The Ordeal of Paddy Jackson and the Antics of Senator "Amadan" O'Riordain

Paddy Jackson (Inset) and Senator Aodhan O'Riordain
'Amadan' means 'Fool' in the Gaelic language

The offending tweet 

While I have substituted 'Amadan' (Gaelic for 'Fool') in Senator Aodhan O'Riordain's first name there is nothing amusing about the way he slandered Paddy Jackson and the other three defendants in the Belfast Rape trial. After a trial lasting nine weeks (concluding on 29 March)  the four were acquitted unanimously by the jury in less than four hours. Given that the 11 jurors had to decide on a total of 6 charges against 4 defendants, they can't  have done much more than set up the voting procedure and  say "Not Guilty" several dozen times. 

So how did Senator O'Riordain come to believe that the jury got in wrong? After all he has served as Minister of State in a number of Government departments - including Justice and Equality  in 2014 where he had special responsibility for Equality! I note from his website that he is currently Labour Party spokesman for Education and that;

" I believe in a more tolerant, more equal, and more diverse Ireland. I am ambitious for our country and I want to continue to champion the ideas that I pursued as a Minister of State."

I have already written about the manner in which our current Minister for Justice and Equality Charlie Flanagan had slandered Nora Wall (and the Cistercians of Mount Melleray) in 2009 and how - in the same year - Alan Shatter demanded an investigation into claims that the Catholic Church had been involved in the unsolved murder of 10 year old Bernadette Connolly in 1970. Both were Fine Gael TDs (ordinary Members of Parliament)  when they made their false allegations of child abuse and child murder respectively and both went on to become Minister for Justice and Equality. 

Fine Gael was founded as a Conservative and Christian Democratic Party and the antics of people like Shatter and Flanagan  once used to surprise me - although not in recent years. The Labour Party has had a radical and anti-clerical wing for several decades but Senator O'Riordain's public slandering of Paddy Jackson and Co on the basis of their being "smug well-connected middle-class boys" is something new. Now that the influence of the Catholic Church has been eliminated in Ireland, it looks like our "radicals" are  re-orientating themselves from anti-clerical hatred towards the Class variety!  (Of course feminist hatred of men is part of the toxic mix).

"Radical" Politicians Started by Slandering the Clergy - But They've Moved On!

Starting from the 1990s there are a number of cases where anti-clerical politicians (and journalists) targeted Catholic clergy and religious but ordinary people ended up as "collateral damage". I am thinking of

(1)  Pat Rabbitte slandering Cardinal Cahal Daly in 1994 but former Attorney General Harry Whelehan and Taoiseach (Prime Minister) Albert Reynolds resigned as a result of the firestorm of hysteria that Rabbitte ignited. 

(2) Homeless schizophrenic Pablo McCabe who was accused of rape in 1999 along with former Sister of Mercy Nora Wall. The accusers intended to extract large sums of money from the Sisters of Mercy BUT prior to 1999 no woman had been convicted of rape in Ireland so the penniless McCabe was dragged in to make the accusation look more credible.

(3) An unnamed retired senior official in Department of Education who was slandered by Fine Gael TD Phil Hogan in 2002 and by then Fine Gael TD (now Minister for Justice) Charlie Flanagan in 2009 - each time under the protection of Dail Privilege. The official had inspected the Sister of Mercy home in which Nora Wall worked and given it a clean bill of health - which presumably, is the reason for their allegations.

(4) In June 2009 Labour Party TD Ruairi Quinn said in the Dail that "Either officials in the department are members of secret societies, such as the Knights of St Columbanus and Opus Dei, and have taken it upon themselves to protect the interests of these clerical orders at this point in time. . . or, alternatively, the [Fianna Fail] minister is politically incompetent and incapable of managing the department".  

The Catholic Church no longer has any influence in Ireland but this kind of poisonous hatred has not disappeared but found other targets - including male authority figures like Paddy Jackson and his colleagues in the IRFU.   

(1) Pat Rabbitte and Cardinal Cahal Daly

The late Richard Webster was a cultural historian - and agnostic - who wrote a lot about the hysteria surrounding allegations of sexual abuse in the UK. His main focus was on the effects on lay teachers and child-care workers in the UK but he also wrote about the Catholic Church and about Ireland. This is from his on-line essay "States of Fear, the Redress Board and Ireland's Folly" itself an extract from his book "The Secret of Bryn Estyn: The Making of a Modern Witch Hunt". 

"Another country which has developed a particularly intense and dangerous crusade against child abuse is the Republic of Ireland. Here, as in almost every modern instance, the collective fantasy which has been progressively developed has a core of reality. The beginnings of the story go back to 1994 when the authorities in Northern Ireland sought the extradition from the Republic of Father Brendan Smyth, a Catholic priest who was facing a number of counts of child sexual abuse to which he would eventually plead guilty. It would appear that he had previously been protected against allegations by his own Norbertine order, which had moved him from parish to parish as complaints arose, and failed to alert the police. 

"Perhaps because of the age of the allegations, which went back twenty years, there was a delay of several months during which the Irish attorney general took no action in relation to the extradition request. Unfounded reports began to circulate in Dublin that the process was being deliberately delayed in response to a request made at the highest level by the Catholic Church. An Irish opposition deputy, Pat Rabbitte, then referred in parliament to the possible existence of a document that would ‘rock the foundations of this society to its very roots’. He apparently had in mind the rumoured existence of a letter written by the Primate of All Ireland, Cardinal Cathal Daly, to the attorney general in Dublin. In this letter the Cardinal had supposedly interceded on behalf of Father Brendan Smyth and requested the delay in his extradition which had in fact taken place. [My emphasis]

"No evidence has been produced that any such letter ever existed. Yet, as a direct result of the rumours which now swept the country, confidence in the ruling establishment was undermined and the Fianna Fail government of Albert Reynolds fell, amidst talk of a dark conspiracy involving politicians, members of Opus Dei, the Knights of Columbus and others. This conspiracy was allegedly seeking to cover up the activities of paedophile priests...."

Pat Rabbitte was then a member of a small anti-clerical party Democratic Left. We can assume that Cardinal Cahal Daly was the main target of his fantasy but former Attorney General Harry Whelehan was not just collateral damage.  As a practicing Catholic, Whelehan would also have been in Pat Rabbitte's sights and perhaps the left wing TD actually believed in his Catholic Conspiracy Theory. 

