Irish Salem: Colm O'Gorman

Showing posts with label Colm O'Gorman. Show all posts

Tuesday, July 10, 2018

Eight Falsely Accused Bishops (and Archbishops) in Ireland

Archbishop John Charles McQuaid (slandered by Dr Noel Browne and John Cooney)

Cardinal Archbishop Cahal Daly (slandered by Deputy Pat Rabbitte)

Background:

This article started as an "open letter" to several Irish historians on 7 December 2006, with a follow-up 10 days later. Both were published at the time by the "Alliance Victim Support Group" on its website AllianceSupport.org. I think that the Group which was founded in 1999, disbanded recently and there is just a skeletal website remaining. The first two letters refer to false allegations against six Irish Bishops - including two Archbishops (John Charles McQuaid of Dublin and Cahal Daly of Armagh - pictured above). In June 2008 I forwarded copies of the two to Brenda Power of the Sunday Times in response to an article she had written concerning the effects of false allegations of sexual assault. By this time there had been an additional allegation against a former Archbishop i.e. Thomas Morris of Cashel and I also recalled that Mary Raftery had slandered the former Bishop of Ossary, Peter Birch. Bishop Birch had been widely admired for his work among the poor by many people - including by my own mentor Brother Maurice Kirk.

All of the falsely accused Bishops were extremely high-profile - including three Archbishops. There are only four Archdioceses in Ireland and I have joked over the years that an Archbishop of Tuam - either current or deceased - is obviously next on our anti-clerics hit-list. Actually it has already occurred - but more on this later!

EIGHT Falsely Accused Bishops

Monday, 23 June, 2008
From: "Rory Connor"
To: Brenda Power, Sunday Times

Brenda Power
The Sunday Times
Regarding your article "It's the Innocent who Merit an Explanation" http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/ireland/article4188284.ece
you may like to look at the following two articles which have appeared on the www.alliancesupport.org website.

The letters were originally addressed to a number of Irish Historians - and cced to Colm O'Gorman of the "victims" group One in Four for obvious reasons.

A total of 8 Bishops have been falsely accused of sex offences in Ireland - including 3 Archbishops. There are only 26 full Bishops in the country including 4 Archbishops so the Archbishop of Tuam is presumably next on our liberals hit list!

The following articles dated December 2006 relate to 6 Bishops. There has been one subsequent case - the late Archbishop Thomas Morris of Cashel [1] and incredibly I had overlooked one case - that of the late Bishop Peter Birch of Ossory (Kilkenny) [2].

Finally the hysteria about sex crimes is not indiscriminate or at least it didn't begin that way. It was first directed at the Catholic Church and then spread to the rest of society. To counter it you need to start with the obscene lies directed at Churchmen.

Regards

Rory Connor

[1] See "Archbishop Thomas Morris and Oliver O'Grady" on www.alliancesupport.org on 17 January 2007.
Relevant Link: Archbishop Thomas Morris and Oliver O'Grady

[2] Included in the article "Vincent Browne, Mary Raftery and Sister Conception" on www.alliancesupport.org on 21 July 2006.
Relevant Link Bishop Birch and Mary Raftery

Originally SIX Falsely Accused Bishops

Ladies, Gentlemen and Scholars,

The following article concerns false sex allegations directed against 6 Irish Bishops between 1994 and 2006. This represents nearly a quarter of the Irish Hierarchy (shades of "One in Four"!).

Can we expect Colm O'Gorman, the founder of "One in Four" to comment? After all people who make false allegations of child abuse are trading on the misery of those who were REALLY abused. When our current Witch-hunt eventually comes to an end, children who are true victims of child abuse will find it difficult to get a hearing.

Cynicism is the legacy of Hysteria and Cynicism will be the ultimate legacy of our Irish Salem.

Regards

Rory Connor

7 December 2006

FALSE SEX ALLEGATIONS AGAINST IRISH BISHOPS

In the 12 years since 1994, a total of six Irish bishops have been the target of false sex allegations in the media. The majority of the allegations relate to claims that the bishop was a paedophile, one to a different sex claim and one to a charge of trying to prevent the extradition of the paedophile priest Father Brendan Smyth.

There are only 26 bishops in the whole of Ireland.

My articles on the allegations are published on the website www.alliancesupport.org between June and November 2006.

1. GUARDIAN APOLOGY TO BISHOPS FOR PAEDOPHILE RING CLAIM [April 1994]

www.alliancesupport.org 29 September 2006

Relevant Link: The Guardian and Bishop Magee

On 2 April 1994, The Guardian, which is Britain's most distinguished "liberal" newspaper, published an allegation that a senior Irish Bishop was linked to a paedophile ring.

The Guardian thought that, by not naming the bishop they could get away with their lies. However there are only 26 bishops on the whole of Ireland and the newspaper report contained certain remarks that reduced the number of possible targets still further. The Irish Hierarchy threatened a class libel suit and the Guardian were forced to apologise.

On 22 April 1994, the Irish Times which is the Irish equivalent of the Guardian, published a report that contains little more than the text of their sister paper's apology. However the more down-market Sunday Independent published a detailed report into the background of the libel. Independent journalist Sam Smyth pointed out that this claim had been previously investigated by a number of British TABLOIDS which rejected it as false! Yet the Guardian went ahead and published anyway!

2. CARDINAL CATHAL DALY ACCUSED BY PAT RABBITTE, (Nov. 1994)

The following summary comes from Richard Websters article "States of Fear, The Redress Board and Ireland's Folly" on the website www.richardwebster.net.

(My own longer article "FALSE ALLEGATIONS: PAT RABBITTE AND CARDINAL CATHAL DALY" is on www.alliancesuppoprt.org in October 2006.)

Relevant Link: Pat Rabbitte and Cardinal Cahal Daly

"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.

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."

3. BISHOP BRENDAN COMISKEY ACCUSED BY GAY BYRNE [OCTOBER 1995]

[from my article "BISHOP BRENDAN COMISKEY AND FALSE ALLEGATIONS OF CHILD ABUSE" on www.alliancesupport.org in October 2006]

Relevant Link: Bishop Comiskey and Gay Byrne

The following is from a sneering article by Declan Lynch in the Sunday Independent on 8 October 1995. It is headed "Gaybo Speaks and the Catholic Faithful Tremble":

"I personally would rate myself a friend and admirer of Brendan Comiskey [said Gay Byrne on his radio programme], and indeed I was looking for him on the telephone recently, and he didn't make contact with me which would have been kind of unusual, a little bit unusual.

