Sunday, January 10, 2016

Labour Councillors Join Mob Harrasment of Innocent Family - CONTINUED

Archbishop Diarmuid Martin - Sins of Omission re Child Sex Abuse

This atrocious story - mobs harassing the family of a man who had a two-decades-old conviction for sex with a minor - gained a certain amount of publicity in 2010 but has now been practically forgotten. If it had occurred 50 years ago, our anti-clerical media would be ranting about it still.

At the time there was a brief but heated controversy on the Politics.ie website - to which I contributed of course. The following contains some  extracts from the discussion

Labour Councillors Join Mob Harassment of Innocent Family

I concluded my own contribution to the discussion in 2010 as follows:

The family have been hounded out of Kilcoole, Redcross, Rathnew and Ashford. I think they are all in the Archdiocese of Dublin which covers most of Co. Wicklow as well. Ashford certainlly is and that is where their house was burned down.

Archbishop Diarmuid Martin has become a great hero of the liberal media because of the way he has dealt with allegations of child sexual abuse. He cannot make a speech without denouncing the evils of abuse and apologising for the way the Church dealt with them in the past. He even put pressure on Bishop Martin Drennan to resign even though NO criticism had been made of him in the Murphy Report. (Like the Wicklow mob, the Archbishop seems to believe in guilt by association.)

Archbishop Diarmuid Martin, John Cooney, Kathy O'Beirne, Bishop Dermot O'Mahony

Would it be too much to ask the Archbishop to condemn the behaviour of the people who hound an innocent mother and her four children? The mob are abusing these innocents. Moreover the hysteria and fanaticism generated by the mob will rebound on real victims of child sexual abuse in the future. Cynicism is what normally follows after Hysteria.


Rory Connor
16 January 2016

LABOUR COUNCILLORS JOIN MOB HARRASSMENT OF INNOCENT FAMILY

[extract from Politics.ie discussion in July 2010]

·         onlyasking
The ugly face of modern Ireland is on show in Wicklow, led by rabble-rousing Labour councillors.
Innocent relatives of a man convicted of a sex offence 18 years ago are being hounded out of Wicklow, with the charge being led by Labour Party councillors. The man was given a suspended six month sentence 18 years ago for 'Unlawful Carnal Knowledge of a Minor'.

This unfortunate family has been run out of a string of locations across Wicklow following mob-protests, culminating in the burning of a local authority house yesterday.
It is my understanding that relatives of convicted criminals are not found guilty through blood association. Indeed, they are entirely innocent unless found guilty. Collective punishments, to my knowledge, are illegal in this state and almost all others.

Labour councillors, having realised the local electoral difficulties they would face through behaving with humanity, compassion and christian or humanist decency, have ditched any hint of such qualities and have aligned themselves with the baying mob. Of course they 'utterly condemn the burning of the house' by fellow-protestors. Yeah, right. The fact that the arson occured while the protestors stood outside the house makes a laughing-stock of such hand-wringing.

Here is an innocent family being hounded from pillar to post. That's an ugly modern manifestation of the dark impulses that lay behind the burning of women as witches a few hundred years ago.
It is simply a disgrace that the party founded by James Connolly would be involved in such a campaign of naked harrassment against a woman and her children who have undoubtedly suffered terribly through the actions of one of their relatives.

Of course I realise that people are concerned for the safety of their children. It would appear that the man at the centre has not re-offended in over 18 ears, and it is also clear that children are at vastly greater risk of being sexually abused within the home than at the hands of strangers.
Would the wife of a man of 80 with a single similar conviction from 60 years ago be chased out of Wicklow? On this evidence, quite possibly. Would it be justifiable? Obviously not.

I daresay some or most of the members of this mob attend church and pretend they are christians. Can they imagine the Christ they pay lip-service to condoning this type of behaviour, or would they imagine him standing against the mob.
Will any member of this family ever be allowed to live in peace? Ever?

This brings disgrace on any elected representative who joins the mob, regardless of what party they represent. So far, Labour has been to the fore in this dark episode.
It's amazing how a sniff of government can infect a political party, putting a sledgehammer through its moral compass.

