Tag: Journalism (Page 6 of 14)

A Savage Animal

20th July 2009 / Abigail / 0 Comments

Gerald Barry was today facing a life sentence for the second time this year. He is already serving a mandatory life sentence for the murder of Swiss student Manuela Riedo in Galway in September 2007.

Today we heard, in chilling detail, how just eight weeks previously he had brutally raped a 21-year-old French student. There were haunting similarities between the two attacks and the graphic account given by the first victim must to some extent mirrored how Manuela spent her final hours.

The victim of the rape, a few years older than the Swiss girl, had been out with friends that night. At the end of the night, not being able to find a taxi, she decided to walk home. As she was walking through the Mervue area of Galway she passed a man. A few steps later she realised he was following her.

Barry grabbed her by her hair and pressed something she thought was a knife to her throat. Then he dragged her into the grounds of a local GAA club and subjected her to a horrific rape.

He repeatedly both orally and anally raped her while he threatened to kill her if she tried to escape. During the attack he also asked her if she was enjoying it. After the final anal rape he saw that she was bleeding and told her “Hey, you’re bleeding. Great.”

In a victim impact statement read to the court the student, who was not present in court, said she was still coming to terms with what had happened to her. She said that she was receiving counselling but could only get as far as the moment Barry had grabbed her because the memory of the rape itself was still too painful.

She called Barry a predator, “He is not a human or a man. He is a liar, a rapist and a murderer. I beg you not to let him out because he will do it again.” The woman said that she still felt very insecure whenever anyone came up behind her or touched her back or her neck.

She told gardai that she could not work out why she was still alive, why Barry hadn’t killed her as he would later kill Manuela. “I am surprised that I am still alive. Why was I let go? Why I am still breathing?”

The woman also criticised media coverage of her ordeal. She said “It happened to me, not to them” and said that the media did not understand the harm they did to others. I’ve noticed that line has not been widely reported by my colleagues. We don’t listen to these details or write them up for some kind of gratuitous entertainment. The public have the right to know that animals like Barry walk around and do harm to people. If we gloss over the details of their crimes we absolve them of the full horror of their actions.

Barry is undoubtedly a menace to society. If people don’t know what he is capable of then they might not see quite how much of a menace he actually is.

Less than two months after he had raped the now 23-year-old woman he was to murder Manuela Riedo. Then he would also have been visiting an ex girlfriend. He would also make a pretense that the encounter was consensual, although in Manuela’s case he said this to gardai – we will never know if he aid as much to his victim.

Gardai were still investigating the rape when Manuela took her final walk home. The rest is tragically known.

Judge Paul Carney has asked whether he has the option of imposing a life sentence, the very highest sentence allowable for the very worst kind of rape. He will pass his sentence on Friday in Galway. It remains to be seen just how severe a sentence he hands down.

A Dangerous Recidivist

15th July 2009 / Abigail / 0 Comments

Simon McGinley was sentenced to 21 years in jail today at the Central Criminal Court. His crime was a horrific attack on an 86-year-old woman, who he raped after breaking into her house in the middle of the night. 21 years is an extraordinarily long sentence for rape in an Irish court but McGinley was no ordinary rapist.

He had appeared before the Central Criminal Court before and the crime he was accused of then caused the “C” case controversy when his 13-year-old victim, who had been taken into care after she became pregnant from the rape, had to apply to the courts to travel for an abortion.

Miss C was in the court today to see the man whose children she had once babysat, who had only been sentenced to six years for what he did to her twelve years ago, sentenced for this latest crime.

Through the sheer range in the ages of his victims, McGinley showed himself to be a dangerous predator who had shown no sign of reform. Although he was sentenced to 21 years he will not serve the full term as Irish sentences include an automatic 25% remission as a carrot to encourage good behaviour in jail. But Mr Justice George Bermingham’s decision to hand down such a long sentence is definitely a step in the right direction.