"So much so that I don't believe now that Brendan Comiskey has gone to America because of stress, nor do I believe he's gone because of alcohol, nor do I believe he's gone because of his alleged protection of a priest who's up on charges.

"I think there is something other. I haven't the faintest idea of what it is, but I think there is something else, and I think it is something dreadful, and I.m almost afraid of what it might be. That's my personal reaction."

A second article in the same paper commented that "although the remarks appeared to be 'off the cuff' it is known that Gay scripts his shows with extreme care and attention."

So what was Gay Byrne suggesting? When Father Sean Fortune committed suicide he left a note claiming that he had been sexually assaulted by Bishop Comiskey! Is that what Gay had in mind?

4. TV3 APOLOGISES TO BISHOP OF CLOYNE JOHN MAGEE [SEPTEMBER 1999]

[See article "Apology to Bishop of Cloyne, John Magee by TV3" on www.alliancesupport.org on 27 Sept 2006]

Relevant Link: TV3 and Bishop Magee

The following is the text of TV3's apology for libelling Bishop Magee:

RETRACTION AND APOLOGY TO THE BISHOP AND DIOCESE OF CLOYNE BROADCAST BY TV3 ON TUESDAY 21ST SEPTEMBER [1999] IN THE 5.30PM, 7.30PM AND 10.45PM NEWS BULLETINS

It was reported on the 15th September last in the news at 5.30pm, 7.00pm and 10.45pm that the Catholic Church had settled a case with a man who claimed that inappropriate behaviour took place in the Bishop of Cloyne's residence. We wish to unreservedly retract same as it is clear that no such claim was made by the man in question. We are satisfied that there was no basis or truth whatever in the allegations and any suggestion that the Bishop of Cloyne has been compromised in any manner in the conduct of his duties is sincerely regretted and entirely without foundation. We wish to offer an unreserved apology to the Bishop and to the Diocese of Cloyne.

The sincerity of TV3's repentance can be gauged from the fact that, one month later, in October 1999, they broadcast Louis Lentin's documentary "Our Boys". This contained an allegation by Gerry Kelly that he attended the funerals of boys in Artane who had been killed by the Christian Brothers. No boy died of any cause while Gerry Kelly was in Artane!

5. JOHN CHARLES McQUAID LIBELLED BY JOHN COONEY

Relevant Links: Five Articles on John Cooney and John Charles McQuaid

I have published several articles on this subject on the Alliance website from July 2006 onwards. See in particular the 5 articles entitled "JOHN COONEY AND JOHN CHARLES MCQUAID" (1) to (5). The first article contains quotations from 4 Irish historians, all of whom agree that the allegations in Cooney's biography of John Charles are rubbish. Incredibly they also agree that its a great book - provided you disregard the "silly bits" about paedophilia!!

The most outrageous claim in John Cooney's book "John Charles McQuaid - Ruler of Catholic Ireland" is that the Archbishop was a homosexual paedophile. However in my third article I refer to Cooney's other allegation that the Archbishop used an astronomical telescope to spy on courting couples on Killiney beach and on girls in a schoolyard. I point out some problems with these claims

(A) Killiney beach is not visible from the Archbishop's observatory

(B) Homosexual paedophiles do not normally display an interest in courting couples or females of any age (Actually the same applies to non-paedophile homosexuals!).

(C) An astronomical telescope is designed to view stars millions of miles away. It is not suitable for observing human beings a hundred yards away!

Dr Noel Browne is the source of the main allegation against the late Archbishop. See articles "DOCTOR NOEL BROWNE AND HIS ENEMIES" and "DOCTOR NOEL BROWNE AND THE BISHOPS" on the Alliance Support website.

Relevant Links: Noel Browne and His Enemies and Noel Browne and the Bishops

6. BISHOP EAMONN CASEY.

[see article "Eamonn Casey, the Bishop Still Seeking Sanctuary from His Past" on www.alliancesuppport.org on 19 November 2006]

Relevant Link: Bishop Casey Accused

Bishop Eamonn Casey was recently accused by a middle aged woman who claimed that he had abused her 30 years ago. Thus we are clearly talking about an allegation of pedophilia. The claim was given huge publicity by the media which emphasised that the woman is regarded as mentally disturbed and has made unfounded allegations against other people. So why all the publicity since journalists obviously did not believe her?. If she had accused a retired headmaster or senior civil servant would her lies have been given equal prominence? The difference is that Eamonn Casey is a retired Bishop. The Rape Crisis Network also thought that this was a good opportunity to demand that he apologise again to Annie Murphy.

What we have here is a society that is spewing on itself. The saga of false allegations against Bishops began in 1994 when the UK Guardian accused an un-named Bishop of being part of a paedophile ring. Later that year Pat Rabbitte implied that Cardinal Cahal Daly was engaged in a conspiracy with the Attorney General to prevent the extradition of Father Brendan Smyth. In that year the false allegations were being made by the highest in the land. Now a poor deranged woman is repeating them. "A fish rots from the head" says the Russian proverb about the role of intellectuals in society. Now the rot has reached both tail and heart!

Rory Connor

7 December 2006

'One in Four' Bishops - as per Colm O'Gorman!

Ladies, Gentlemen and Scholars,

A couple of objections to my article on "False Allegations against Irish Bishops" have come to my attention. [www.alliancesupport.org on 9 Dec 2006]. The main objection is that I am overstating the significance of the number of false allegations. I claim - only partly with tongue in cheek - that the allegations against six Bishops amount to "One in Four" of the Irish Hierarchy (as per Colm O'Gorman and his group of that name).

FIRST OBJECTION. You are referring to TWO different generations of Bishops. After all Archbishop McQuaid died in 1973 and Bishop Casey retired in 1992. Therefore the proportion of falsely accused Bishops is one in eight or ten rather than "One in Four".