·        Kilbarry1

Hysteria re Child Abuse

Some people seem to be assuming that while it is wrong to target the family of a former sex offender, it is "understandable" to target the man himself. This man was convicted 18 years ago, given a six months sentence and has not offended since. He has a right to live with his family and they with him. Even if the Council told his family that they would be housed, provided that he did not stay with them, this would be unjust and probably unconstitutional.

A few years ago there was a case in Wales where a policeman Geoffrey Harries was ACCUSED of possessing child pornography. He and his wife were forced out of their home. They went to live with his mother. A "concerned" neighbour then vandalised his car at night. He confronted the man and was stabbed to death. AFTER his death the police put up TV cameras on the outside of the mothers house to protect her from the the "concerned" neighbours. One reader's comment on THAT newspaper story was:
If they place people on bail, for contentious acts, to houses without consulting neighbours, what do you expect Sandra Jones, Swansea

Geoffrey Harries, Daniel Williams, Murdered "Child Porn" Policeman

Anyone who condones mob violence against a real or suspected sex offender is targetting the family as well.

·         Cato
[ Originally Posted by Kilbarry1 
 This man was convicted 18 years ago, given a six months sentence and has not offended since. ]

How do you know that? The most we can say is that he has not been convicted since. You are making a dangerous assumption there given the recidivism rate.

·         Kilbarry1
[ Originally Posted by Oldira1 
What you are saying is that a family should disown their husband/father in order to get a roof over their head? This crime was 18 years ago and surely to God because a person has a past does not mean they should be denied a future. I too am a prent and while I would not be comfortable about a KNOWN sex offender living nearby I would accept it and be watchful. I would be far more worried about an UNKNOWN sex offender living nearby.
No child should ever ever be punished for the actions of a parent
. ]

Council official Catherine Halligan, from the local authority's housing division, gave assurances that the sex offender would not move to the house and that only his partner and four children were to be housed. She said that the "appropriate checks" had been done and that the council had stipulated that the man was to be nowhere near the house. (Sunday Independent 4 July)

Actually it's quite clear that this man's partner and children will not be left alone by the mob even if they DO repudiate him.

I have already referred to the case where a Welsh policeman, accused of having child porn, and his wife were forced to leave their house and move in with his mother. The policeman was then murdered by a "concerned" resident. AFTER his murder the police installed CCTV cameras on the mothers house to protect her from the other "concerned" residents.

Geoffrey Harries, Daniel Williams, Murdered "Child Porn" Policeman

We are dealing with mob violence and hysteria. If these events had occured in 1950s Ireland, Diarmaid Ferriter would have a chapter about it in his book Occasions of Sin: Sex and Society in Modern Ireland (2009). It WILL be written about in future history books but next time it won't be possible to blame the Catholic Church!



·        godot

[ Originally Posted by Cato 
Again,it is possible that he may have re-offended and not come to the attention of the GardaĆ­. He may have led a blameless life since release. We cannot make a definitive statement either way. ]
It's possible you're a paedophile. We cannot make a definitive statement either way.
See the problem with this logic?
·         KingKane
By that logic no one would ever get a council house as they could have committed all kinds of offences but not been caught yet.

·         Kilbarry1
I saw an article by Emer O'Kelly on the subject in the Sunday Independent. The background is that the family wanted to live together, but due to the public hysteria the woman and her 4 children agreed to live seperatly from the man and the woman agreed not to associate with him but this was not enough for the mob and the house was burned down anyway.

Apparently the Labour councillors who put themselves at the head of the mob had no answer when asked if their colleagues in neighbouring counties would be happy to take on responsibility for the family. In fact they had no suggestion as to what should be done.

Innocent should not suffer by association - Analysis, Opinion - Independent.ie

The family wanted to live again as a unit and efforts were made to house them together in Kilcoole, Redcross, and Rathnew. Angry protests from local residents in each village ensured that the efforts were abandoned. In despair, the woman finally told council officials that she was prepared to abandon her hopes of living with her husband in a family unit, provided she and her children could be housed. She even signed an agreement to the effect that she would not have her husband visit her or their children. A house was provided in a housing estate in Ashford.