Depressingly the six year sentence he was given for his earlier crime is more or less the norm for rape sentences in this country. I’ve talked about this before on this blog and no doubt it will be a subject I return to as long as sentences for rapes here remain so pitifully short. It’s worth noting that in the past, people who have raped children younger than 13 on numerous occassions have received sentences of a few years, or, as in the case of Philip Sullivan, have had a weighty sentence reduced by the Court of Criminal Appeal in January this year.

McGinley has shown no remorse. As he was brought out to the prison van past the waiting photographers today he turned to the cameras and said “I’m innocent. I did not do this.” This was in the face of over whelming DNA evidence. It will be very interesting indeed to see how he fares on appeal.

If someone who has committed two such terrible crimes and continues to show no remorse or acknowledge what he has done does not warrant the life sentence, then how bad does a rape have to be to get it? Getting a young teenager pregnant only warranted six years. Isn’t it time that these sentences were looked at and minimum sentences introduced? 21 years was a good length but it shouldn’t be so rarely applied. Rape is a serious enough crime to be tried in the Central Criminal Court – the sentences should reflect that. Most rapists get less than people who are tried on certain drugs offences…in the Circuit Criminal Court.

With new legislation being passed through both houses of the Oireachtas recently that deals with “gangland” crime, surely they could have looked at an area of offending that has been needing reform for years. Judges like Mr Justice Bermingham and Mr Justice Carney are attempting to hand down tougher sentences but they do tend to get reduced on appeal. McGinley deserved his sentence but there are others who have been guilty of equally brutal crimes who have and will serve far fewer years. Something will have to change.

The Maximum Penalty

10th July 2009 / Abigail / 2 Comments

Ronnie Dunbar was sentenced to life imprisonment today. He had been convicted back in May of the killing of Sligo teenager Melissa Mahon. The girl was only 14 when she died, a tragic kid on a fast track to nowhere. She had turned to Dunbar for safety, a father figure, a knight in shining armour who could take the unhappy 14-year-old away from everything she was running from.

To Melissa, Dunbar was someone she idolised. He was someone who could save her from demons, take her away from the parents she had accused of abusing her, who didn’t treat her like a little girl. To the world today, Dunbar is a killer. The man who took a fragile, vulnerable wisp of a thing and snuffed out her life.

He was convicted back in May of manslaughter, after the jury deliberated over three days after a complex six week trial, full of contradictions and unanswered questions. The only account of Melissa’s death came from the evidence of Dunbar’s own daughters. Samantha Conroy and her little sister, who can’t be named for legal reasons, didn’t agree on everything but they both agreed that their father had killed their friend.

They both told the court that Melissa had been dumped in the River Bonnet, wrapped in a sleeping bag, a method of disposal, as the judge said today, “not befitting an animal”.

A life sentence for manslaughter is highly unusual. No-one on the press benches today could remember the last time one had been handed down. Even Judge Barry White, who imposed the sentence, referred to a life sentence of penal servitude, suggesting that the last case he had been looking at was pre 1997 before the law was changed to read “life imprisonment”.

However he said today that this was a case which merited the highest sentence possible. Dunbar had preyed on a vulnerable child and had shown no remorse whatsoever. He had concealed the body until all that was left for the State Pathologist to examine was a small pile of bones. The fragile fleshy parts that would show the traces of a violent death were long gone so there could be no cause of death.

Barry White speculated that this may have been a factor in the jury reaching the verdict of manslaughter rather than murder.

Dunbar didn’t react as the sentence was read out. He was wearing the same blue tracksuit he was wearing on Monday, his numerous tattoos almost entirely hidden. Only the smaller designs on his head were visible, a cross with three stars around it on his neck. The screaming skull, perhaps the one he had told his young daughters that could catch ghosts and demons could not be seen, neither could the more conventional “Mum & Dad” and “I Love Sligo” ones.

The Mahon family, who had been attending in force throughout the trial were noticeably absent today. The two benches where they had sat through day after day of gruesome forensic evidence occupied today by the press and the gardai. Only Leanna, the closest to Melissa in age and the closest in life, crept into the back of the courtroom as the judge took his seat, standing behind the public benches with her boyfriend’s arms tightly around her.