MY ANSWER. Yes but all of the allegations date from 1994 to date and these 12 years fit neatly into one generation. MOREOVER the usual explanations for making claims decades after the event, do not apply in these cases. The usual excuses are:

(A) I was traumatised by my experiences and only recovered recently,

(B) Nobody would believe my word against that of a priest/Bishop.

Since we are talking about lies and slander these explanations are irrelevant. Thus the "One in Four" proportion is OK.

SECOND OBJECTION: There are 26 Irish dioceses but 33 Bishops - the other 7 are "Auxiliary Bishops". Again this means that you have exaggerated the proportion of those who have been falsely accused.

MY REPLY. No Auxiliary Bishop has been falsely accused (as far as I know) and I think it unlikely that one will be in the future. Just look at the list of those who have been the target of obscene lies:

John Charles McQuaid was the best known Irish prelate of the 20th Century. He was Archbishop of Dublin and Primate of Ireland.
Cathal Daly was Cardinal Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of All Ireland.
John Magee of Cloyne is the only man in the history of the Church to have been Private Secretary to three Popes (Paul VI, John Paul 1 and John Paul 11)
Bishops Eamonn Casey and Brendan Comiskey are very well known prelates who had frequent dealings with the media
I am reasonably sure I know the identity of the un-named Bishop who was accused by the UK Guardian in 1994. He is no "Auxiliary" either!
Our lying intellectuals tend to concentrate on the "big shots" in the Catholic Church and disdain mere Auxiliary Bishops. Thus I think my "One in Four" proportion is still valid.

FINALLY I believe that the behaviour of our lying anti-clerics says a great deal about the nature of the paedophile problem in this country. Let us suppose, for the sake of argument, that there is a major problem with paedophile clergy in the Catholic Church. Then over the last 50 years or so, you would expect that at least one Bishop would be identified as a paedophile. You would also expect that this man would be operating in a small diocese and that few people would have heard of him before the scandal. THAT is the way things work out in real life (as opposed to Salem Style Witch-hunts). And the reason things happen that way is that a man with severe moral and emotional problems is unlikely to be a high-flier in any profession. (Compare the unfortunate Judge Brian Curtin).

However that is NOT how things actually worked out. Ludicrous and lying allegations have been made against a Cardinal Archbishop of Armagh, a former Archbishop of Dublin who was a hate figure for "liberals" since the 1970s etc etc.

Clearly we are not talking about real life but a parallel universe in which our anti-clerics draw their plots from Dallas and their morals from the Nazi pornographer Julius Streicher.

Is it possible that I am overstating my case?

Best wishes,

Rory Connor

[19 December 2006]

False Allegation against Former Archbishop(s) of Tuam

Over the years I have joked that Irish "liberals" who slandered three of our four Archbishops, were bound to take aim at the Archbishop of Tuam. Actually it happened a few years ago but I didn't fully appreciate its significance at the time. In June 2014 the Jesuit magazine "America" persuaded the Associated Press to issue an apology for claiming that the Catholic Church had refused to baptise the children of unmarried mothers at the mother and baby home in Tuam run by the Bon Secour nuns. Senior Editor Kevin Clarke wrote in "The Galway Horror Part II"
https://www.americamagazine.org/content/all-things/galway-horror-part-ii
“Babies born inside the institutions were denied baptism and, if they died from the illness and disease rife in such facilities, also denied a Christian burial.” It is a sentence, unattributed to any source, which repeats—either word for word or in a close approximation—in hundreds of articles concerning the now infamous deaths and burials of hundreds of children in Tuam, Galway between 1925 and 1961. This appalling sacramental indifference is referenced in major U.S. and U.K. publications and cited in leading online opinion journals like Salon as more evidence of the cruelty of the Bon Secours sisters who ran the home and the Catholic Church in Ireland in general.

The text of the apology is as follows:
DUBLIN (AP) — In stories published June 3 and June 8 [2014] about young children buried in unmarked graves after dying at a former Irish orphanage for the children of unwed mothers, The Associated Press incorrectly reported that the children had not received Roman Catholic baptisms; documents show that many children at the orphanage were baptized. The AP also incorrectly reported that Catholic teaching at the time was to deny baptism and Christian burial to the children of unwed mothers; although that may have occurred in practice at times it was not church teaching. In addition, in the June 3 story, the AP quoted a researcher who said she believed that most of the remains of children who died there were interred in a disused septic tank; the researcher has since clarified that without excavation and forensic analysis it is impossible to know how many sets of remains the tank contains, if any. The June 3 story also contained an incorrect reference to the year that the orphanage opened; it was 1925, not 1926.

The journalists who published those lies were aiming at the Bon Secour nuns in particular and at the Catholic Church in general. However it is the clergy and not nuns, who would have made that decision and the local priest would certainly have referred an issue of such rarity and importance to his Bishop - or in this case to the Archbishop of Tuam. According all four Irish Archbishops have now been subjected to obscene lies by our "liberal" media!

If our journalists - and politicians - were targeting Protestant Archbishops or the Chief Rabbi of Ireland with such lies, no one would be in any doubt as to their motivation!

Friday, February 2, 2018

Are There Very Few False Allegations of Rape and Child Abuse [3]

Colm O'Gorman - 'One in Four' Victim Group and Amnesty International

This is a follow up to two previous posts with titles "Are There Very Few False Allegations of Rape and Child Abuse [1]" and "Are There Very Few False Allegations of Rape and Child Abuse [2]"

[I highlight a photo of Colm O'Gorman because of his role as founder of one of Ireland's largest Victim groups 'One in Four', his present position as head of Amnesty Ireland and, not least, his statement in March 2006 that false allegations of child abuse against Catholic priests did not constitute a problem!]

The following is a extract from a discussion on the Spiked-online website in December 2015 that followed an article by Mike Hume entitled "The Year We Forgot What Free Speech Means". I am concentrating on a debate between myself [Kilbarry1 AKA Rory Connor] and an Australian Jack Richards. The debate ranges over the meaning of human nature, the colonisation of Australia, the Aboriginals and "White Guilt", Social Darwinism, Islam, Christianity and Humanism - and of course the role of the Catholic Church!

