to hear
each other. Those kinds of things could be helpful in the creation
of such a process and can happen while some kind of truth process
is going on, to deal with the impact of it but also be available
in the longer term for those who never got a chance to participate
in the process as well. I do think it is very difficult to start
something without that trust being gained initially, and I am
not sure that that is there yet. It might be difficult to start
something if people do not feel that they are going to actually
tell the truth or that there is going to be some kind of reparation
or some kind of outcome that is going to be beneficial for everybody.
Q87 Mr Tynan: You may feel that people
might come here and not be prepared to say that they were involved
in the violence and the terrorism and might not be prepared to
come and say "I did it; I did it for this reason." Do
you feel that there would need to be groups of them meeting in
order to have a discussion?
Ms Dover: It could be individuals.
This is probably more a personal opinion but I think that sometimes
when you connect with another human being as an individual you
are more likely then to advocate that back to your own community
and say actually it is not quite so scary to go and talk to someone
and I have learned this. I think that is really beneficial, if
those kinds of things can go back into the community. Maybe sometimes
it might be that a group goes and does something, but I think
individuals taking the risk to go and talk and say "Yes,
I did do this" or "This happened to me"—I
think it can be both, I do not think it has to be one or the other.
Q88 Mr Tynan: It is just getting the
conditions right.
Ms Dover: Yes. I have not got
any answer to that I am afraid, about how you do that.
Mr Tynan: Thank you, chair.
Q89 Mr Hepburn: Do you think official
victim strategies actually address the issues that the victims
themselves feel are the most important?
Ms Dover: I think it depends on
how the strategy has been formed. In relation to ours, I do not
think ours is perfect by any means, but we did a needs analysis
and we not only invited people to come and tell us what happened
to them to be able to get their perceptions of what their support
needs had been, were and are now, but we also interviewed agencies
about what they thought they were providing, so what we are doing
now is based on what we have been told from the people who have
been most directly affected as to what their needs are, and we
are now putting strategies in place to deal with that. For me
I think that is a useful way of doing it because often strategies
can be put in place for the benefit of others, but may not actually
have involved them in finding out what is actually needed. So
I could not comment on whether some of the strategies that are
already in place have or have not involved victims in identifying
their needs or in the design, but I think a useful way of looking
at meeting needs is to identify them through talking to the people
who have been affected.
Q90 Mr Hepburn: In the research that
you have been conducting, what needs have been identified for
victims in Great Britain and has the Government gone any way to
rectify those needs?
Ms Dover: Some of that may come
at a later stage. There are several kinds of needs that have been
identified, some of them medical needs, health needs, psychological
needs; people often if they have been caught up in an incident,
find it very difficult in terms of keeping and sustaining employment,
all those sorts of problems. Then there are social needs that
people have, and also some of the things about recognition and
acknowledgement of needs. Some of the people we work with have
felt very let down by Government, I can quote somebody who we
work with who lost his son, his son was a soldier, and he said
that the IRA did what he expected them to do, but the Government's
response to him afterwards, when he writes a letter to the Prime
Minister and it gets sent off to all different departments, was
not what he was expecting, he was expecting to be supported and
cared for and looked after, and he felt very strongly that that
has not happened. People here have felt that they have not been
acknowledged, for the fact that they even exist over here, because
a lot of focus and money—rightly so—has gone into
Northern Ireland because that is where the majority of the conflict
and the majority of the people affected have been, but people
are very dispersed within the population here so it is actually
very hard to try and meet the needs, and I think some of the geographical
difficulties have just been the reality that people have faced.
Like I said earlier about the lack of awareness about Northern
Ireland, there has been a big impact on people there as well,
so the context of what happened for them has been important for
some people in what they need to happen, and for others they have
just got on and coped and they do not consider Northern Ireland
actually to be a big issue. There are a variety of things that
have happened; our report made several recommendations to Government
and a couple of them have definitely been met, some in relation
to us in that we have now secured some further funding to continue
our work, which was one of the recommendations, but certainly
when we were trying to get it on the agenda one of the MPs who
I think used to be on this Committee, Harry Barnes, was instrumental
in helping us to get some questions raised in the House and get
it onto the agenda of the different Government departments, but
some of it I am sure is not able to be followed up because it
is quite a small number of people who have been impacted in comparison
with the population, and so possibly it is not necessarily going
to have an impact. We did not have a response from the Department
of Health at all in relation to what we sent them in trying to
follow up the recommendations, but nearly all the others did respond
one way or the other. Some of the work that we have been funded
to do now is about trying to make sure those things are implemented
and followed up, so we are creating an inter-agency group to look
at the issues we have identified in the report that are wider
than just Northern Ireland. The context, obviously, is as important,
but some of them are similar for certain other organisations and
what they have been facing, so I think we are going to try and
work together to change things at a strategic policy level. It
is early days to see whether things will change or whether Government
will respond, but we live in hope.