Last Friday week, her belongings had already been moved into the house when local residents gathered to protest against her being housed. The distressed woman was taken away by ambulance, and her children were removed by relatives. Satisfied, the mob melted away. Two nights later, the house was torched, and all the woman's possessions were destroyed in the fire.

The damage was so severe that the adjoining house had to be evacuated. The tenant was an 88-year-old woman who was distraught and terrified; the house had been renovated and adapted for her at considerable expense to the taxpayer. Now she too is homeless, and the public money spent on her house is down the tubes. 


If this happened in the 1930s, we would still be hearing about it in our history books (by Diarmaid Ferriter and Co) on how the Catholic Church whipped up sexual hysteria and how we are so much more "tolerant" nowadays.

·         Kilbarry1

When I say the Labour Councillors "put themselves at the head of the mob" I mean:

The following night, Wicklow County Council met. Nicky Kelly of Labour proposed a motion that for the future, council members should be informed of all housing allocations 10 days in advance of their implementation. But another Labour councillor, Conal Kavanagh, came up with an even more radical answer to the terrorising of an innocent family, and the destruction of public property. He proposed not merely that sex offenders be removed entirely from the Co Wicklow housing list, but that anyone "they consorted with" should be taken off the list. We're not talking about an internet child-molesting ring here. We're talking about family members who have committed no crime. Not a voice was raised, from any party, against this violation of civil rights. .....

The sex offender in this case, whose offence was 18 years ago, had been assessed by the Granada Institute (which specialises in the treatment of sexual crimes) as "low risk". That's as low as it gets: there is no such thing as "non-risk" for anyone. ......

But his wife and children have committed no offence. Yet Councillor Conal Kavanagh defends his own actions in trying to enshrine in council policy a system that could refuse housing to any family finding themselves in a similar situation in the future. The rights of an innocent family, he says, have to be "balanced" with the general good. And he added that it was "unfair" to expect the council to house the family; .......
Councillor Kavanagh went on to say that the people demonstrating against the housing of this innocent family were not a mob. Councillor Kavanagh met them last week, he says, and they were perfectly reasonable, concerned citizens.

If they were so reasonable, I asked, how did they react when he pointed out that the family had to be housed somewhere. But apparently he didn't point that out to the concerned citizens. But then, his motion, passed on the nod, wants to make housing such a family impossible. How did he feel about his Labour Party colleagues in neighbouring county jurisdictions, I asked. Did he think they would welcome having to deal with a problem which he had made for them? He didn't answer. 


Why was "not a voice was raised from any party" about councillors Kavanagh's vile motion? Presumably because all other councillors believed that to denounce it would cost them votes. The people who burned down the house were not ignorant vandals; they represented the community as did the Labour councillors.



  • Kilbarry1

Originally Posted by magic_norhan 
WTF - The family were actually in a house in Wicklow Town - they were not homeless 
Also - The motion passed Unanimously - ALL parties supported it ]

"ALL parties supported it" but the Labour Party led the mob. I assume that the others did not object because they know that to do so would lose them votes.

Another quote from Emer O'Kelly's article:
One lonely figure stands out as the voice of reason and fairness: Michael Nicholson, the director of services with Wicklow County Council, who called what happened an example of mob mentality, and stands over that remark. 

I appreciate Michael Nicholson's courage but he is NOT a politician and therefore his job is not dependent on the mob. I notice that: 
Environment Minister John Gormley, who would have to endorse this cruel and discriminatory motion in Wicklow before it would be enforceable, has refused to comment. When I contacted his office, I was told that the department has no function in the case until Wicklow County Council lodges a request to alter its current statutory requirement to make it possible to hound the innocent families of sex offenders out of its jurisdiction.

It looks like John Gormley also recognises a vote-loser when he sees one!