In his book "The Transformation of Ireland 1900-2000", Diarmaid Ferriter makes this significant comment about the affair:

"Some became angry when that when Harry Whelehan was questioned and denied the existence of a Catholic conspiracy within the Attorney-General's office, he felt the need to defend his right to be a practicing Catholic."

Democratic Left later merged with the Labour Party, did a reverse take-over and Pat Rabbitte himself was Labour leader from 2002 to 2007. He never apologised for his leading role in Ireland's worst political witch-hunt.

(2) Pablo McCabe and Nora Wall (formerly Sister Dominic)

Nora Wall - formerly Sister Dominic of the Sisters of Mercy - was subjected to a barrage of obscene media abuse in June 1999 when she and Pablo McCabe were convicted (and briefly jailed) on charges of raping a 10 year old girl Regina Walsh in 1987 or 1988 at St Michaels Home in Cappoquin, Co. Waterford. Wall was alleged to have held down the girl while McCabe raped her.  "Vile Nun", "Pervert Nun", "I Was Raped by Anti-Christ" were some of the headlines at the time. Both had originally been charged with raping the same girl on her 12th birthday on 8 January 1990 but the Defence were able to show that Pablo McCabe could not possibly have been in Cappoquin on that date. The jury simply found the two Not Guilty on that charge but convicted them on the other rape count - in respect of which Regina Walsh could not specify the exact date or even the year.

Kevin Myers was the only journalist to publicly dissent from the media consensus and defend Nora Wall. It's not entirely surprising that he himself later fell victim to a different type of media witch-hunt. (See my article Kevin Myers and the Age of De Valera and McQuaid). More typical of the reaction of the great and the good in Ireland, was that of the director of the Dublin Rape Crisis Centre, Olive Braiden, who welcomed the imposition of a maximum sentence, and said it would ensure that Nora Wall would be monitored for the rest of her life to prevent recurrence.

The rape convictions were quickly reversed following a huge stroke of luck for the accused. On 17 June 1999, a week after the convictions, Regina Walsh gave an interview to journalist Barry O'Keefe of The Star newspaper claiming that she had also been raped by a "black man in Leicester Square" in London. This was news to Wall's defence team. Moreover, The Star published the names of Walsh and her "witness" Patricia Phelan for the first time. A Kilkenny businessman read the newspaper and recognised Phelan as the woman who had made a false rape allegation against him, and the defence came into possession of this evidence. Nora Wall and Pablo McCabe were released after spending 4 days in prison. Eventually in December 2005 the Court of Criminal Appeal issued a Certificate of Miscarriage of Justice to Nora Wall. Pablo McCabe had died three years previously aged 53. He was almost the same age as Nora Wall but his health had been broken down by years of homelessness and alcohol abuse.

Although there were two persons accused of rape, the media focused almost exclusively on Nora Wall. An exception is the detailed account of the case by Breda O'Brien in the Irish Quarterly Review 'Studies' entitled: "Miscarriage of Justice: Paul McCabe and Nora Wall". O'Brien quotes the words of Linda Loman in Arthur Miller's 'Death of a Salesman', about her husband Wille Loman enduring humiliation at the end of his career:
"I don't say he's a great man... His name was never in the paper. He's not the finest character that ever lived. But he's a human being, and a terrible thing is happening to him. So attention must be paid. He's not to be allowed to fall in his grave like an old dog. Attention, attention must finally be paid to such a person."

'Studies' is a prestigious publication but it's significant that it is published by the Irish Jesuits - and Breda O'Brien is a Catholic journalist. No secular journalists seem to have taken an interest in the fate of a homeless schizophrenic man savagely  treated by anti-clerics who aimed to discredit the Catholic Church and extract large amounts of "compensation" from the Sisters of Mercy. Prior to June 1999,no woman had ever been convicted of rape in Ireland so the penniless McCabe was included in the allegation in order to make it appear more plausible! 

(3) Phil Hogan and Charlie Flanagan say Senior Official in Dept. of Education was in Paedophile Ring

The allegation was first made by Phil Hogan TD in the Dail (Irish Parliament) on 24 April 2002 when Hogan himself was Chairman of the Fine Gael Parliamentary Party. See my blog article Justice Minister Charlie Flanagan and Former FG Chair Phil Hogan Vs George Hook and Nora Wall and in particular the full text of the Irish Times article dated 25 April entitled  "TD Cites Retired Official in Child Sex Abuse Allegations" that I quote in the Comments section. Hogan's allegations were extremely lurid  involving a paedophile ring, convicted murderer Malcolm McArthur, children being tortured and forced to have sex with animals, the unnamed retired senior official in Dept of Education, and of course Nora Wall. It is clear that Hogan was basically targeting Nora Wall and the Sisters of Mercy and accordingly the Dept of Education official was "collateral damage" - because he had inspected the residential center where Nora Wall worked and given it a favourable report.  Note the following from the Irish Times article:

Mr Hogan said the official was linked to investigations into sexual abuse in residential centres in Kilkenny city, Cappoquin, Co Waterford, and Clonmel.......He said it was alleged that all of the abuse took place at the time the [Cappoquin] centre was managed by Nora Wall, a former Sister of Mercy nun whose conviction for rape of a 10-year-old child was quashed by the court of criminal appeal in 1999.
  

The media did little more at the time, than quote what Phil Hogan had said in the Dail. Deputies cannot be sued for what they say in parliament and the same presumably applies to journalists who quote their words without specifically endorsing them. So Irish journalists understood in April 2002 that Phil Hogan was talking nonsense. Why then did Charlie Flanagan T.D. repeat the same allegations seven years later?  

This is an extract from a Dail Debate on the Institutional Child Abuse Bill 2009 on 8 July 2009, Deputy Charles Flanagan speaking

.......The pattern is repeated in respect of Nora Wall. My colleague, Deputy Phil Hogan, highlighted in this House in April 2002 the alleged involvement of a senior departmental official in a Dublin-based child sex ring at a time he was supposed to have been investigating child abuse. That individual had investigated the home run by Nora Wall and gave it a clean bill of health at a time when there were serious problems at the home, as identified by the Ryan report. .....I regret I do not have more time to probe these matters further but I will return to them in the autumn. It is evident from the behaviour of officials at the Departments of Education Science and Health and Children that Ireland has an endemic problem in respect of the craven deference shown to institutions and those who personify them. .......