I start with a quote from Jack Richards directed at another participant, humanist Carl Barjer:
"Homo sapiens are animals, very clever animals who can make telephones, computers and rockets, but animals none the less. All animals herd with their own, mark out their territories and defend them, they protect their own gene pool, and as Muslims clearly demonstrate, hide their women away like precious possessions so they won’t be tainted by the blood of other tribes. Only complete fools like you, blinded by idealistic and ridiculous ideologies, believe that the lion will lie down with the lamb and we can all be one big happy family of “humanity”. That’s just such rotten bullshit and dangerous bullshit. Every pack has its dominant male and female and a pecking order and if you aren’t prepared to fight, lie and steal for yours you’ll get nothing. And that’s exactly what you’ll deserve."

This is Social Darwinism (although I don't think the term was used in the discussion) and it's not something I would normally sympathise with. However faced with the kind of leaders we have today in both Church and State, it's an ideology that I can at least understand!

Another unkind comment from Jack Richards follows regarding Australian Aboriginals:
"Everything in this country was built by whites: every road, railway, farm, bridge, house, dock, drain, power grid, airport, mill, factory every last endeavour of every kind. The Aborigine have contributed nothing. They are virtually unemployable and are a huge and costly burden on society. In 1990 there was a paper on what they cost us over and above the welfare available to all Australians. That was 25 years ago and between Federal, State and Local Aboriginal specific programs we were spending an extra $41,000 p.a. per person. I know that paper well - I wrote it and did the research when I worked for a then Federal Cabinet Minister."

Debate with Jack Richards on Spiked-Online website

I replied to him as follows (December 2015)

Kilbarry1: First reply to Jack Richards
I agree with a lot of what you say, while being dubious about the way you say it - but then I wouldn't describe myself as a "dominant" male. For an example of the way a community can self-destruct by adopting a lunatic variety of idealism, see my article on the decadence of the Irish Sisters of Mercy
The Sisters responded to bogus allegations of child abuse (including child murder) by apologising to the false accusers on the basis that they must have suffered great pain in order to make them say such things. The apology was supposed to "heal the pain" but surprisingly it didn't - even after the Sisters repeated it on numerous occasions. After they paid £20,000 to the parents of a child who died decades before, the parents accused a nun of murdering the baby by burning holes in its legs with a red hot poker. Try Googling the newspaper headline:
"HOT POKER WAS USED ON LITTLE MARION.. NO CASH WILL GET HER BACK; I THINK MY BABY WAS MURDERED AT THE ORPHANAGE, SAYS PAYOUT MUM."

The present position is that the Merciful Sisters blame the Irish Bishops for their problems. Their rationale may be that the Bishops made some (albeit inadequate) efforts to defend themselves - including a couple of successful libel actions against false accusers.

Jack Richards: First reply to Kilbarry1
I once read that the number of Irish children who were molested by the Catholic Clergy in Ireland actually out-number those who were not.

Is there anyone in this world who is not an hereditary victim? Before about 1975 no-one believed that victimhood could be inherited - but indeed it can.

My whole life has been miserable and agonising because of my inherited victimhood - and so far I haven't received a cent in compensation nor an official apology from the British Government! Bastards!

You see I am the direct descendant of 10 Convicts transported to New South Wales. I'll forget about most of them who were just English thieves - even though one was a 14 year-old boy sentenced to death, along with his mother, for burglary in 1786 in Somerset. They hanged her but he received a reprieve and just got 14 years transportation. He spent 2 years on a hulk in Portsmouth Harbour and then shipped out on the "Neptune" with the Second Fleet in 1789. When it arrived in Sydney over a third of the convicts had died from mistreatment and starvation.

But my real claim to victimhood dates from 1803 when Mick and Kathleen arrived in chains from Cork, Ireland. They'd taken part in the uprising of the "United Irishmen" and were thrown into the dungeons of Dublin Castle. They both got 7 years and their crime was "Taking an Illegal Oath".

The British Government robbed me of my heritage, my culture, my language and all my relatives! I've never gotten over it!

I often think that if it hadn't been for the stinking British invaders of Ireland and their barbarism I'd be sitting in O'Reilly's Pub in Cork, drinking Guinness, singing laments in Gaelic, dancing without moving my arms and saying "to be sure to be sure" in a broad Irish brogue.

Instead of that luxury, here I am on the other side of the world enduring an Australian summer a few hours drive from the white-sand beaches on the Pacific Coast and being forced to drink Carlton at the local Pub and listen to Country and Western music on the juke-box and suffer all the horrors of living on a huge island full of useless stuff like all those Herefords grazing my paddocks, the iron, coal, gold, silver, copper, uranium, lead, bauxite etc and living in a country that rates only 2nd the UN's Human Development Index.

I think the British Government should compensate me for the huge personal and cultural losses my family has endured.

Kilbarry1: Second reply to Jack Richards
"I once read that the number of Irish children who were molested by the Catholic Clergy in Ireland actually out-number those who were not.
Is there anyone in this world who is not an hereditary victim? ..."

The reason you heard that is probably because we have about 10 separate Child Abuse "Victims" groups in Ireland, almost every one of them funded by the Irish State and literally every one of them founded after our Taoiseach (Prime Minister) made a public apology to "Victims of institutional abuse" in May 1999.

Of the 10 groups, FOUR were involved in allegations of child murder against the Christian Brothers and Sisters of Mercy. The first claims related to real children who had actually died but later ones referred to periods when no child died of ANY cause. Re the latter, I coined the phrases "Murder of the Undead" and "Victimless Murders". (Google will complete the phrases for you in Ireland and hopefully in Australia as well).

The leader of a FIFTH group wrote an article in the Irish Times in March 2006 explaining that some people believed that false allegations of child abuse were being made against Irish priests but "fortunately" that did NOT constitute a problem. A few months previously, two men had been convicted of trying to blackmail a well-known Irish priest, by threatening to make a false allegation against him but perhaps this gentlemen had "forgotten". His mistake was forgiven however as, a couple of years later he was appointed executive director of Amnesty International in Ireland.

The leader of a SIXTH group declared in a public outburst on national television aimed at a Government Minister that he had been "raped, buggered and beaten" in an industrial school run by priests of the Rosminian Order. The leader of a RIVAL "Victims" group unhelpfully pointed out that he had specifically denied this and praised the Rosminians in a radio interview years before. (The two leaders were involved in a difference of opinion as to how large sums of Government money for Victims should be spent).