  • Kilbarry1

[ Originally Posted by magic_norhan 
Think about this though Wicklowboy - vigilante mobs will make the situation worse - society needs to put these people somewhere , and if they are continually chased out of areas by angry mobs they tend to go underground where things become much, much more dangerous. ]
True but over-stated. This man committed a sex offence 18 years ago that got him a suspended sentence of six months. The Granada Institute has described him as "low-risk" which is the lowest category of risk available. There is no one in the "no-risk" category. The person(s) who burned down the house and endangered an 88 year old neighbour in the process, are a greater danger to society than this man.

Also the people "chased out of areas by angry mobs" include this man's wife and four children. These were also specifically targetted by the Labour party motion as persons who "consorted with" their husband and father.


·         Kilbarry1
[ Originally Posted by Godot  (in reply to Murra)
Right, stick him on the town outskirts - if he wants to abuse minors, he will never think of going for a walk or using transport,ffs.
Anyway you're missing the point, it was his family which was being moved in and are being unfairly targeted. ]

There are 4 children in the family. I think they are aged between 8 and 15. They have been abused by mobs of people who are - by definition - more dangerous to children than this man who was convicted of a sex offence in 1992. And you can imagine the example they are giving to their own children!

Not entirely by co-incidence I came across this article in The Wicklow People dated 14 July
'Bad eggs' making life hell for council estate residents - News, frontpage - Wicklowpeople.ie

RESIDENTS OF a housing estate in Rathdrum are fed up with anti-social behaviour which is making their lives a misery, including allegations of drug dealing, all night parties and fights in broad daylight.

  • Godot 

[ Originally Posted by Murra 
It was crazy for Wicklow Co Council to attempt to house a known sex offender on any council estate, most of which have kids playing about outside. They could surely have found a house on the outskirts of a town or village where there are no children nearby. It's understandable that nobody with kids wants a sex offender near them. ]

Right, stick him on the town outskirts - if he wants to abuse minors, he will never think of going for a walk or using transport,ffs.

Anyway you're missing the point, it was his family which was being moved in and are being unfairly targeted.

  • Murra

[  Originally Posted by Godot 
Right, stick him on the town outskirts - if he wants to abuse minors, he will never think of going for a walk or using transport,ffs.
Anyway you're missing the point, it was his family which was being moved in and are being unfairly targeted. ]

Well, if he did walk in around a council estate - where he had no business - then he would be spotted by people. If he lives there, he'd be in and out all the time.

And it wasn't just his family that were being moved in - he was being moved in with them.


  • Kilbarry1 

[ Originally Posted by Murra View Post
Well, if he did walk in around a council estate - where he had no business - then he would be spotted by people. If he lives there, he'd be in and out all the time.
And it wasn't just his family that were being moved in - he was being moved in with them. ]

Did you even read the previous page of posts including the following quote from the Sunday Independent

The family wanted to live again as a unit and efforts were made to house them together in Kilcoole, Redcross, and Rathnew. Angry protests from local residents in each village ensured that the efforts were abandoned. In despair, the woman finally told council officials that she was prepared to abandon her hopes of living with her husband in a family unit, provided she and her children could be housed. She even signed an agreement to the effect that she would not have her husband visit her or their children. A house was provided in a housing estate in Ashford.

Last Friday week, her belongings had already been moved into the house when local residents gathered to protest against her being housed. The distressed woman was taken away by ambulance, and her children were removed by relatives. Satisfied, the mob melted away. Two nights later, the house was torched, and all the woman's possessions were destroyed in the fire.

The damage was so severe that the adjoining house had to be evacuated. The tenant was an 88-year-old woman who was distraught and terrified; the house had been renovated and adapted for her at considerable expense to the taxpayer. Now she too is homeless, and the public money spent on her house is down the tubes. 


The mob targetted the wife and children AFTER she had agreed to break contact with her husband. The house was burned down AFTER she agreed to that. The Labour motion denying housing to those "who consort with" sex offenders was passed AFTER the house was burned down.

We are living in a sick and hysterical society. If you want to defend that society, then don't try to evade the issue by misrepresenting what is actually happening.