Deputy Flanagan did not repeat his colleague's 2002 claim about children being forced to have sex with animals but he did add a new allegation against the Cistercian monks of Mount Melleray - presumably because their Abbey was not far from the Sister of Mercy home in Cappoquin.

(4) Ruairi Quinn Claims Dept of Education Officials are Members of "Secret Societies" like Opus Dei and Knights of Columbanus

Labour Deputy Ruairi Quinn's claim about Education officials was not as vile as that of Fine Gael's Phil Hogan or Charlie Flanagan but it was made in June 2009 at the same time that the latter was accusing a former official of being a member of a paedophile ring. It also echoes Richard Webster's observation about the events of 1994 precipitated by Deputy Pat Rabbitte when "the Fianna Fail government of Albert Reynolds fell, amidst talk of a dark conspiracy involving politicians, members of Opus Dei, the Knights of Columbus and others." 

Ruairi Quinn was leader of the Labour Party from 1997 to 2002 - prior to voicing his fantasies about Opus Dei in Education - and went on to become Minister for Education himself from 2011 to 2014. Now in retirement, Quinn gave an interview to Kathy Sheridan of the Irish Times which was published on 22 February 2016, entitled "Not retiring quietly, Ruairi Quinn has harsh words for critics"  

....There is no shouting now either, more a deep frustration, disappointment and the sadness of a man first elected nearly 40 years ago, now facing into retirement amid unprecedented levels of abuse and venom. He blames media coverage and intolerance, and a general drop in standards. “People feel they can blackguard each other. .....

Irony is definitely not the former Education Ministers's  strong point. There is no hint that Quinn's own brand of thuggish rhetoric had anything to do with the "unprecedented levels of abuse and venom" in public discourse. In fact Catholic clergy, the Gardai (police) - and lately the stars of Irish rugby - are far more likely to be targets than Labour Party politicians. However it's true that any public figure can be targeted by hate-filled fanatics and Ruairi Quinn  certainly didn't like the share of venom he got when he was in power. It was much safer to be on the  opposition benches, dishing it out!

Conclusion

To give Senator Aodhan O'Riordain his due, his denunciation of the "smug well-connected  middle class boys" who had been falsely accused of rape, was NOT as vile as the behaviour of the two Fine Gael politicians who are currently serving as EU Commissioner for Agriculture and Minister for Justice and Equality respectively.  O'Riordain's tweet was not on the same level as accusing a senior Education official of being a member of a paedophile ring (Phil Hogan and Charlie Flanagan) or nuns forcing children to have sex with animals (Phil Hogan alone). Actually you could make a similar judgement about the antics of retired Labour politicians Pat Rabbitte and Ruairi Quinn; they also failed to descend to the gutter levels of their FG counterparts.

 It is strange that the once conservative and Christian Democrat-style Fine Gael party can produce  people like Hogan and Flanagan but Labour isn't quite as bad. Perhaps part of the explanation is that Paddy Jackson and his IRFU colleagues are entirely secular - they are not even "collateral damage" for people whose main interest is in demonising the clergy. For the time being, rugby stars and other prominent secular types do not attract quite the same level of venomous hatred. However in the moral vacuum left by the decline of the Catholic Church, I would not expect this situation to continue. Future witch-hunts are likely to to be aimed at male authority figures like the police and the IRFU and I predict they they will turn out to be as vile as anything that Nora Wall and Pablo McCabe experienced. 

Satanic Ritual Abuse (SRA) in Ireland and the UK - The Role of the Police

Retired Garda Frank Mullen RIP and his wife

Mike Veale former Chief Constable of Wiltshire

Irish Police Are Targets of Satanic Abuse Claims: UK Police Support Claims!

This is a follow up to my previous article on Satanic Ritual Abuse in Ireland (and the Shortage Thereof). There is a curious asymmetry between Ireland's sole instance of Satanic Ritual Abuse and its recent revival in the UK.   In Ireland members of the the Gardai (police) were the main targets of this hysteria - including Frank Mullen one of the founders of the Garda Representative Association.  In the UK Mike Veale,  the Chief Constable of the Wiltshire police, led a witch-hunt against deceased Tory Prime Minister Edward Heath that included allegations of Satanic Ritual Abuse. This was by no means the sole example of the UK police pursuing ludicrous allegations against Tory politicians. (See for example, the Wikipedia article on Operation Midland in relation to the London Metropolitan Police).  It seems that, in the minds of some anti-Establishment types in the UK,  the Tory Party has assumed the role occupied by the Catholic Church in Ireland!

Is there a contradiction here - surely the police are part of the UK Establishment? Why should they  play the kind of socially destructive role one would normally attribute to Anarchists or  mentally disturbed persons?  I will return to this question towards the end of the article.

Original Claims Made by Cynthia Owen Against Gardai

Cynthia Owen was born in 1961 and made her first allegations in 1994 when she returned from the UK where she had been living for over a decade;  those allegations were  directed against her parents and brothers. She claimed that her father and other men had raped her causing her to become pregnant at the age of 11 and that her mother had murdered the baby. This was supposed to refer to the body of a baby that was actually found in Dun Laoghaire, Co Dublin in 1973. In 2007 Ms Owen  persuaded a jury at a Coroner's Court to declare that she was the mother of this first murdered, baby However by 2005 she was already making additional claims about another baby to whom she said she gave birth in 1975 when she was 14. This second baby was supposedly buried in the back garden of the family home in Dalkey Co. Dublin. Accordingly in July 2005 the Gardai spent a week digging up the garden of the family home but found nothing. At this stage Cynthia started to make an escalating series of allegations mainly directed at members of An Garda Siochana.  