She looked shocked as the half expected sentence was read out and ducked quickly out, away from the reporters who pushed forward to talk from her. There were rumours through the press benches that the family would not talk after their silence had been secured by a certain paper. We’ll just have to wait and see.

It was nice to see Leanna there. Poor little Melissa deserved to have someone there for her but it was understandable that her parents had decided not to show after the pillorying they received from the judge on Monday. He revisited the subject again today, stressing that he hadn’t been including Melissa’s brothers and sisters in his criticism but underlining the fact that if the victim impact statement wasn’t treated with respect it would become worthless and not serve the victims, the common good or justice itself.

So tonight Dunbar is looking at a very lengthy spell inside. He will be facing other charges in the near future as well, so no doubt it won’t be out of sight out of mind. This was a very nasty and very mucky case. One of the bleaker stories to run through the courts.

I’m looking forward to moving onto something else.

Victim Impact Statements Hit a Nerve

6th July 2009 / Abigail / 1 Comment

Ronnie Dunbar’s trial was always going to be contentious. Whenever a grown man is accused of harming a young girl feelings run high. Dunbar was found guilty of the manslaughter of Melissa Mahon at the end of a six week trial in May. Her family reacted angrily to the verdict and there was certainly surprise at the jury’s decision in some quarters. They came to their conclusion after hearing the evidence in the trial and after due deliberation and there is nothing anyone can say or do about that.

Well the jury have done their job and today, at the sentence hearing all attention was on the trial judge Mr Barry White who must decide the length of sentence Ronnie Dunbar will now serve. The Mahon family were out in force. Melissa’s parents, Freddie and Mary Mahon sat together as they had through most of the trial. Eight of their nine children surrounded them in the packed courtroom.

During the trial the family had come under certain criticism with evidence that Mary Mahon had a somewhat volatile relationship with her youngest daughter and had initially been less than forthcoming with gardai investigating her disappearance. She had told them that Melissa was staying with family in the UK when they came looking for hints about where the vulnerable 14-year-old had vanished to in September 2006. She refused to tell them who had told her Melissa might be in the UK and also refused to give a statement, saying that Melissa’s disappearance was the responsibility of the HSE from whose care she had been lost.

Today Mr Justice Barry White said that he found the victim impact statement Mary had prepared to be “disingenuous in the extreme”. He told prosecuting counsel Isobel Kennedy that he could not prevent her from reading it out but asked that evidence of the Mahon’s family’s attitude towards the investigation be read into the record.

The witness impact statement was duly read to the court. Mary Mahon had filled out the standard form succinctly giving details of the physical effects of Melissa’s disappearance and death. In blunt language she had put that she herself had been depressed from a very early stage in the investigation and had tried to take her own life by taking an overdose. Her husband had saved her but would not now allow pills into the house. She said that her two youngest daughters had turned to self harm and had received treatment from their local GP although she herself had preferred to deal with the trauma in her own way without seeking medical attention.

In the brief statement she said that the whole situation had an emotional effect on the entire family both in England and Ireland. “My whole life is gone. She was my baby. Our whole life has been torn apart by the loss of our baby Melissa.”

Mr Justice White had already asked the DPP to find similar cases that could help him determine a sentence in a case involving such a vulnerable youngster. Isobel Kennedy told him that there had been no cases quite like this one but listed several familiar names, most notably Wayne O’Donohue, the teenager who was convicted of the manslaughter of 11-year-old Robert Hollohan in January 2006. O’Donoghue was sentenced to four years in prison.

Dunbar’s defence team say that the O’Donoghue case has the greatest similarity to their client’s plight and senior counsel Brendan Grehan has repeatedly mentioned the issue of involuntary manslaughter, although no evidence was produced during the trial outlining how Melissa Mahon’s accidental death could have occurred. Today Mr Grehan repeatedly objected to Ms Kennedy’s reading of certain areas of evidence from the trial, areas that had been meant to prove motive for the murder charge discounted by the jury.