.........
  • Kilbarry1 
[ Originally Posted by FutureTaoiseach
Here is a proposal. How about when sex-offenders are released, they be forced to either live on islands with only their own kind of offenders or leave the State? There could then be no excuse for harrassing their innocent family members as they would no longer be living with the sex-offenders.  ]

Is this a joke? It is a violation of the rights of a wife and children to force them to live apart from their husband and father. In any case the mob threatened the wife and children even AFTER she promised to bar the husband from her home AND they then burned down their house including all of her personal belongings.

I again quote from last week's Sunday Independent:

Last Friday week, her belongings had already been moved into the house when local residents gathered to protest against her being housed. The distressed woman was taken away by ambulance, and her children were removed by relatives. Satisfied, the mob melted away. Two nights later, the house was torched, and all the woman's possessions were destroyed in the fire.

  • merle haggard 
[  Originally Posted by bored and fussy View Post
How did the labour party deal with issues like this in the past. ]

I dont know . Maybe somebody should contact Emmet Stagg and ask him for his opinion .

  • Kilbarry1 
[  Originally Posted by merle haggard View Post
I dont know . Maybe somebody should contact Emmet Stagg and ask him for his opinion . ]

Actually the hysteria about child abuse dates back to 1994 when Pat Rabbittte brought down the Government of Albert Reynolds by falsely suggesting that there was a conspiracy between Cardinal Daly and Attorney General to prevent the extradition of Father Brendan Smyth to Northern Ireland. Not only did Rabbitte get away with it; a special Super-Junior ministry was created for him in the new Government.

See "The Fall of the Government of Albert Reynolds [1994]"
Welcome to IrishSalem.com

There is a Russian proverb "A fish rots from the head" and the Wicklow mob is only copying the behaviour of its betters - except on the street rather than in Dail Eireann.

As for Emmet Stagg, his misadventure in the Phoenix Park was treated with great "compassion" by the media. Labour CREATE witch-hunts; they don't fall victims to them!

  • merle haggard 
[ Originally Posted by Kilbarry1 
Actually the hysteria about child abuse dates back to 1994 when Pat Rabbittte brought down the Government of Albert Reynolds by falsely suggesting that there was a conspiracy between Cardinal Daly and Attorney General to prevent the extradition of Father Brendan Smyth to Northern Ireland. Not only did Rabbitte get away with it; a special Super-Junior ministry was created for him in the new Government.

See "The Fall of the Government of Albert Reynolds [1994]"
Welcome to IrishSalem.com

There is a Russian proverb "A fish rots from the head" and the Wicklow mob is only copying the behaviour of its betters - except on the street rather than in Dail Eireann.

As for Emmet Stagg, his misadventure in the Phoenix Park was treated with great "compassion" by the media. Labour CREATE witch-hunts; they don't fall victims to them! ]

Im still unsure as to what Deputy stagg was up to in the phoenix park but i do know for sure that many of the drug addicted and homeless young kids who were preyed upon by wealthy older men were and are well below the age of consent .

The targetting of innocent family members and children by this mob is child abuse in itself . In my view anyone physically , verbally or emotionally abusing innocent children over a crime they had no hand act or part in should be ineligible for council housing themselves

  •  Kilbarry1 
[ Originally posted by Merle Haggard
I dont know . Maybe somebody should contact Emmet Stagg and ask him for his opinion . ]

[ Originally Posted by Kilbarry1 
... As for Emmet Stagg, his misadventure in the Phoenix Park was treated with great "compassion" by the media. Labour CREATE witch-hunts; they don't fall victims to them!  ]

The following extract from an article by Ryle Dwyer in the Irish Examiner, October 24, 2009 illustrates the above point. Dwyer is celebrating the fact that Irish people are no longer afraid of a "belt of the crozier".

One thing that Donal Ɠg need no longer fear ? a belt of the crozier | Irish Examiner

After Emmet Stagg admitted his gay involvement in Phoenix Park in March 1994, there were a few hours when the public reaction to the story could possibly have gone either way, but Pat Cox courageously took the lead on RTƉ’s Questions and Answers. "All that Emmet Stagg has said in his statement today is that he is a card-carrying member of the human race, and I stand with Emmet Stagg tonight, " Cox declared. It was a bold and courageous stand.