An article by Marie Halloran in the Irish Times on 11 July 2005 is headed "Dalkey Rape Allegations Made Against two Gardai" and includes the following:

Detectives are examining new rape allegations, against a Garda and a retired Garda, made by the woman at the centre of the Dalkey, co. Dublin abuse case. The two men are to be interviewed, following claims that the woman who is now 43, was raped in the 1970s by them. The allegations are understood to have been made in the past two weeks, and are being treated by the Gardai with "skepticism", according to one Garda source, in part because of the delay in making the claims. [My emphasis]

According to a Garda spokesperson, "a lot of information has been put forward" and a number of people have been named by the woman, known as Niamh and all information would be examined........

An article in the Sunday Independent the previous day about "Niamh" (as she was then referred to by the media)  confirmed that:
A conference on the case is due to be held this week in the wake of further claims by Niamh that she was prostituted in her teens at the house once her father had lost interest in her. [Garda] Officers who have been investigating her case for 10 years say the first they heard of these claims was in the media.

While "Niamh's" disappointment with the police failure to find the body of a second baby in 2005 may have been the immediate occasion for her new allegations, she probably had a  pre-existing grievance against the Gardai. According to a report by Cormac O'Keefe in the Irish Examiner on 8 July:
Prior to this, in 1994, Niamh told gardai she had been sexually abused by her father and a brother. She later told gardai about the pregnancies, which she said were the result of sexual abuse. Garda sources have said the information from Niamh, a result of regression therapy, [my emphasis] has been sketchy. 

Garda investigations in 1994 and 1995 resulted in a number of files being sent to the Director of Public Prosecutions. The DPP ruled against prosecution on the grounds of lack of independent evidence and the passage of time.

An article in the UK Guardian confirms that 
Owen attempted to bring the case against her parents to the prosecuting authorities seven times, but each time it came back citing lack of evidence.
The same article also gives some indication of WHY the prosecuting authorities had difficulty with her evidence. After she married in the UK and had a child  in the 1980s
By now,  Owen was suffering from post-traumatic stress, nightmares and flashbacks. On the anniversary of her baby's death, everything would come rushing back and it seemed to be getting worse at time went on.

"Regression Therapy" and "Recovered Memory" cut little ice in Ireland in the 1990s - although belief in the latter may have become more acceptable in recent years, I regret to say. Thankfully, Satanic Ritual Abuse has always been regarded as incredible in Ireland but Cynthia Owen spent many years in the UK and her "memories" seem to have developed in the 1980s when SRA hysteria was at its height in the UK and the USA. And she continued to insist that these memories were true long after the demise of that witch-hunt. 

It is clear Cynthia Owen's revised allegations of Satanic Ritual Abuse against her family and the Gardai in 2005 also emerged as the result of a type of "therapy". According to an article by Darren Boyle in the Sunday Mirror on 18 February 2007:
A clinical psychologist has said four men at the centre of the Dalkey house of horrors case are STILL a significant risk to children.  This follows the verdict of a jury at the inquest of a murdered infant girl.The jury of six men and six women accepted Cynthia Owen's account that she had given birth to baby Noleen on April 4, 1973 at the family's home in Dalkey, Co Dublin. 

It is understood that gardai will investigate claims of a paedophile ring in operation in South Co Dublin during the 1970s as well as claims of satanic child sexual abuse.  [My emphasis]

During the four-day inquest, the clinical psychologist Dawn Henderson gave evidence of her treatment sessions with child sex abuse survivor Cynthia Owen. Dr Henderson treated Mrs Owen for three and a half years over 71 sessions of an hour and a half each. Under oath before the inquest at Dublin County Coroner's Court, Dr Henderson said she still had "major concerns about the safety of children" in contact with the men named as A, C, D and E. 

Mr C was named in the inquest as Peter Murphy Jnr. He was accused of raping his two sisters Cynthia and Frances and his brothers Martin and Michael. Mr Murphy said his siblings had "made up those memories". The four men are accused of sexually abusing Cynthia Owen. Dr Henderson said she had an obligation to alert authorities to her concerns. The psychologist said she had "no doubts as to the truthfulness" of Mrs Owen's accounts of child sexual abuse at the hands of a number of relatives.
Dr Henderson said Mrs Owen had told her about satanic abuse and a paedophile ring in operation as she grew up. [My emphasis]

An article in the Irish Times on 15 February 2007 Dalkey Baby Story 'Very Credible' confirms that  Dr Dawn Henderson was  "a clinical psychologist for the National Health Service (NHS) in Wales", and had said that Cynthia Owens "had relayed details of "satanic abuse" and a "paedophile ring". According to the Irish Times "Dr Henderson treated Ms Owen in Wales from 2001 to 2004 and said she had "no doubt whatsoever" about the truthfulness of her allegations."  Dr Henderson also said she used "cognitive behaviour therapy" when treating Ms Owen and at no time used "regression therapy," which she said had been widely discredited. So that's OK then!

On at least eight occasions a file was regarding Ms Owens developing allegations was sent to the Director of Public Prosecutions. Each time the DPP recommended no prosecution. In 2007 - following the verdict of the coroner's court -  the case was also examined by senior counsel Patrick Gageby on behalf of the then Minister for Justice Michael McDowell. No further action was recommended by the barrister. The allegations were also investigated by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) in 2011, which told one of the accused retired Garda Frank Mullen that nothing had been proven against him. 

Sergeant Maurice McCabe and Alan Shatter (2014)

Then Ireland's only SRA case started to intersect with the claims being made by garda whistleblower Maurice McCabe - of whom I have written on a number of occasions.  In February 2014 the Government agreed that a senior counsel was to examine claims being made by Sergeant McCabe that the force mishandled a series of cases involving abduction, assault and murder. On 25 February 2014, Taoiseach Enda Kenny confirmed that senior counsel Seán Guerin was to conduct an independent examination of the cases to see if there were grounds for the establishment of an Commission of Investigation. Naturally the allegations made by Cynthia Owen were quickly added to the dossier of files to be examined by the Senior Counsel. Alan Shatter was Minister for Justice at the time. Ms Owen expressed her frustration and disappointment in Minister Shatter’s lack of action on her behalf - especially as he had been her legal representative for four years in the 1990s AND had called for a full review of the the 1973 file while working in private practice in 2007. However he was now backtracking fast from his former client and earlier in 2014 had refused her request for an inquiry - citing the 2007 report by Patrick Gageby!