The prosecution, on the other hand, were happier to liken Dunbar’s actions in the aftermath of Melissa’s death (as described by his two younger daughters during the trial) to the bloody cover up of the Scissor Sisters after they had killed their mother’s Kenyan lover.

The defence were unhappy with the comparison to such a high profile murder conviction and Brendan Grehan told Judge White that a judge could not hand down a sentence that undermined a jury’s decision.

Technically, manslaughter can carry the same sentence as murder, that of life in prison. But Mr Justice White will have to determine his sentence according to a complex system of checks and balances, case law and legal precedent. It was perhaps not particularly surprising that he postponed the sentence until the end of the week. Ronnie Dunbar will now have to wait until Friday morning to learn his fate.

Speaking to reporters outside the Four Courts Melissa’s parents voiced their anger at the judges comments on Mary Mahon’s victim impact statement.

Mary and Freddie Mahon are not expected to be in court to see the man convicted of their daughter’s killing sent to jail but other members of the family plan to attend.

Of Gangs and Justice…

30th June 2009 / Abigail / 0 Comments

Today Dermot Ahern published the Criminal Justice (Amendment) Bill 2009. It’s the latest in a series of changes to criminal justice laws here in Ireland that have been published in the last couple of weeks.

Last month the minister published the Criminal Procedure Bill 2009 with removes the Double Jeopardy rule, under which a person cannot be tried twice for an offence for which they have been acquitted. Under the proposed legislation there will be three exceptions to the rule; where new evidence becomes available, where a trial was “tainted” by intimidation of witnesses and perjury and where a judge gave a mistaken ruling on a point of law which subsequently led to an acquittal.

It’ll be very interesting to see if any familiar faces appear again in court if this legislation is passed. There have been a couple of high profile murder acquittals in the past couple of years which I’m sure the gardai and the DPP would love to revisit if they can.

Today’s publication deals with another highly contentious issue – that of organised crime. With gang violence a major problem in modern Ireland, gangland murder trials have become a fairly common occurrence. You can always tell when there’s one coming up on a Monday morning because Court 1 suddenly has a garda checkpoint outside it and everyone’s bags are checked and pockets emptied.

Defendants like Gary Campion, convicted in April of the murder of “Fat” Frankie Ryan. Campion is connected with the Dundon McCarthy gang in Limerick and was convicted in November 2007 of the murder of bouncer Brian Fitzgerald. Both these trials took place in Cloverhill Courthouse, a court where increased security is easier to arrange than in the historic Four Courts complex.

Under the new bill, which the Minister hopes to get passed into law before the Dail rises for the summer, those accused of gang crime, where there was a major problem with witnesses or juries being intimidated, could be tried by judge alone in the Special Criminal Court.

At the moment, the Special Criminal Court is reserved for paramilitary or terrorist crimes. The idea of extending it’s use to include those involved in criminal gangs is not a new one. Previous justice minister Michael McDowell had mooted it and there have been one or two of these cases tried there already.

In 1996, Brian Meehan, the only person tried for the murder of journalist Veronica Guerin, was convicted to life in the Special Criminal Court. But there has always been a lot of opposition to the idea on the basis of civil liberties. Almost as soon as it was published the Irish Council for Civil Liberties accused the bill of “trampling on the rule of law”.

I’ve heard arguments on both sides for the use of the Special Criminal. I must admit though that when you’ve sat through a trial where witness after witness will barely admit to their name on the stand or changes their story at the last minute it’s easy to see the sense in a trial where gardai will be permitted to give evidence of what was claimed in these cases. After all, is there that big a difference between some of the trials that have gone through the Special for those members of an “illegal organisation” and the facts of some of the cases that now take place under the gangland banner.

I remember being taught about the Diplock courts when I studied in Northern Ireland. We were told that all offences that involved firearms were treated as “scheduled offences” and could be tried in the Diplocks.

