RTÉ One Redress Documentary and Prime Time Winners at Justice Media Awards 2021

RTÉ One’s powerful two-part documentary Redress: Breaking the Silence was the overall winner this year’s Justice Media Award Broadcast TV category. The programmes were produced by RTÉ’s Factual Unit team of Máire Kearney, Mick Peelo and Shelia Ahern, and executive produced by Liam McGrath and Colm O’Callaghan.

In April 1999, an RTÉ television documentary series, States Of Fear, profoundly changed the conversation about residential institutions in Ireland and caused a national outcry. Following which, the then Taoiseach, Bertie Ahern, apologised on behalf of the state to the victims of childhood abuse, promising to ‘address the injustices of the past’. After that apology, legal remedies and support schemes were set in motion. But what really happened ?

Over 15,500 survivors subsequently took part in a state-sponsored Redress scheme and 2,100 gave evidence before the Commission to Enquire into Child Abuse. A series of gagging clauses has thus far prevented those who took part in the Redress scheme from talking definitively about their experiences of that process. Using the personal testimonies of survivors of residential abuse who sought redress, the two-part series examined the Irish state’s response to those survivors.

The judges praised the documentary as “a special report examining the State’s response to questions of justice and accountability for survivors of historical abuse. This excellent piece illuminated the on-going struggles and fight faced by survivors.” 

RTÉ Prime Time also received two merit awards for their reports by Reporter Barry Cummins and Producer SallyAnne Godson in the Broadcast TV and International Justice categories. Prime Time’s report Guardian of the Peace was a special report on the longest ever murder trial in the history of the state following the killing of Detective Garda Adrian Donohoe. The Irish People Smugglers by Prime Time reported on the shocking discovery of young Vietnamese migrants in a container in Essex.

This year’s Justice Media Awards took place via an online ceremony on Thursday 24 June with 200 entries received.

Congratulations to the winners.