At the end of 2015 it emerged that the review panel looking into over 200 allegations of Garda malpractice recommended no further action in relation to the allegations by Cynthia Owens. Apparently in reaction to this In January 2016 Cynthia Owen uploaded her allegations, including some new ones onto a Facebook page. She identified 12 people by name - including Frank Mullen - who she claims abused her.

The media did not identify the accused persons but Frank Mullen took the major decision to identify himself  in an interview with Michael Clifford which was published in  the Irish Examiner on 2 May 2016.  He told Michael Clifford that the cloud of suspicion that had hung over him had a major adverse impact on his life and that of those around him. He didn’t want things to end that way. “We’re five generations in Dalkey and I couldn’t leave a legacy like that behind me. I had to clear my name before I departed this world.”

The Ordeal of Frank Mullen

Frank Mullen was - unsurprisingly - the only one of the twelve men named by Cynthia Owen in her Facebook post, to agree to go public and give interviews to the media. (The post was taken down after a week but echoes of it remain online).  I have written about Mr. Mullen in the second part of my previous article on Satanic Ritual Abuse in Ireland.

Irish Examiner journalist Michael Clifford published at least two articles about Frank Mullen. The first dated 3 May 2016 is entitled Frank Mullen: ‘I couldn’t leave a legacy like that behind me’ with the subtitle "Frank Mullen, an ex-garda, wants vindication from wild accusations over the last 10 years, writes Michael Clifford". The second dated  29 July 2017 has the significant title Frank Mullen dies trying to clear his name with subtitle 
He was left with a conundrum: How do you disprove an allegation of historic sexual abuse, writes Michael Clifford

Some extracts from the articles;
The family has received support from friends in their community, but Mr Mullen feels the State agencies, particularly the gardaí, have not investigated the matters properly, which, if they did, he says, would completely vindicate him. “It’s gone on for over 10 years and different chief superintendents have given me promises that my name would be cleared,” he says.

“The file has never been finished and my name has not been properly vindicated. I carried out my own investigations and gave them the information but that doesn’t appear to have been taken into account.” His wife concurs. “Frank gave 27 years of his life to An Garda Síochána so I felt very hurt with the way he has been treated.”

[No doubt the Garda Chief Superintendents did their best for a retired member of the force. The difficulty is in proving that an accuser is lying. ]

[Frank Mullen] says he can’t fathom how his name, or that of the other men, were the subject of these allegations. “All of us whom she accused were well known within the community so maybe that was why she used our names. [My emphasis] That’s the only reason we can think of,” he says.

[ This is a key aspect. Several years ago I wrote an article about a number of priests of Bishops and priests who have been falsely accused of child abuse or covering up such abuse. All of them were widely known - including three Archbishops. (The island of Ireland is divided into a total of four Archbishoprics).] 

During all this time, Owen regularly featured in the media, including The Late, Late Show. She wrote a book, Living With Evil, [published October 2009] which detailed her harrowing upbringing. Regularly, she called for a public inquiry into the whole affair.

[As I recall, she briefly mentioned "ritual abuse" during her Late Late Show interview (in 2010?) but presenter Ryan Tubridy made no attempt to question her about that aspect of her story. "Satanic Ritual Abuse has no credibility in Ireland!]

Last year, [2015] Mr Mullen’s long tenure with Dalkey United came to an end. He had been one of the founder members of the club more than 50 years ago. Among the players he mentored and remained friends with was Irish football legend Paul McGrath. Mr Mullen says he was asked to leave the club as a result of the controversy that swirled around the allegations made against him. “I was asked to resign pending all these investigations and rumours and I refused. Then they expelled me without even allowing me to produce evidence. I cried my eyes out.”

The club’s chairman, Colin Beecham, told the Irish Examiner that the club had no comment to make on the matter.

[I suspect that it was pressure from parents that forced the club's hand. In Ireland today, hysteria and "guilty until proven innocent" are the default positions in relation to allegations of child abuse. ]

The second Irish Examiner article by Michael Clifford is dated 29 July 2017 just days after the death of Frank Mullen. Michael Clifford begins:
Frank Mullen died last Sunday before he could clear his name. For more than the last 10 years of his life, he had been haunted by allegations of the terrible crimes. He had been accused of involvement in a paedophile ring, covering up the murder of a newborn baby, and even being responsible for killing a family of 13 in a work of arson.

And he provides this significant explanation for society's failure to punish false accusers and to support the victims of their vicious lies:
There is rarely much help for somebody trying to disprove these kinds of allegations. Not from politicians, for whom the cause could easily lose votes. Most of the media shy away also. Everybody is acutely aware of the history of a failure to listen to abuse victims.

Is Cynthia Owen herself unaware of her invulnerability? In an article in the Sunday World on 7 January 2016 ‘Dalkey House of Horrors’ victim names members of paedophile sex ringjournalist Nicola Tallant writes::

In an extraordinary move this week she has published the names and photos of the men she accuses and challenged them to sue.

She said: “Today it ends, no more silence. Hit me with your best shot, what have I to lose? You already took two of my children, and my three siblings, you already took my body, my mind, my heart and my soul. But there’s one thing you’re not getting, my courage. “Today, I show the world what I looked like while you were raping me, and what you looked like too. Today, you live with it, I have had to live with it for all these years. Now it’s your turn.” [Emphasis is mine]

Indeed what had she to lose? She published the names and photos of the six surviving members of the 12-strong "paedophile ring" on Facebook. - and her post was quickly removed. If the six had sued they would have given her enormous publicity in the mass media and to what purpose? Is she in a position to pay their legal fees, let alone damages? And even though the Satanic Ritual Abuse hysteria never took root in Ireland, is it possible for an individual to prove that that they did not belong to such a group? 
In Ireland today, no courage is required to make such claims. In fact we actively facilitate liars, fanatics - and mentally disturbed persons - to abuse Frank Mullen and other innocents! 

Police Chief Constable Mike Veale and the Return of Recovered Memory in the UK

As per the Wikipedia article on former Conservative Prime Minister Edward Heath (who died in July 2005):
In August 2015 several police forces were investigating allegations of child sexual abuse by Heath. Hampshire, Jersey, Kent, Wiltshire, Gloucestershire and Thames Valley constabularies and London's Metropolitan Police investigated such claims.
(It is worth noting that Cynthia Owen published the names of the members of the alleged Dalkey "paedophile ring" for the first time, only a few months later).