The leader of a SEVENTH group was involved in a furious row with his own members regarding Compensation funds the group had received from Religious Congregations. He said he had come into his office one day and found a knife stuck in his desk etc

Possibly the remaining three (or so) Victims' groups are credible OR maybe they are just small and I don't know much about them.

Kilbarry1: Second reply to Jack Richards - Continued
For those who want to check out the gory details:

(A) In 2006 I attempted to summarise false allegations of child MURDER (in particular) directed at the Catholic Church. The link is here
"Letter to Sunday Tribune Re Child Killing Allegations"

I explained at the time that "If someone accuses you of child abuse 30, 40 or even 50 years ago there is no way you can clear your name. However if the same person claims you killed a child and no child died at the time, then this says a great deal about your accuser's credibility."

At the time I composed the article, I had forgotten about the claim in the UK Daily Mirror (11 October 1997) that a Sister of Mercy had murdered a baby by burning holes in its legs with a red hot poker. One reason I forgot, was that the Sisters of Mercy were so "compassionate" to the accuser that they failed to sue. (The editors of The Mirror employ very high powered lawyers to protect themselves against libel actions, BUT they also realise that decadent imbeciles represent to threat.)

(B) The current executive director of Amnesty International (Ireland) wrote in the Irish Times on 29 March 2006 that "In the past few months a number of commentators have suggested that grave injustice is being done to priests falsely accused of child sexual abuse. Such suggestions rightly concern fair minded people, but remarkably, no evidence of any kind has been presented to suggest that false allegations are being made or that the rights of those accused are being abused.”

Just two months previously, two brothers had been convicted of trying to blackmail a priest Father Michael Kennedy by threatening to accuse him of child abuse. I believe that Fr Kennedy is a relative of THE Kennedys so it is remarkable that Mr O'Gorman had forgotten about the case (or maybe didn't consider it significant?)
(See my article on "Colm O'Gorman" Note the paragraphs headed "Colm O'Gorman, Nora Wall and Amnesty International" and the following one.)

(C) Very handily, there IS an easily available video of the man who denounced a Government Minister on national TV for ignoring his own experiences of rape at the hands of Rosminian priests. Check out the Comments section of the Spiked article "No Justice in a Year of Moral Crusades" by Luke Gittos. The video is one of two posted by "holliegrieg justice" and I replied to him.
[See my recent article "Recovered Memory in Ireland - and Allegations of Child Abuse" for video of Victims' group leader denouncing Government Minister]

(D) The saga of the Victims' charity "Right of Place" and the dispute about the use of its funds WAS actually covered by another Victims' group "Alliance Support". The resignation of the Right of Place founder is dealt with here
and there are several background articles on the Alliance Support website about the affair.
[Alliance Support website is no longer operative.There are a number of articles about "Right of Place" and its founder Noel C. Barry on The Shame of Ireland website here. See also Comment below ]

On a related matter, several Irish Bishops were also accused of being paedophiles or conspiracy to defend paedophile priests but I won't bother you with THOSE gory details here. (As per normal, the claims were nonsense. ) However that is just Ireland. Perhaps accusers and their Child Abuse Victims' groups are more credible in Australia?

Jack Richards: Second reply to Kilbarry1
When I was 6 years old I was abused by a Sister of the Good Samaritan. The old bitch flogged me into unconsciousness in a beating that lasted for about 2 hours. She broke two canes on me and finished the job with a third. When my father complained, rather forcefully, to Mother Superior and showed her the 40+ "stripes' I had from the ankles up - including two across the face - she dismissed it as being necessary discipline. Later than night the Parish Priest, an Irishmen as they all were in those days nearly 60 years ago, rang my father and threatened to have him charged with assault for accosting the nuns! That was my last day in a Catholic School.

I am of the view that there were many genuine incidents of brutality and sexual abuse carried out by the Clergy in those days, and up to very recent times, who were protected by the Church and the police and judiciary. But it wasn't just the Catholics as the current Royal Commission into Child Sexual Abuse in Australia shows - they were all in it. So far they've nailed Catholic Priests and Brothers, Anglican Ministers, Salvation Army, Seventh Day Adventists, Methodists, Baptists, Jehovah Witnesses and Jewish Rabbis. It seems that any organisation that had unfettered access to children had its quota of paedophiles. From what has been revealed during the course of the RC, most of the "abuse" was homosexual in nature - especially in Catholic institutions.

Having said that, I recall that in the 80s and 90s there was an outbreak of "repressed memory" syndrome when literally thousand of people suddenly remembered being abused by their fathers who all seemed to belong to Satanic Cults. There was an epidemic across the USA, here and the western world generally - and 99.9999% of it was bullshit. Now it's called "False memory syndrome" because the ideas were planted by zealous "psychologists" who attributed all psychological disorders in later life to childhood sexual abuse. Some American enthusiasts wrote a text book on the "symptoms" of childhood sexual abuse and one of the symptoms, believe it or not, was "failure to remember sexual abuse"!

What's happening in Ireland is starting to remind me of the witch hunts of the 16th-18th Centuries and the epidemic of denunciations during the Purges in 1930's Soviet Union. All these accusations need to be looked at both sympathetically and with much scepticism because there's a very good chance they're not true. If there're large sums of money involved the credibility of the accusers must be proportionately reduced. But it's not just money that provokes denunciators: there's all that kudos and sympathy and victimhood to be milked. For some people, being a victim is the high point of their otherwise worthless life and they really get off on it. Human nature is a strange thing. I live by the theory that if you trust no-one you'll never be disappointed. I have met far more compulsive liars, frauds, swindlers and conmen than I have honest men. Indeed I can't remember ever meeting an honest man or woman.

I might add that for a few years I worked in a Government department investigating theft and fraud. It was often surprising that the people we caught stealing were very well educated, held high positions, and didn't need to steal - and often the theft was so petty. For example, one very senior Civil Servant was caught for stealing the tyres off a Government owned vehicle. For the price of a set of tyres - about $600 - he lost his job and was fined double their value plus has a life-long conviction for dishonesty.