Q91 Mark Tami: You have touched on this
in some ways in your answer to the last question, but what more
do you think Government can do to really engage with the victims?
What more do we need to do?
Ms Dover: I do not profess to
know all the answers, I can only speak from the people we work
with over here, that they feel that they definitely need equal
treatment to victims in Northern Ireland and need to be involved
in decisions that are being made that affect them. For example,
I mentioned the peace process had a massive impact on people over
here but people over here were not involved in any way in that,
so if there are decisions being made in relation to Northern Ireland
that may well have an impact on people over here, we would say
let us find a way, being realistic about it.
Q92 Mark Tami: Would you say that that
needs to be formalised in the form of a commission or a victims'
ombudsman or something like that, or do you think that is going
too far?
Ms Dover: I do not know, it depends
on the power and reach of a commissioner or ombudsman and what
their purpose is. At the moment, within the Northern Ireland Office,
the victims liaison unit that was created after the Bloomfield
report has just been disbanded and they have been handing over
power to OFMDFM's victims unit for a long time, but we have been
given a new department in the Northern Ireland Office—the
representative is just behind me—to take over the GB project,
but in terms of where people from here now go, where they would
have gone to the victims liaison unit, that is a bit unclear at
the moment as to where those needs are going to be met. I suppose
there is a possibility that they may be met in the new department
that is overseeing us, but I think the response I have had from
people when I have informed them that that is happening, they
are feeling that they have been left out of the process yet again.
If an ombudsman or a commissioner was set up it would be useful
if their jurisdiction could cover people generally affected by
Northern Ireland and not be limited by geographic boundaries.
Equally, one of the things that is really important, I think,
is that departments that exist in England, Scotland and Wales—for
example, the Scottish Executive has a victims department, the
Home Office has a victims department, these places need to be
utilised for the people who live in England, Scotland and Wales
as well and they need to be made aware of the existence of these
people and being able to support them as well, which is not currently
the situation. Maybe some of the things could be handled more
practically in GB, but if decisions in relation to the Troubles
victims are being made then it needs to involve people not just
from GB but also the Republic of Ireland, some kind of body that
can take the needs and the issues forward and make policy decisions
in relation to those people as well.
Mark Tami: Thank you.
Q93 Mr Beggs: The Belfast Agreement states
that it is essential to acknowledge and address the suffering
of victims as a necessary element of reconciliation. How far has
the suffering of victims been acknowledged?
Ms Dover: I think acknowledgement
is a difficult word and a difficult concept, because there are
lots of different ways in which people can be acknowledged. Some
of the things that we suggested in terms of an individual or group
level, things like story-telling processes, can be really useful
in acknowledging that the experience happened by another person
who may have had a similar experience—that is one form of
acknowledgement. A truth recovery process could be a form of acknowledgement,
compensation could be a form of acknowledgement and I think maybe
there needs to be some work done into what does acknowledgement
actually mean, there are so many different ways in which people
can be acknowledged. I remember some of the ex-soldiers we work
with feel they have not been recognised for what they have done
in relation to other kinds of campaigns that they have been involved
in, yet from the MoD's perspective for example, it could be argued
that because they have received a medal or they might be receiving
an army pension in relation to their experience that this could
be seen as acknowledgement. I think some of the difficulties are
about whether it is acknowledgement by the Government, whether
it is acknowledgement by the people who committed the acts, whether
it is acknowledgement by the general public, by members of the
community; there are so many different levels and there needs
to be some exploration of what do people mean by acknowledgement
and how is it going to be beneficial for them, and then you can
look at ways in which that can actually happen.
Q94 Mr Beggs: What more, in your opinion,
could be done to officially recognise the suffering of victims
based in Great Britain?
Ms Dover: That is a question I
would like to come back to you on, if that would be okay, because
I think I would find that hard to say because we have so many
different views on that. It is probably quite an individual view
for a lot of people, so what I would propose to do is take that
question back and ask some of the people who we work with to make
a response and come back to you. I think any answer I would give
would be quite insufficient.
Mr Beggs: That would be quite helpful,
thank you.
Chairman: Mr Stephen Pound.
Mr Pound: I have to say that last answer
was quite ministerial.
Chairman: I think you meant magisterial.
Q95 Mr Pound: No, ministerial, that is
just the sort of thing ministers say. Twice in your evidence you
have referred to story-telling, most recently in your answer to
Mr Beggs, and earlier on you talked about the question of identity
from story-telling, and this echoes something that Marie Fitzduff
said when she gave evidence, that sometimes the identity can be
defined by story-telling. Do you think by and large victims should
be given the opportunity for story-telling?