The two most high profile police investigations into allegations about Heath were 
(A)  Operation Midland, the London Metropolitan Police inquiry into historical claims of child abuse and related child homicides made against Heath and several other prominent persons 

(B) Operation Conifer run by Mike Veale the Chief Constable of Wiltshire. The Wiki article on Heath summarises this operation as follows:
In November 2016 The Guardian reported that a leading criminologist, Richard Hoskins, had stated that the evidence used against Heath in Operation Conifer, including discredited allegations of satanic ritual abuse, was "preposterous", "fantastical" and gained through the "controversial" practice of recovered-memory therapy. [My emphasis] The Wiltshire Police and Crime Commissioner discussed the future of the investigation with the Wiltshire chief constable, Mike Veale. In December the same paper reported that 15 people had made complaints of sexual abuse against Heath. That same month, chief constable Veale issued a video statement in which he said the satanic ritual abuse allegation "does not relate to Sir Edward Heath".

In March 2017 Operation Conifer was closed having cost a reported £1.5 million over two years, as no corroborating evidence had been found in any of the total 42 allegations by 40 individuals (including three different names used by one person).

The Wiki article on the Chief Constable himself gives some further details:
On 10 October 2017, former MP Harvey Proctor who had previously been falsely accused of sexual abuse, criticised Veale for allegedly “trashing” his reputation a second time by reviving claims of an establishment paedophile ring. [The first time was by the Metropolitan Police in  "Operation Midland".] Veale had called for a fresh inquiry into claims of cover-up and conspiracy in Westminster.

On 11 October 2017, Lord Finkelstein stated in an article headed "This disgraceful chief constable must quit" in The Times newspaper that "the investigation of Heath was naive and disproportionate" and that Veale "should go" for "the attempt to win a public relations battle using the moral authority of the police".

And indeed Chief Constable Mike Veale did "quit" although probably not in the manner envisaged by British journalist and Conservative politician  Lord Daniel Finkelstein. The Wiltshire Police and Crime Commissioner, Angus Macpherson, decided not to renew Veale's contract which had been due to expire in June 2018. In January 2018, Mike Veale was appointed Chief Constable of Cleveland Police!

Why Do the UK Police Support False Allegations against Establishment Figures?

I raised this question at the beginning of the article.  Surely the police are part of the UK Establishment? Why should they  play the kind of socially destructive role one would normally attribute to Anarchists or  mentally disturbed persons? 

Well actually the police in the UK are not fully fledged members of "the Establishment". An anecdote about George Orwell may help to illustrate this fact. When the young Orwell then Eric Blair) finished Eton College he proposed to join the Indian Imperial Police - a highly unusual choice for Etonians who were more likely to become army officers, senior civil servants, diplomats etc. When providing Blair with a reference, his classical tutor A.S.F. Gow remarked that it was the first time he had ever written a reference for a student to join the police!

Perhaps class  plays the same role in the UK that religion does in Ireland and Class Hatred is their version of Anti-clericalism? And when Chief Constables in Wiltshire and London pursue crazy investigations that target Tory politicians with charges of child-murder and rape, perhaps this is the equivalent of Alan Shatter and Charlie Flanagan (former and present Ministers for Justice) laying similar charges against Passionist priests and [former Sister of Mercy] Nora Wall respectively? Of course Messrs Shatter and Flanagan did not allege that Irish priests and nuns engaged in Satanic abuse - because such claims have little credibility in Ireland. However both Shatter and Flanagan whipped up public hysteria in this country in relation to child abuse and the same hysteria is now being turned against An Garda Siochana (Irish police force) itself! 

Conclusion: "This Inquiry is Dead. It Has Ceased To Be"

On 8 October 2017, The Sunday Times published an article by Dominic Lawson, a former editor of The Sunday Telegraph on the subject of Operation Confer.  Entitled "This inquiry is dead. It has ceased to be", with subtitle The hounding of Edward Heath was begun by a fantasist. Now it’s pure Python, it was of course a play on the famous Dead Parrot Sketch in a 1969 episode of  Monty Python's Flying Circus.

This parrot is no more! He has ceased to be! 'E's expired and gone to meet 'is maker!

'E's a stiff! Bereft of life, 'e rests in peace! If you hadn't nailed 'im to the perch 'e'd be pushing up the daisies!
'Is metabolic processes are now 'istory! 'E's off the twig!
'E's kicked the bucket, 'e's shuffled off 'is mortal coil, run down the curtain and joined the bleedin' choir invisibile!!
THIS IS AN EX-PARROT!!

At this stage, I suspect  that Satanic Ritual Abuse really is dead in the UK. In Ireland where we avoided the main panic, the only episode we did experience, is still live (although not very active at present).  Python's Irish Parrot has to be nailed to its perch to create a semblance of life, but very few Irish journalists are prepared to expose the fraud that Cynthia Owen created.

The Maurice McCabe Affair - Six Top Level Resignations To Date (and More to Come?)

Alan Shatter - Resigned May 2014

Frances Fitzgerald - Resigned Nov. 2017

To date the saga of whistleblower Sergeant Maurice McCabe has resulted in the forced resignations of  six prominent individuals and has had a negative effect on the careers of  two successive Irish Prime Ministers - and on the current Minster for Justice Charlie Flanagan (whose two predecessors, pictured above, had to fall on their swords in disgrace). Meanwhile Sergeant McCabe has gone from success to success - "he who must not be criticised" - even though the O'Higgins Commission was less than supportive of his claim that five senior Gardai, ranging from his immediate superior to the Garda Commissioner, were corrupt.
   .
"It's a bit Irish" our former colonial masters used to say about some especially farcical situation. However they are in no position to laugh now. In recent years in the UK, two major investigations  - Operations Midland (London Metropolitan Police) and Conifer (Wiltshire Police) - were carried out into allegations of paedophilia, homicide and Satanic Ritual Abuse leveled at former Tory Prime Minister Ted Heath who died in 2005 i.e. a decade before the investigations began. In Ireland we still have some way to go  before we plumb those depths of insanity - but we are getting there!