But some people are such accomplished liars that, had I not known they were as guilty as sin and had the evidence of it, I'd have believed their denials. I got one woman for stealing a computer and a printer. When interviewed she denied it, of course, and was so terribly indignant that we'd accuse her! What she didn't know was that we had CCTV film of her loading the goods into the boot of her car. So after her swearing on the life her children that she was innocent, and quite convincingly doing so, we showed her the film.

One major investigation had to do with a Religious School. In Australia non-government schools get subsidised for every student they educate. I forget the exact amount but it was about $2,600 per student per year and the schools have to complete a census upon which the grants, capital and recurrent, are made. In any event, the Principal of the school - a very religious man who insisted on praying for us at every opportunity - had been fudging the census and claiming for 30-40 children who did not exist and pocketing the money for himself. This had been going on for some years. Again, he was a very convincing fraud and liar and, even when confronted with damning evidence in his own hand-writing, he denied having done it! He was so convincing in proclaiming his innocence that a Committee of supporters was formed to defend him against our "false accusations" and "racist" attempts to persecute an honest man. He kept up his charade until the day of his committal hearing in the Supreme Court - then he confessed, admitted it all, and pled guilty when the Prosecution offered to drop a couple of charges.

Never trust anyone, no matter how honest and convincing they seem, and you'll never be disappointed.

Kilbarry1: Final reply to Jack Richards
Regarding your last sentence, I really think that you are TOO cynical. I know some very decent human beings who - nevertheless- would not be too scrupulous about twisting the truth to get an increased Government grant or insurance payout. I probably wouldn't do either myself but that is partly because I have poor communications skills; on one occasion when I had a genuine insurance claim, I handled it so badly that I know they suspected me of fraud!

Re your first sentence I know a lady who was very badly battered in kindergarten - by a female SECULAR teacher who later was admitted to a mental hospital. My friend also said that the woman could be very nice outside class but should never have become a teacher.

This discussion could go on forever. I believe that the overwhelming majority of paedophile claims are false. In Ireland members of "Victims'" groups hardly ever raise objections when their leaders make transparently false allegations - of child murder for example. (The only thing that seems to arouse their ire, is controversies about money). I assume the reason they don't complain is that their own allegations are equally spurious - and they are making them for financial reasons.

I know less about Australia but I recall a case a few years ago in which the head of the Vincentian Order was arrested amid huge publicity, for supposedly molesting a student 20 years previously. He was released when he was able to prove that he was not on the Australian subcontinent at the time in question. (If he had been, perhaps he would have been convicted?). There was a similar case in Cornwall, Ontario (Canada) when a number of nutcases accused practically every prominent citizen of the town of belonging to a paedophile ring. NATURALLY this included the then Bishop and it's not entirely unsurprising that he had not been Bishop, nor in the diocese, at the relevant time.

There have been several allegations against Bishops in Ireland, some so ludicrous that they embarrassed our anti-clerics. I summarised them here:
8 Falsely Accused Bishops - The Innocent Who Merit an Explanation
Note that three former Archbishops were accused. There are only four Archbishops on the island of Ireland so I await an allegation against the Archbishop of Tuam (present or past). Cynicism is the daughter of Hysteria and cynicism is all we will be left with when this wave of hysteria finally runs its course. REAL victims of child abuse will find it very difficult to be taken seriously then.

CONCLUSION: "Stolen Generations" of Children?

Jack Richards is no friend of the Catholic Church and Ireland has no real equivalent of Australian aboriginals. However some of what he says about the supposedly "Stolen Generation" of aboriginal children does resonate in this country. I am thinking about the allegations of "child abuse on an industrial scale" in residential schools and also the hysteria about the Tuam babies supposedly buried in a cess pit.

Jack Richards writes:
In 1962 I attended a public school in outback NSW [New South Wales] with a large Aboriginal cohort. There was a half-caste girl who was captured and carted away by welfare. She lived on the banks of the Lachlan River in a hollow under a sheet of corrugated iron. Being a "yella fella" she was rejected by the (racist) full bloods. She stank to high heaven, had head lice, scabies, impetigo and was malnourished - but the worst affliction was an untreated suppurating ear infection that had become fly-blown. You could see the maggots crawling in the oozing pus. She was about 10 years old and was regularly molested by bucks of all ages. She was taken away to the Far West Children's home - a hospital in the salubrious Sydney suburb of Manly where she was treated for those diseases as well as her gonorrhoea. About a year later she came back.

She's still in the same town and is now an Aboriginal activist who claims to have been "stolen"!!!!! Her life was saved, she was cured of loathsome diseases and parasites and brought back to health from the edge of death, and yet she claims she was carted away by evil whites; indeed she was "stolen" from a loving family! The truth is, her mother was a drunken whore who'd sell herself for a bottle of beer and her father was unknown and no-one in the tribe gave a shit about her. The only people who did were the white welfare officers. .........

You see, the truth is a bit hard to confront. Like that girl I knew at school 53 years ago, it would be a very difficult thing to admit that your mother was a drunken prostitute who had no idea who your father was - just some anonymous white drifter who paid his shilling - and that your "tribe" didn't want you or care about you. It's much easier to believe that evil whites stole you so as to remove you from your "culture" and drove off your father who really loved you.

Well perhaps the aboriginal girl's very difficult childhood provides at least a partial excuse. But what about the Irish journalists who publish allegations of child murder at a time when no child died, or the politician who brings down a government by inventing a tale of a conspiracy between an Archbishop and an Attorney General to protect a paedophile priest?

Monday, October 23, 2017

Are There Very Few False Allegations of Rape and Child Abuse? [2]

Colm O'Gorman, Executive Director of Amnesty International Ireland

This is a follow up to my original article
Are There Very Few False Allegations of Rape and Child Abuse? [1]
(The first two paragraphs below are adapted from the original article. )

Colm O'Gorman and the Insignificance of False Allegations.

Colm O'Gorman is dismissive of the idea that false allegations of rape or child sex abuse, constitute a significant problem. He wrote in the Irish Times on 29 March 2006 that:
“In the past few months a number of commentators have suggested that grave injustice is being done to priests falsely accused of child sexual abuse. Such suggestions rightly concern fair minded people, but remarkably, no evidence of any kind has been presented to suggest that false allegations are being made or that the rights of those accused are being abused.”