I’m sure that we’ll hear all the arguments for and against the changes in the law when the legislation is debated in the next few weeks. It’ll be a very interesting one to keep an eye on.

The Jury Bites Again

26th June 2009 / Abigail / 0 Comments

All this week I’ve been working through a paper edit of The Novel. The next stage is to add all the changes into the actual document and write a few extra bits and pieces that need to be worked in. I’ve been working pretty intensively, far faster than I would have if I was writing a draft or actually typing up changes. It means that I’ve been totally zoned out for the whole week. I resurfaced long enough to notice that Michael Jackson had died, at some stage last night but apart from that…

Because I’ve been working with a hard copy of The Novel I haven’t been on-line much at all for the past few days, with the result that this blog has suffered somewhat. I didn’t, for example comment on Wednesday about Monica Leech being awarded record libel damages against the Evening Herald.

For any readers not familiar with the story, Ms Leech is a PR woman who worked in an extremely well paid capacity for the Department of the Environment. This was back in 2002 and 2003, when the Government purse strings were not quite so tightly knotted. Things blew up in 2004 when several papers printed articles suggesting that she had only got the contract because she was having an affair with the then Minister.

There have been several libel actions in the wake of these claims. In 2007 she won €250,000 after allegations against her voiced by a caller to the Liveline show on RTE radio. She failed to successfully sue the Irish Independent for printing the allegations from the show. Last November she was awarded €125,000 against the Irish Mail and the Mail on Sunday.

This week was the daddy of all awards. A High Court jury awarded her…wait for it…€1.9 million against the Evening Herald.

Now in Ireland, a jury in a libel trial can name a figure they think should be awarded to the complainant. It’s not like the UK, where the judge gives them a ball park figure and they make their decision around that.

Being accused of having an affair in the national press might be a deeply traumatic experience, especially if it’s not true but is the damage worse than, say, someone who has been paralysed in a horrific car accident, or someone disabled for life after a problem at their birth? With the proceeds from her various actions Ms Leech now has enough money to avoid the media spotlight for quite a while should she choose to.

€1.9 million is an extremely large figure and one can’t help see it as highly punitive rather than simply a reparation for harm caused. There has been a lot of comment this week about the size of the award and what it means for the Irish media.

It does seem ridiculous that in a criminal trial a judge imposing a sentence for a crime that does not automatically carry a life sentence must come up with the term according to strict guidelines. Each sentence must be decided along a sliding scale of seriousness within the definition of the offence. The judge must arrive at a figure then take into account any mitigating circumstances that would lessen the term. If he doesn’t arrive at a sentence this way there is a pretty good chance it will simply be overturned on appeal.

However, a libel judge doesn’t have any sliding scale. There may well be one but he doesn’t share it with the jury who are sitting in judgement. So twelve people who have probably never set foot in a court of law before are allowed to come to a decision unfettered by any rules or case law.

I’ve written in the past here about some of the bizarre things juries can get up to. I’ve seen them fail to reach a unanimous decision when both sides of barristers were in absolute agreement (a case of not guilty of murder by reason of insanity for a classic paranoid schizophrenic). There have been numerous occasions when a verdict has come as a shock and I’ve wondered if I was sitting in the same trial as those twelve.

Yet this unpredictable beast is let loose when it comes to civil damages. All their prejudices against the media are left to run riot when they are not allowed to when a person’s liberty is at stake. I know that a jail term is different from a fine and a criminal trial is very different from a civil one but a jury is a jury.

I’m not saying that Monica Leech wasn’t wronged against or that certain sectors of the press might have pushed the story further than they should but lottery sized libel wins don’t help. They just weaken the press. Stories that need to be reported go uncommented on. The threat of such massive payouts will frighten papers into inaction.

Any country needs a strong press. Of course it should be an ethical press but it shouldn’t be afraid to pursue stories that might upset the great and good. Because sometimes the great and good are doing things to the public detriment. That’s what the press are for…and there’s been plenty of evidence in Ireland how much we need one like that.