To summarise the Irish saga, the casualties to date include: 

• Two successive Ministers for Justice - Alan Shatter and Frances Fitzgerald.
• Two successive Secretary-Generals of the Department of Justice - Brian Purcell and Noel Waters.
• Two successive Garda (Police) Commissioners - Martin Callinan and Noirin O'Sullivan.

Moreover the affair contributed to the controversies surrounding the retirement of  former Taoiseach (Prime Minister) Enda Kenny in June 2017, while his successor Leo Varadkar has been weakened by the resignation of deputy PM Frances Fitzgerald.

[ I have photos only of Shatter and Fitzgerald above. Both may well be  innocent in the present case, but they previously whipped up the media mob against their own "reactionary" enemies. (See links on their names). Now they have fallen victim not to the "reactionaries", but to their former media friends who have turned Nihilist, and now hate everyone in power! ]

The most dangerous and long-lasting consequence of this fake scandal is likely to be on the morale of An Garda Siochana (Irish police). However the immediate consequence will be the difficulty in getting a credible candidate to take on the post of Secretary- General of the Department of Justice. Noel Waters reluctantly took over from Brian Purcell in 2014 as Acting Secretary General on the understanding that he would pass on the poisoned chalice to a newly appointed SG after a few weeks. However no credible candidate applied for the job and Noel Waters was appointed on a permanent basis in October 2016. Now he has gone too!

Enough of shameful tokenism, dismantling 'Independent Republic' must be next step

The above is the headline over an article in the Irish Independent on 29 November 2017 by Ivan Yates, a businessman and broadcaster who is also a former Fine Gael politician who was once a Minister (of Agriculture). The 'Independent Republic' he refers to is the Department of Justice and his article demonstrates the danger to the institutions of the State posed by people who treat a whistleblower with uncritical adulation. ("Shameful tokenism" is supposed to describe the multiple resignations and general hysteria to date.) Yates also provides a useful summary of how this scandal developed:

The entire tenure of Frances Fitzgerald as justice minister covered May 8, 2014 to June 14, 2017.To ascertain the first she knew of Garda management's campaign of retaliation against Sergeant Maurice McCabe was in June 2016, could never be sustained. .....Appointing and constantly defending Noirin O'Sullivan as Garda commissioner and Noel Waters as secretary general at Justice meant she favoured and protected the status quo rather than seeking radical reform. 

The first wave of the toxic fallout for the failed McCabe character assasination ended the careers of former justice minister Alan Shatter, Garda commissioner Martin Callinan and secretary general of the Department of Justice Brian Purcell. The second wave toppled Taoisceach Enda Kenny, Ms O Sullivan, Mr. Waters and Ms. Fitzgerald. But more need to go. Management structures at An Garda Siochana in the Phoenix Park and Department of Justice in St. Stephens Green need to be deconstructed. ........

The 'Independent Republic' of the Department of Justice needs to be dismantled. It hasn't so much regulated the Department of Justice as acted as its downtown office. It has used the cloak of 'state security' to operate a secretive culture unanswerable to the elected government. It is dysfunctionable in passing communications to ministers in time, proving this week that it always covers its own backside. 

Justice Minister Charlie Flanagan risks becoming its latest victim by failing to assert his ministerial authority.......

It's a nihilistic view and unsurprisingly Ivan Yates praises the media and TDs Mick Wallace and Clare Daly for voicing  the same criticisms over the years. I see that Yates gave an interview to Eolas magazine recently in which he gave this interesting overview of his career to date:
http://www.eolasmagazine.ie/live-and-let-live-ivan-yates/
“It’s funny,” laughs Yates. “When I went into politics a lot of Protestants said: ‘Tut Tut, politics is the lowest form of animal life and you shouldn’t be doing it.’ And when I was getting out of politics into bookmaking the politicians said: ‘What are you doing? Bookmaking is the lowest form of animal life!’ So I kept going down-hill and ending up in the media is the gutter altogether.”

Well that's honest anyway - and accurate as well!

Garda Controversies:The Personnel and Casualties to Date

 Maurice McCabe: Actually more an instigator than a casualty. Whistleblower Sergeant Maurice McCabe began raising his questions about alleged garda malpractise more than a decade ago. The ongoing Disclosures Tribunal chaired by Mr. Justice Peter Charleton is investigating if he was subjected to a "smear campaign" by the gardai he was accusing of corruption. (Does this "campaign" amount to anything more than gardai defending themselves against allegations that the O'Higgins Commission found were false?)

Martin Callinan: The former Garda commissioner resigned in March 2014 with the force embroiled in two controversies - namely the whistleblower issue and concern over the practise of recording phone calls at Garda stations. (Giving evidence before the Public Accounts Committee in January 2014, Martin Callinan had described the actions of  two Garda whistleblowers John Wilson and Maurice McCabe as "disgusting".)

Alan Shatter: The ex-Fine Gael TD quit as Justice Minister in May 2014 after his handling of the whistleblower claims was challanged in the Guerin report. The O'Higgins Commission subsequently found that Mr Shatter had handled the concerns appropriately. The Report of the Commission was published in May 2016 - but Shatter had also lost his Dail seat in the General Election of February 2016.

Brian Purcell: Former Department of Justice Secretary General Brian Purcell stood aside in July 2014 after then Justice minister Frances Fitzgerald published theToland Report on the Department, which identified a "closed, secretive and silo-driven culture" there. 

Enda Kenny: Mr Kenny's departure as Taoiseach (Prime Minister) in June 2017 is said to have been  accelerated over his handling of revelations the previous February, that false allegations of child abuse were made against Sergeant Maurice McCabe. (A gross blunder by a social worker had led her to cut and paste details from a diferent case, onto a file dealing with Sergeant McCabe!) 

Noirin O'Sullivan: Ms. O'Sullivan quit as Garda commissioner in September 2017. She said that the "unending cycle" of investigations and inquiries into Garda controversies was making it difficult to "implement the  deep ... reform necessary to modernise" the Garda. She was the second garda commissioner to resign over the Maurice McCabe affair.