At the time, Colm O'Gorman was head of the child abuse victims' organisation "One In Four" which he had founded. Two years later, in February 2008 he became Executive Director of Amnesty International Ireland a post he still holds. Evidently Amnesty is in agreement with his views on the non-importance of false allegations!

In response to O'Gorman's March 2006 article, I wrote a letter to the Irish Times. It wasn't published (I didn't expect it to be) but here it is anyway.

Editor
Irish Times

9 April 2006

Madam,
Writing in the Irish Times on 29 March last, the director of "One in Four" Colm O'Gorman made some remarkable statements in an article headed "There is no evidence to show that the rights of those accused have been abused".

Mr O'Gorman stated: "In the past few months a number of commentators have suggested that grave injustice is being done to priests falsely accused of child sexual abuse. Such suggestions rightly concern fair minded people, but remarkably, no evidence of any kind has been presented to suggest that false allegations are being made or that the rights of those accused are being abused."

Did Mr. O'Gorman never hear of the case of Nora Wall, formerly Sister Dominic of the Sisters of Mercy? In 1999 she became the first woman in the history of the State to be convicted of raping a child AND the first person to get a life sentence for rape. She was also the first person to be convicted on the basis of "Recovered Memory Syndrome". (This kind of evidence is very rare in Ireland but has a long and infamous history in the USA).

Nora Wall was convicted on the word of two women Regina Walsh and her "witness" Patricia Phelan, BOTH of whom had made a string of allegations against other people (mainly relatives and boyfriends). The case started to collapse when they sold their story to The Star newspaper and one of the men who had been accused by Patricia Phelan read it and contacted Nora Wall's family. In December 2005 in the Court of Criminal Appeal, Patricia Phelan finally confessed publicly that she had lied.

In the same newspaper article Regina Walsh stated that she had also been raped by a "black man in Leicester Square". Again it was the first the Defence had heard of this allegation.

At the trial Regina Walsh claimed that one of the rapes occurred on her 12th birthday. She said that Nora Wall held her down while Pablo McCabe raped her. Pablo McCabe was in Mountjoy Prison on that date!! When this was pointed out to the jury they acquitted the two accused on that charge but convicted them on the other allegations. I believe that the only reason for this incredible decision is that Nora Wall had been a nun. Does Colm O'Gorman have an alternative explanation?

Mr. O'Gorman might like to look at the Judgement of the Court of Criminal Appeal on the Nora Wall case. It is dated 16 December 2005 and is readily available on the Internet.

But perhaps the Nora Wall case is just an aberration? Consider the following.

There are wild claims that the Christian Brothers and other religious have murdered up to 'hundreds' of the boys in their care. (For example an interview with Mannix Flynn about Letterfrack Industrial School in the Sunday Independent on 22 December 2002). Gardai at Clifden, Co Galway, investigated claims that there were bodies of boys who had died as a result of foul play buried in the grounds of Letterfrack. Early in 2003, the Gardai reported that they had found no evidence to back this up. Superintendent Tony O'Dowd said: "There was no evidence available that would suggest that foul play led to the deaths of anybody buried inside or outside of the cemetery at the old Industrial School in Letterfrack." He added: "There was no evidence of a mass grave."

Then there was the case of former Letterfrack resident, Willie Delaney. His body was exhumed in April 2001 because of claims that he had died as a result of head wounds inflicted by a Christian Brother. The subsequent autopsy revealed that he had died from natural causes and that there was no evidence of a blow to the head.

The list goes on. Patrick Flaherty, who spent some years in the Holy Family School in Renmore, Co Galway said he made two allegations against members of the Brothers of Charity because of 'false memory syndrome'. He later withdrew the allegations. He has also said that while attending a public meeting of the Laffoy Commission in 2003 he overheard other former residents discussing among themselves whether or not to accuse a particular Brother. Some in the group said the Brother had never abused anyone. Others said he should be accused anyway.

The evidence of Patrick Flaherty was not widely reported in the media (I saw it in the Irish Independent on 1st November 2003 and nowhere else). However as head of "One in Four", surely Colm O'Gorman should be aware of it?

There is no way that Mr. O'Gorman can have missed the allegations about the "killing" of Willie Delaney. The media screamed obscenities at the Christian Brothers. About 20 April 2001, Evening Herald posters were all over the streets of Dublin proclaiming "Now it's Murder Enquiry". Then the autopsy report was published and the entire media dropped the story like a shot. Yet this was a Blood Libel against the Christian Brothers which was no different from Nazi Blood Libels about the Jews.

Did Colm O'Gorman have anything to say at the time? Will he say something now? How can he possibly maintain that "no evidence of any kind has been presented to suggest that false allegations are being made or that the rights of those accused are being abused."

Yours etc.

Rory Connor

NOTES:
(1) I was so sure that the Irish Times would not publish this letter that I sent it to Mr. O'Gorman on the same day saying that I did not expect publication and requesting his comments. Maybe he would care to give them now?

(2) I forgot to include the case of Waterford priest Fr Michael Kennedy. In January 2006 i.e. only two months before O'Gorman's statement, two brothers were convicted of trying to extort money from the priest by threatening to make false allegations of child abuse against him.

Colm O'Gorman and the Catholic Church

There was a discussion on the Politics.ie website in May 2009 at the time Colm O'Gorman published his biography 'Beyond Belief'. Naturally I contributed!

In reply to a comment that "It's hard to be very critical of someone who has suffered like that, even when you disagree on the most basic point, as you always have some sympathy", I wrote

I am not so sure about that. The following is part of an interview Colm O'Gorman did with Emily Hourihane in the Sunday Independent today [10 May 2009] - entitled 'The Man Who Faced His Demons'

In 'Beyond Belief', O'Gorman writes, bleakly, "there were two men living in our village who hurt children ... they raped and abused ... I was one of the children they hurt." When I ask him now how this could have happened, why he was not better protected, he responds, "because I was five at a time when this wasn't possible. It was 1971, child sexual abuse didn't exist. I didn't have anything like the level of understanding to know what was happening to me. And at that age, one of the things I knew was that grown-ups hurt you when you'd been bad. So my experience of adults who hurt me, was that they hurt me if it was my fault." ................