"There is some merciless bastard who let this story out," he added indignantly. "I want the Garda Commissioner to find out and to out who the rat is who brought this out into the public in this demeaning and irresponsible way."

It was a seminal moment in which Pat Cox provided decisive leadership. In his impromptu outrage he advanced the cause of tolerance and true freedom in this republic.
It's wonderful that our politicians don't fear a "belt of the crozier". What a pity the ones in Wicklow are so afraid of the mob that they go along with a Labour motion that denies housing to family members who "consort with" a sex offender.

  •  merle haggard 
As far as i can see the child abusers are the ones who are harassing and terrorising young children . Young children whom the labour party seem to have abandoned . We seem to have gone from Valley of the squinting windows to Valley of the broken windows. I guess thats progress

  • Kilbarry1 
The family have been hounded out of Kilcoole, Redcross, Rathnew and Ashford. I think they are all in the Archdiocese of Dublin which covers most of Co. Wicklow as well. Ashford certainlly is and that is where their house was burned down.

Archbishop Diarmuid Martin has become a great hero of the liberal media because of the way he has dealt with allegations of child sexual abuse. He cannot make a speech without denouncing the evils of abuse and apologising for the way the Church dealt with them in the past. He even put pressure on Bishop Martin Drennan to resign even though NO criticism had been made of him in the Murphy Report. (Like the Wicklow mob, the Archbishop seems to believe in guilt by association.)

Archbishop Diarmuid Martin, John Cooney, Kathy O'Beirne, Bishop Dermot O'Mahony

Would it be too much to ask the Archbishop to condemn the behaviour of the people who hound an innocent mother and her four children? The mob are abusing these innocents. Moreover the hysteria and fanaticism generated by the mob will rebound on real victims of child sexual abuse in the future. Cynicism is what normally follows after Hysteria.

Saturday, January 9, 2016

Moral Panics; Satanic Abuse, Recovered Memory - and Ireland



The following is (another) extract from the discussion following Luke Gittos article "No Justice in a Year of Moral Crusades" in Spiked magazine (22 December 2015).  We had almost no examples of Satanic Ritual Abuse (SRA) in Ireland and - I think - a good deal less Recovered memory than in the UK or the USA. The one partial exception concerning SRA is significant because the lady in question had spent decades in the UK. We Irish have a tendency to blame all our ills on our British neighbours; in the case of Satanic Abuse we may have been right!

Rory Connor
9 January 2016


Avatar


In all this child abuse hysteria, we seem to have forgotten the Cleveland scandal of the late 1980s, when Dr Marietta Higgs and Dr Geoffrey Wyatt removed 121 children from their parents on their diagnosis of rape made on the basis of their 'anal dilation' test. Had they not been fanatics like one of the more conspicuous posters on this thread, they might have troubled themselves to try their test on all children: on this basis, every child in the world would have been raped. We have had similar examples in the Orkneys and Rochdale where social workers and medical personnel were quite frankly deranged, and used the most unscrupulous means to get 'evidence' of abuse.
I once accompanied a single father to hospital--his 4-yr-old son had been with us when we stopped off for a pint. The boy fell off a bar stool and got a severe nose bleed. The father was reluctant to take him into the doctor, because he came from a working class home and he knew how he'd be received. The following day it was pretty obvious the boy's nose was broken, so he took him in to see his GP. Quite predictably, he was ordered to report to the nearest hospital, and he phoned me and asked me to go along. As I was the director of a children's charity, he hoped that they would take me word.
In fact it took a long time before I had a chance to say a word. Nurses and doctors fell upon us like vultures, making no attempt to disguise their glee at finding another 'victim'. The poor kid had his anus examined by three separate doctors--if that isn't child abuse, I'd like to know what is.
Fortunately, the registrar was a young German woman who quite clearly didn't think a lot of her colleagues. At last the father and I had a chance to say what happened. I'm glad to say that she didn't find it necessary to contact the landlord of the pub, who also witnessed the accident.
At around the same time, a friend of mine--an Army Officer--and his wife decided not to take their 9-mo-old son to a doctor after he'd got a second-degree burn. Even 'respectable' middle-class people were terrified of abuse allegations.
Long before this, my sister 'recovered' memories of child abuse and caused great distress in our family. She was so convincing that even I started to wonder if there might be something in it--until she made an allegation that could not possibly have occurred.
Of course, neither I nor anyone else has any evidence to prove how prevalent sexual abuse of children may be. This is all the more reason to let the legal system take its course--and to end the scandalous abuse of family courts, where due process is ignored, and reporting banned. When I was running the children's charity, BBC4's Children's Affairs reporter warned me to stay out of the clutches of social workers: she knew what happens when cases are tried in camera.
Courts of law are not infallible, but the only alternative is anarchy.