Ms Dover: I think there should
be provision for that to happen, but I do not think everybody
will want or need it. We invite people to come to it and it is
entirely up to them whether they go through that process, whether
they come to it and how much or how little they feel they need
or want to say, and people can leave at any time as well if they
really feel that that is not right for them. So there is a lot
of value for people in being able to talk about what happened
and frame it, and then it can be really positive in terms of moving
on or being able to identify what actually happened to them and
where they are now and put some perspective onto things. Equally,
not just about being able to tell their story but hearing someone
else's has been really beneficial for people because they do not
feel so isolated, for one thing, they can recognise others' pain
even if it might be coming from a completely opposite point of
view or someone they might have considered to be from the enemy
side. I think there are a lot of benefits but it is the sort of
thing that people cannot be forced into and we do a lot of work
around preparing people for that kind of experience, to make sure
they are ready, because in some cases it may compound some of
the difficulties people are facing. So it is a really, really
beneficial experience for people, but it has to be carefully managed,
how people get into that kind of thing, because it could be difficult
for them afterwards.
Q96 Mr Pound: When someone is telling
the story of their traumatic experience, are they talking to someone
else or are they talking to themselves?
Ms Dover: I suppose it could be
both. I can give an example of the way we work: we bring together,
say, a group of 15 people—and we have done it in the sense
that they might just be from Great Britain but we have also done
it in a wider grouping for Northern Ireland from different sides.
Usually the process involves doing some kind of individual work
to help them frame what it is they want to talk about, and I would
say that that is not the actual narrative, but that is helping
them to prepare themselves for talking in a group of people. They
are split into small groups and when they are doing that individual
work—and sometimes we use beads, sometimes we use paper
and symbols, or people might want to write things down, whatever
way they find helpful—sometimes when they look at it, spend
time just thinking for an hour for themselves about what is it
that has actually happened to me and where am I, they get a lot
of perspective from that themselves and they might be telling
themselves their own story. When they come into small groups with
each other and they are telling the story, they are telling it
to someone else but they are also possibly, in some cases, speaking
about it for the first time and they will be talking about their
story to tell themselves how they feel and identify where they
are for themselves, so it can be both really, I think.
Q97 Mr Pound: Does a person tell the
story once ever, or do they tell the same story over and over
again? Are you aware of cases where a person has achieved catharsis
or has had some therapeutic benefit, that they do not feel the
need to repeat that story?
Ms Dover: Yes, several of the
people we work with have been in contact with other organisations
and gone on story-telling experiences, and I know from my own
experience of facilitating these dialogues that in some cases
the story can change every time you tell it. For some people going
and saying it once, maybe that was all they actually need, for
others there are a lot of complex issues in relation to it all,
so that they may feel they want to talk about it with someone
also from Great Britain, but actually having done that they then
feel I would like to hear from the other side as well, I would
like the other side to hear me, so it may be that they do a series
of story-telling sessions. I can give you an example of one woman
we work with who had been on a couple of other residentials, on
wider ones including people from Northern Ireland, not with us,
and she had got some benefit from it, but she came on one of our
residentials and she had lost her father who was a soldier. On
our residential we had some ex-soldiers and there was one in her
group and, hearing his story, gave her a part of her father back
because she was able to hear a bit more about what it would have
been like for him. At this stage she is saying she does not feel
she needs to go any further with story-telling, she feels she
has got what she needed at this moment. She may well change her
mind or come back to it another time, but she really feels that
for her that was a key moment, that was what she needed to hear.
We kept in contact with her, but she is not coming to any of the
other things that we have organised, she is not interested at
the moment, but maybe in a few years time she may well be. The
key thing is that sometimes people need a stage where they meet
with others from a similar background or with a similar experience,
and then can move on to wider, reconciliation type story-telling,
where they hear from the other side or maybe even from combatants.
Sometimes people can go straight to that and it is very much about
where the person is in their own healing and what other experiences
they have had.
Q98 Mr Pound: I appreciate the therapeutic
significance of internal dialogue, but one of the books that most
affected me about the Troubles was the book called Only the
Rivers Run Free which, I do not know if you are familiar with
it, was a series of stories of women's experience of the Troubles.
That came about from story-telling, just to confront their own
demons in many cases, and then published as a book. Has that ever
been suggested to you in any of your story-telling sessions? The
word story-telling sounds almost like a diminution of the validity
of what you are saying.
Ms Dover: I know what you are
saying by story-telling and I think it does have difficult connotations
for people.
Q99 Mr Pound: Particular politicians
who frequently tell tales, tall tales.
Ms Dover: That is actually an
issue, we do not call our residentials story-telling residentials,
we call them sharing experiences.
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