Noel Waters: Mr.Waters served as acting secretary general of Department of Justice after Mr. Purcell's departure. He was appointed on a permanent basis in October 2016. He had planned to retire in February 2018 but instead resigned on 28 November 2017 while issuing a statement that those working in Justice had been "subjected to a barrage of unwarranted criticism". He was the second Secretary general of Justice to resign over the McCabe affair.

Frances Fitzgerald: Frances Fitzgerald resigned as Tanaiste (Deputy Prime Minister) and Minister for Business, Enterprise and Innovation on 28 November 2017. She had been Minister for Justice until June 2017 and thus became the second former Minister for Justice to resign over the whistleblower "scandal". 

Fitzgerald was a close ally of Taoiseach Leo Varadkar but Fianna Fail had threatened to withdraw from their co-operation agreement with the Government and thus cause an election, if Fitzgerald did not resign. Varadkar is therefore the second Taoiseach to be adversely  affected by this "scandal" based on the allegations of Sergeant McCabe.

Charlie Flanagan: Charlie Flanagan is our current Minister for Justice. As indicated in previous posts and especially this one, he survives because he is prepared to throw his own civil servants under the bus in order to save himself. To do him justice (no pun intended), the almost simultaneous resignations of  Noel Waters and Frances Fitzgerald also took pressure off him and served to sate the media witch-hunters. For the time being, no one wants to force a third Minister for Justice to fall on his sword!

Conclusion:

It is notable that all of the politicians who have been adversely affected by this fake "scandal" have themselves  slandered other people or joined in media witch-hunts against their ideological opponents. 

Alan Shatter: In 2009 Shatter demanded - and got - a high level Garda investigation into allegations that the Catholic Church had been involved in the unsolved murder of  a 10 year old girl Bernadette Connolly, four decades previously in 1970. A year later he was told by the then Minister for Justice Dermot Ahern (Fianna Fail) that no evidence of such collusion had been found. A few months after that, Fianna Fail were out of power and in March 2011, Shatter himself became Minister for Justice in the new Fine Gael government. There was not a word from him subsequently about Bernadette Connolly, so we can assume that he did not suspect that Fianna Fail had colluded with the Gardai investigators to protect the Church! However Shatter further aggravated an existing climate of public hysteria - and fell victim to it himself three years later.  

Enda Kenny. On 20 July 2011 the then Taoiseach Enda Kenny condemned the Vatican for its allege role in a "scandal" relating to the Dioces of Cloyne in Co. Cork.  He stated that the Church's alleged role in obstructing the Cloyne investigation into child abuse was a serious infringement upon the sovereignty of Ireland and that the scandal revealed "the dysfunction, disconnection and elitism that dominates the culture of the Vatican to this day" He added that "the historic relationship between church and state in Ireland could not be the same again".

On 3 September 2011, the Holy See issued its response to Mr Kenny's speech noting that "the accusation that the Holy See attempted to frustrate an Inquiry in a sovereign, democratic republic as little as three years ago, not three decades ago", which Mr Kenny made no attempt to substantiate, is unfounded. Indeed, when asked, a Government spokesperson clarified that Mr. Kenny was not referring to any specific incident. [My emphasis].  The response added that "Those Reports [...] contain no evidence to suggest that the Holy See meddled in the internal affairs of the Irish State or, for that matter, was involved in the day-to-day management of Irish dioceses or religious congregations with respect to sexual abuse issues."

[NOTE: The reckless invocation of a non-existent grievance is a feature of  anti-clericalism in Ireland and I have written about an extreme example here. Our anti-clerics know that they will not be required to justify their allegations, so they feel free to make absurd claims!]

Leo Varadkar and Frances Fitzgerald supported the witch-hunt against journalist Kevin Myers in July/August 2017. Leo Varadkar claimed that the article written by Myers  "is misogynistic and anti-Semitic" and approved of the Sunday Times action in firing him. Frances Fitzgerald added that "there’s an onus on everyone, including the media obviously, to make sure that articles like that do not appear". Few journalists objected to our Prime Minister and Deputy PM endorsing political censorship nor did they pose any awkward questions to our great leaders when the Jewish Representative Council of Ireland declared that Kevin Myers is not an anti-Semite. However Varadkar and Fitzgerald's endorsement of the witch-hunt against Myers did not do them any good later when they themselves were targeted by the same media wolves!

Our current Minister for Justice Charlie Flanagan was just an ordinary TD (Member of Parliament) in July 2009 when he made an obscene allegation against Nora Wall (formally Sister Dominic of the Sisters of Mercy). The allegation - that she had supplied children to paedophile priests - was one for which she had received an apology and damages from the Sunday World in 2002. Deputy Flanagan of course knew that he could not be sued for anything he said in the Dail (Parliament). I quote from his speech:
"There is more to this than meets the eye in respect of these social events. It has been suggested that there were frequent visits to the Cappoquin home by some clergy from Mount Melleray Abbey. Access to children may have been a key motivation for these visits. One must bear in mind that Mount Melleray was selected by the notorious paedophile, Fr. Brendan Smith, as a holiday destination or as a haven to which to escape when he was on the run from the authorities in Northern Ireland. This issue must be revisited" [My emphasis]

"This issue must be revisited". Like Alan Shatter before him, Charlie Flanagan is now Justice Minister. Has he revisited the issue? If he has failed to do so - as Shatter failed to follow up on his allegations regarding the murder of Bernadette Connolly - why has this happened? Does the Catholic Church still exercise secret power in Department of Justice?   Are senior civil servants members of Opus Dei or the Knights of Columbanus?  I think that Minister Flanagan has a duty to enlighten us!

NOTE dated 11 January 2018
In addition to slandering Nora Wall (and the Cistercian monks of Mount Melleray) in 2009, I had forgotten that  Charlie Flanagan also defamed a senior civil servant in the  Department of Health. This man had carried out an inspection of the Sister of Mercy children's home in Cappoquin which was managed by Nora Wall and given it a favourable report. In the insane  imaginings of the then Fine Gael Spokesman for Justice (now Minister), that meant the official must have been complicit in child abuse and a member of a Paedophile Ring! See my Comment below dated 10 January.

Charlie Flanagan is now trying to save his political skin by throwing his own civil servants under the bus in relation to the Maurice McCabe "scandal". Clearly this is NOT the first time he targeted civil servants in relation to an invented and hysterical "scandal".