    • Avatar


      The late cultural historian Richard Webster suggested to me that the reason Ireland had practically no Satanic Ritual Abuse (SRA) cases was the influence of the Catholic Church and its strong opposition to Freudian ideas. The Church opposed Freudianism because of the implications for Catholic doctrines regarding sin, free will and personal responsibility. Richard Webster was an atheist (NOT of the Dawkins persuasion) but he was also a major critic of Freud and and believed that SRA was a logical development of his ideas.
      Based on what Richard Webster suggested, I developed my own theory that false allegations of child murder in Ireland are our equivalent of SRA - except that in OUR case Freudian delusions are replaced by open lying. (I am thinking in particular of the cases where no child died of ANY cause during the period in question). However I don't know enough about Freud and he didn't know enough about Ireland to prove anything of the sort. It could be a useful subject for a law graduate looking for a doctoral thesis!
      Incidentally the 2008 hysteria about child-killing in Jersey was possibly based on the with-hunt in Ireland re the old industrial school at Letterfrack in Co Galway. Letterfrack is as remote a location in my country as the island of Jersey is vis a vis the UK. Also the Jersey policeman largely responsible was born in Derry!


        • Avatar


          My mother was a disciple of the blessed Sigmund, and when I arrived in England in my late 20s I was relieved to find that Freud worship was a decidedly marginal enthusiasm. I never had the patience to read any of his gospels, and regarded advocates of psychoanalysis as narcissistic obsessives. However, I'm not sure how this could have developed into SRA. It's an interesting theory, and I'd be obliged if you could spell it out. I assume this entails something more than an obsessive antipathy to the church.



            • Avatar


              Sorry I can only provide some limited guidance. Richard Webster's website is still maintained by his friends and includes several of his articles on Freud.
              http://www.richardwebster.net/
              I find the theory behind his thesis difficult to understand. I think he is saying that modern society thought it had dispensed with the concepts of Sin, Evil and the Devil but that Freud was a kind of secular Messiah who brought them back in secular form. One of my difficulties with Webster's THEORY is that he emphasizes that Freud re-established the Christian doctrine of Original Sin. However that doctrine states that evil is a basic - although not dominant - element in human nature and that therefore we are all sinful. I would have thought that this doctrine works AGAINST the modern tendency to see child sex abusers as sub-human vermin. Evil is within us and we are not going to eradicate it by transferring our guilt and demonizing any section of humanity no matter how nasty their behaviour.
              From a pragmatic point of view however, I think that Webster's theory has a lot to be said for it. Ireland is much influenced by American and British culture. Yet we had practically no trace at all of the Satanic Ritual Abuse hysteria. I can think of only one partial exception. That was in relation to the "Dalkey House of Horrors" case, where evidently real allegations of abuse were mixed up with some fantasies - including a hint of SRA.
              http://www.alliancesupport.org...
              Two psychologists today told Dublin County Coroner Dr Kieran Geraghty that they were in no doubt that Cynthia Owen had been raped and gave birth to a baby that had been murdered.
              The inquest heard the 45-year-old told Dr Dawn Henderson that she had been the victim of satanic abuse and also mentioned a paedophile ring, details of which she did not want disclosed at the hearing.
              The lady in question was born in Ireland but spent decades in the UK - which I think is very significant. I suspect that the absence of SRA here (and the lesser role of Recovered Memory compared to the US and UK) is due to the influence of the Catholic Church. OK this does not constitute scientific proof but I still think that it might provide a thesis for a law student to investigate