Preparing to Get Back to Work…Again

14th June 2009 / Abigail / 1 Comment

Tomorrow it’s back to work after a couple of weeks off that gave me a taste of a possible summer to come. As I’ve already said here I’m planning to finish my first novel over the summer break from the courts and I’m looking forward to the different pace that working on fiction requires.

Tomorrow though it’s back to the Monday List. The trial I’ll be there for is Thomas Barrett, from Kerry. He’s accused of killing father and son, Michael and Denis Hanrahan. 60-year-old Mr Hanrahan and 27-year-old Denis were found shot dead at their home in Moyvane, Co Kerry in March last year.

It’s a case I’ve been hearing about since it happened (given my line of work I tend to keep tabs on murder investigations – it doesn’t tend to endear you to people at dinner parties!). Over the past year, I’ve heard various rumours – working somewhere with a mix of journalists, barristers and gardai you hear all sorts of gossip about things that might concern any of us in the future and during the prolonged periods of waiting that are part of the judicial process gossip has a habit of spreading.

None of it’s more than gossip of course until the day the trial starts and we hear the opening speech from the prosecution where they outline their case. So tomorrow I’ll find out if the case is going to go ahead as planned and how long it’s going to last, also how big a story it’s likely to be.

So tomorrow is the moment of truth and I’ll find out whether I’m working for a few days, a week or even a fortnight. Tonight I’m just waiting and changing gear again. The lazy mornings with the manuscript and a red pen in the back garden will have to be postponed for the moment. It’s back to the day job.

A Brief Visit to Hear a Prohibition

11th June 2009 / Abigail / 0 Comments

I’ve been off work for the past week and a half…engaged with other things than court matters (a wedding anniversary among other things) but I was back in court this morning briefly. The Central Criminal Court isn’t fully back from it’s break until next Monday but there are various bits of court business to take care of in the mean time.

Today, and the reason for my attendance was Eamonn Lillis. If the name doesn’t ring an immediate bell and you’re in Ireland I’ll refresh your mind about the case. Lillis’s wife, Celine Cawley – a former model who had once appeared briefly in a James Bond Film – was found brutally murdered in December last year.

It was a case always guaranteed to get the press pulses racing…apart from the Bond connection the deceased had run a film production company together. Newspaper reports at the time went into detail of the crime and her background almost gleefully speculating that she had met her death at the hands of a random assailant.

But days later, her husband was arrested and will now stand trial in January. It will be a big trial and get a lot of attention. These cases always do. Already today, his defence team expressed their concern about the media attention the case was receiving. There were only four of us in court – when the trial begins there will be considerably more.

Lillis came into court looking serious in a neat dark suit. During the short proceedings he sat alert in the bench opposite the jury box, where he will watch his trial in several months time. Before the defence could make their point the prosecution stood up to apply for a court order.

The order was simple, Eamonn Lillis was forbidden from any contact with one of the prosecution witnesses in the case. The matter was over in a matter of minutes. The order granted to the prosecution, no comment made on the media attention.

It’s all in waiting until next year when it will become the main event. These are just the points that get us there.

A National Shame

10th June 2009 / Abigail / 4 Comments

Thousands of people took to the streets of Dublin today to show their outrage at the abuse meted out by the Catholic Church in institutions over the years. Once the crowds had assembled outside Leinster House where the politicians were arguing about the worth of the Government, stories were told of how the abuse wrecked lives and calls were made for belated justice.

I’m ashamed to say I wasn’t with the marchers. The husband was, that’s his photograph at the top of this post. I was working on editing the book, sitting in a favourite hideaway where I can work in the centre of town in peace and quite. This afternoon there was another sound that drowned out the buzzing of the bees, from Kildare Street a good ten minutes walk away I could hear the speakers at the march. Their voices carried through megaphones, bounced between buildings, came through the air in a strange ebbing echo, fragments of their stories reaching me on the wind while the shouts of the massive crowd were only a murmur. This is as it should be. Their stories should ring out across town and the whole country should hang their heads in shame at the hurt and harm that so many children and pregnant women had to undergo at the hands of a too powerful church.

