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Lissue House: Inquiry to hear allegations of abuse at former psychiatric hospital

The Historical Institutional Abuse Inquiry will next month hear about allegations of abuse of children at Lissue former psychiatric hospital in Co Antrim
The Historical Institutional Abuse Inquiry will next month hear about allegations of abuse of children at Lissue former psychiatric hospital in Co Antrim The Historical Institutional Abuse Inquiry will next month hear about allegations of abuse of children at Lissue former psychiatric hospital in Co Antrim

ALLEGATIONS of abuse of children at a former psychiatric hospital in Co Antrim will be heard at the Historical Institutional Abuse Inquiry next month.

The inquiry will examine alleged abuse of children and young people within Lissue House in Lisburn.

Claims of sexual, physical and emotional abuse at two children's psychiatric hospitals - including Lissue - were first revealed in The Irish News in 2011.

Six nurses at Lissue House and Forster Green hospital in Belfast were accused of abuse in the 1980s and early 1990s.

Three independent reports into the allegations, compiled since 2009, were never made public until The Irish News investigation.

Later claims emerged that members of the security forces were among those who abused young girls at Lissue during the 1970s.

In the wake of the revelations a police investigation was re-opened into the case.

The inquiry will only examine the abuse and not the medical aspects of the way Lissue was run because this is outside the inquiry's terms of reference.

Inquiry chairman, retired senior High Court judge Sir Anthony Hart, said in November: "This inquiry is not the appropriate inquiry to examine the propriety of particular forms of psychiatric treatment of children".

"We do not have the necessary expertise to do that, and if these matters are to be explored they should be explored in a different inquiry equipped with medical expertise in children’s psychiatric medicine," he said.

Hearings into Lissue are expected to last up to two weeks.

Following revelations of abuse at Lissue, the soon-to-be-defunct Health and Social Care Board launched a probe into the leaking of information relating to the hospital that involved investigators from the Cabinet Office.

The five-month Westminster inquiry cost the taxpayer £33,000 and did not reveal the sources of the information.

More than 80 health service staff or "suspects" either received questionnaires or were interviewed by Cabinet Office officials about their access to documents relating to the scandal.

The Historical Institutional Abuse Inquiry, set up in January 2013, is investigating child abuse at residential institutions in Northern Ireland from 1922 to 1995.

A total of 22 institutions are under investigation.

The inquiry's hearings will be completed this summer and a report will be submitted to the executive by January 17 2017.