The justifications for destroying the recordings and transcripts of survivors of #mothersandbabyhomes are getting tiresome.

A Commission is not 'protecting' survivors by pre-emptively destroying all the evidence they provided. https://www.rte.ie/news/ireland/2021/0215/1197334-ogorman-defends-deletion-of-witness-recordings/

Due to GDPR we must obtain written consent for all information we hold on identifiable individuals. It takes no more than a tickbox to ascertain whether survivors want their testimonies to be retained or destroyed; open or closed. This is standard practice for oral historians.

An important part of gathering survivors' testimonies is not simply to accumulate their 'lived experience' (an ambiguous term that hints at not really believing these testimonies) but to ensure the Commission functions through, what Bhabha calls, the 'right of narration'.

That 'right of narration' means that survivors testimonies are central to how the Commission works because it recognizes their right to speak but that should be extended to allow survivors the right to dictate what happens to their narrations in the future.

it is incredibly important in order to avoid, as much as possible, retraumatizing survivors, to be transparent about the process, centralize their role in the process and give agency to survivors. To destroy all their inputs without consultation does the opposite.

In my own work with a small number of survivors of Magdalene Laundries, we offered the option of keeping testimonies private between researcher and survivor, of being anonymous and / or closing their testimonies for a period of time. The choice was left with the survivor.

Choices should always be there. Some survivors explicitly want their names and their testimonies retained and open. They spent years being shamed for experiences out of their control and they felt it was empowering to be open about them and to ensure the public is educated.

Central to the process of the Commission should have been to act transparently and to provide options for the survivors to decide what path they felt comfortable with.

Fundamentally, destroying records is never about protecting those who have been abused by those in power.