The first time I personally became aware of the scale of the abuse was when my mother was cast as the head nun in Louis Lentin’s 1996 documentary Dear Daughter. She was staying with me while the series was filmed and told me about visiting the old Golden Bridge orphanage with some of the women who had suffered so horrifically there. One of them, Christine Buckley, whose story Dear Daughter followed, is in the photograph above, in the front row of protesters.

My mother told me about the first day of filming, when she was in her nun’s costume for the first time. She got ready for her entrance at the top of a flight of stairs. The women who had once been inmates of that grim place were standing in the hall below watching the shot. She told me that as she came down the stairs as Sister Xavieria, the woman who had been in charge of Goldenbridge in the 1950s, the women all gasped and became visibly upset. The similarity was far too great, the memories too vivid.

Dear Daughter came three years before the infamous States of Fear series which detailed the abuse suffered by the children who had been sent to the infamous industrial schools. It told of horrendous abuse perpetrated by the Sisters of Mercy nuns on the children in their care.

But now 13 years later we are still being shocked at the details of that abuse. Every time there is another report further details of the cruel, sick, inhumane treatment suffered by some of the most vulnerable citizens of this country, come out and the people react with horror, as they should. But in those thirteen years very little progress has been made. The story just keep getting bigger and bigger, with more and more victims hurt by a church that should never have been allowed to have such a stranglehold on the country as a whole.

When the Ferns Report was published, detailing more than 100 allegations of child abuse in a single diocese, the same noises were made and the same outrage expressed. Now we have the Ryan Report which goes into institutional abuse across the whole country but still there is a lack of decisive action on the part of the Government. How many abusers are still walking free and how many victims still waiting for closure and justice?

The fact that one organisation, the Catholic church, was so twisted and corrupt as to allow and condone such wholesale abuse of the people in their care, is horrifying. The fact that the State still seems to show deference to the religious rather than ordering them to face up fully to what they have done, is even worse. There is something very, very wrong with a country in which a slavish subservience to those in power means blind eyes will be turned to whatever abuses the powerful ones choose to get up to. Whether you are talking about the religious orders who had care of the countries children or the likes of Dr Michael Shine, struck off last year for abusing youngsters, there are those who will gather round them protectively, looking up to the priest or the doctor in adoration and hearing no ill.

Surely it’s time that justice was finally doles out? There is no excuse, no mitigation to what these people did. The laws of the land still apply. But instead of being cast out, the religious are treated as a special case. They were handed a ludicrously sweet deal when it came to compensating their victims and the news that they are to cough up more is greeted as if they are doing the country some kind of favour.

It can only be hoped that the voices raised this afternoon were heard and a change in attitude takes place. But going on past evidence it’s going to take a lot more marches before anything changes.

A Broken Heart and the Faithful Followers

29th May 2009 / Abigail / 1 Comment

I was rather distracted today. Too distracted to really register the Sun front page with the news that Ronnie Dunbar has dumped the women who yesterday was on two front pages pledging her undying love. Apparently he nobly wants her to “go and live her life”. Jordan and Peter Andre eat your heart out!

I know that people who are convicted of killing someone frequently have someone whose faith in them never wavers, someone who will wait until the ends of time to be reunited with them, who believes wholeheartedly in their innocence (one would hope). Look at Nikki Pelley waiting for Joe O’Reilly no matter what comments it brought down on her. Or a case I have a particular interest in, Sharon Collins, who can rest assured, until we hear to the contrary, that P.J. Howard, the man she hired a hitman to kill, will be waiting for her release in five or so years time.

It happens all the time and they do say that love is blind but it always amazes me quite how blind it can be, or how steadfast…that’s probably showing a disturbing degree of cynicism but it kind of goes with the territory when you’re down the courts all day.

The Books

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