NORTHERN IRELAND
BBC News
By Kevin Sharkey
BBC News NI
Public hearings at the Historical Institutional Abuse Inquiry have ended after two and a half years.
The chairman of the inquiry, Sir Anthony Hart, is due to hand over his report to Stormont by next January.
The hundreds of testimonies of the past two and a half years at the inquiry have changed a chapter in the history of Northern Ireland society.
Men and women, who were vulnerable children in care in Northern Ireland between 1922 and 1995, have come before the inquiry to give accounts of abuse in their childhood.
They suffered the abuse while in the care of churches, the state and the charity Barnardo’s. Some others were abused by notorious paedophile Fr Brendan Smyth.
The children were sent into care for very many, and very different reasons. These included poverty, broken homes, and violence or abuse in their own family home.
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