ABSTRACT∞ In 20th-century Ireland, many children with disabilities were confined in residential institutions where they were made vulnerable to violence. The Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse and the Residential Institutions Redress Board, introduced in the wake of mass reports of non-recent institutional abuse, were supposed to respond to this cohort of victim-survivors. This article demonstrates the systematic exclusion of victim-survivors with disabilities, particularly persons with intellectual and/or communication disabilities, from these transitional justice processes. We argue that the silencing of persons with disabilities represents an epistemic injustice within these transitional justice processes, amounting to a violation of the right to access justice on an equal basis with others and an ongoing violation of the rights to investigation, recovery and reintegration.
Sherman et al. (Wed,) studied this question.