When he was seven or eight, an older boy from the area began abusing Colm, abuse which he was by then tragically inured to "accept as normal".

And after that there was Father Sean Fortune who was the FOURTH person to abuse him - at the age of 14. Most people's character and personality are well formed by the time they are 14 years old. I do intend to read the book but it seems strange that Sean Fortune and the Catholic Church should be the sole focus of O'Gorman's human right's campaign.

Perhaps it's because of the power of the Church? In an interview with John Spain in the Irish Independent yesterday [9 May 2009] - entitled 'About a Boy' Colm O'Gorman explains:

"You have to remember the social and political power the priests had at the time." In the book he brilliantly describes the flagrant way Fortune would arrive in the house and be feted with food as he waited for Colm. In every house he visited in the area, O'Gorman remembers, people deferred to him and lavished attention on him. His own parents were no different."

But does that explain how two other men - and a youth - were able to abuse him, long before Father Fortune appeared on the scene? Why has O'Gorman's entire career been based on the behaviour of the fourth male to have abused him?

Colm O'Gorman and Fr Sean Fortune

Comment by 'asset test'
Yes it is strange that the other abuse happened also. The fact that O'G doesn't refer to this much is again, because those people did not have a worldwide protectorate around them like the clergy did. Maybe he now sees that as a one off travesty. However the ability of priests in any parish to do the same with impunity was rampant (not all did of course, but could have).
Institutional cover up is probably the reason for his focus on Fortune.

My Reply to 'asset test'
I wish I could be more charitable. The following is from a Profile of Colm O'Gorman that appeared in The Sunday Times on 30 April 2006 - entitled Profile: Champion for the abused valiantly joins political fray - Times Online

It was July 1984 and Colm O’Gorman wanted to tell his sister that he had been sexually abused by Fr Sean Fortune. But the words wouldn’t come. Instead, he told her he was gay and that he had been having an affair with the priest, a monstrous character who eventually committed suicide in 1999 while facing 66 charges of molesting young people. ......When his sister Barbara tracked him down [in Dublin] in 1984, he had found a job in a restaurant and a place to stay. Even though he couldn’t tell her the truth, just telling someone he was gay helped. He became part of the gay scene in Dublin. Previously, when confused about his sexuality, he had thought of himself as “something sick and wrong and evil”, but now this changed. “I will never forget the first time I walked into a meeting and realised, ‘My God, all these people are like me’,” he has said ........

[In London] Things improved in 1994, after he trained as a physical therapist and, for the first time, began to think deeply about his teenage experience.

Word reached him that Fortune was going to celebrate a family wedding, so he didn’t attend. But the priest, according to his sister, was surrounded at the event by a crowd of teenagers. The news triggered O’Gorman into action. He went home, told his father what had happened, and then walked into Wexford garda station and made a statement in March 1995. That action triggered an investigation into Fortune’s activities and led to the uncovering of the widespread sexual abuse in the diocese of Ferns and elsewhere.

Colm O'Gorman was 18 in 1984. According to this article, he was too ashamed to tell his sister that he had been raped by Father Sean Fortune so instead told her he was gay and had an affair with the priest. Am I the only one to see something strange about that scenario? My suggestion: Colm O'Gorman was gay and had been having an affair with Father Fortune!

When O'Gorman denounced Fr Fortune in 1995, the latter was in no position to tell the Gardai that he had been having a sexual affair with O'Gorman prior to 1984. After all, that would have been statutory rape!

This may also explain why Colm O'Gorman finds it so difficult to acknowledge the fact that false allegations of child abuse are a significant problem in Ireland today.

Colm O'Gorman and the Power of the Catholic Church in 1980s Ireland

I wasn't the only one in the Politics.ie discussion to find something strange about Colm O'Gorman's narrative. The following is a comment by 'Utopian Hermit Monk'

Did anyone else hear the interview with Colm O'Gorman on this morning's Tubridy Show? [12 May 2009]link to audio

I caught the second half in the car, but I've just listened to the whole interview (almost 40 minutes).

I have to say that there is something about his story and/or his way of telling it that leaves me uneasy, because I find it very difficult to believe him. He went into detail about being repeatedly abused by a local old fellow when he was five. In spite of this happening repeatedly and, according to himself, having a devastating effect on him, absolutely nobody seems to have noticed that something was wrong. He explains away his parents' failure to notice anything, but he had five siblings, pals, teachers, etc. Apparently, nobody noticed a change in his personality, signs of depression, terror, confusion, etc.

Then, just three years later, as an 8 year old, he was sexually abused by another local - a teenager this time - and, again, nobody noticed.

Then, when he was 14, he had his first encounter with S. Fortune, who enticed him into bed and abused him, only for C.O'G. (after making a cup of tea for himself) to return to bed and, thereafter, allow Fortune to bully him into continuing the abusive relationship.

Later still, aged 17 and studying hotel management at Cathal Brugha Street, he supplemented his finances by working as a male prostitute (still unaware that he was gay - and this in 1984, not 1948!!).

Repeatedly, Colm depicts himself as lurching between exceptional self-possession (e.g., at 14, he decided to 'take charge' of the relation with Fortune, and even started addressing him as 'John' from the night of their first encounter) and exceptional innocence (in Dublin, several years after the Fortune episode, a man in a public toilet invites him back to his place, and Colm is innocent enough to think that there is nothing sinister about this).

Listening to him, I want to believe his account, but I find it impossible to do so. Even when he describes himself in the present as "a very happy man", I can't believe him. It just doesn't ring true. To me, listening to this interview, he comes across as a troubled individual.

At the end of the interview, I was curious to hear him speaking about himself and his partner having adopted children. Not having read the book, I don't understand the legal status of this adoption, but I would imagine it is unusual in Ireland.

Anyhow, I wish him well.

There followed an exchange of views between 'wexfordman' and 'Utopian Hermit Monk'

Comment by wexfordman

Yes, because in the 70's everyone was an expert in spotting children who were victims of abuse, sure you cold spot them a mile away, thats why we were so quick to react to protect the victims and punish the perpetrators