Tag: Media (Page 3 of 3)

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.

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.

Holy Orders…

10th April 2009 / Abigail / 0 Comments

Every year on Good Friday Ireland closes down. It’s illegal to sell alcohol here today so houses up and down the land are full of people getting completely rat arsed at home with oceans of booze bought the day before. One or two uncharitable souls might venture into town to laugh at all the tourists wandering dejectedly around Temple Bar because no one bothered to tell them about the law.

Off licences around the country enjoy their one Friday night off of the year and rebellious parties rock through the night, continuing the theme of getting rat arsed with previously bought alcohol. This year the truly dedicated (along with hotel residents, people in airport departure lounges and one or two other refuges of the desperate and alcoholic) can actually get wined and dined totally legally, not quite in international waters but a definitely aquatic bending of the rules.

The standard line you hear trotted out today when people complain about the levels of drunkenness sparked by enforced prohibition is that it’s only one day a year. Sure we’re not that desperate for a drink are we? But it’s not really a question of the whole nation going cold turkey if they don’t have intravenous alcohol it’s simply a case of the Irish inclination to do the opposite of what they’ve been told to do (look at the Lisbon Treaty!)

But behind all the hilarity and festivity is an inescapable problem with the Good Friday licensing laws and similar rules that govern Christmas Day. They are there solely because Good Friday is a holy day in one religion. For two days a year the laws of Ireland seek to force everyone in the country, regardless of their belief or lack of it, to toe the line laid down by the Catholic church. It’s not a question of whether people can stand being without alcohol for 24 hours, it’s a question of why they’re being told to abstain.

In my previous post I wrote about the ads taken out by the Humanist Association of Ireland which are currently running on DART commuter trains around the capital. The ads point out that in order to take high office in this country you have to take an oath to the Christian god. Not exactly a separation between Church and State! The Good Friday licensing laws are part and parcel of the same thing. A religious law imposed on a population.

Now I know that Ireland is still a predominantly Catholic country. According to the 2006 census there are still more than 3.5 million people living in Ireland who would describe themselves as Catholic. However, the same census also shows that there are more than 700,000 people who do not share that faith. Granted, included in that 700,000 would also be all the other denominations of Christianity who would also celebrate the resurrection but who might have different customs when it comes to observing Good Friday.

The licensing laws don’t take any of this into account. They assume a population that needs policing to follow the rules of their faith, not allowing for personal discipline or responsibility. They are no different from rules under Muslim Sharia law that dictate what a woman must wear and restrict her movements. These rules assume that religion needs to be policed and takes it away from a matter of personal conscience.

It might seem like a little thing. An archaic rule that harks back to a simpler time and might actually have positive health benefits. We’re not talking about going to your local butcher here or buying organic. This is a situation where the rules of one religion dictate the law of the land. I have no problem with individuals following whatever faith they choose. I do have a problem when they impose that belief onto me.

A Still Small Voice of Reason?

8th April 2009 / Abigail / 0 Comments

A few months ago the British Humanist Association launched bus advertising in London. The ads which said “There’s probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life” caused quite a bit of controversy and sparked several retaliatory campaigns from religious groups.

At the time the Irish Humanist Association told the Irish Times that they would not be following suit because they thought the ads were too inflammatory. In a predominantly Catholic country like Ireland you can see their point but I for one was rather disappointed. After all, we see plenty of ads appearing from the Christian side of things, be it the “What think ye of Christ” ads that pop up on buses at this time of year to the various campaigns by pro-life groups, most notably the Mother and Child campaign a few years ago.

The Mother and Child Campaign, and of course Youth Defence, are vociferous in their fight to protect Catholic morals. I spent some months several years ago working for the All Party Oireachtas Committee on the Constitution when they were looking for submissions from members of the public on possible changes to the section of the Irish constitution that deals with the family. We weren’t even dealing with the contentious Article 40.3.3 which is the one dealing with abortion (a somewhat volatile subject here).

What was under discussion though was a woman’s place in the home, the definition of a family and the rights of unmarried parents, adoptive parents and gay couples. Not to mention the ratification of the UN Declaration on the Rights of the child.

There were thousands of submissions. The bulk of them were printed red and white forms distributed by the Mother and Child Campaign in churches around the country. We had people raging against the possibility of taking God out of the Constitution (not up for discussion at that time) and dozens railing against yet another attempt to “bring in abortion by the back door”. People would phone up and hurl abuse. There were even veiled threats at those working in the Committee if they tried to change the status quo.

Having experienced this much vitriol at an attempt to simply modernise the Constitution to take account of the changing make up of the Irish family, I was disappointed but not altogether surprised at the HAI’s response to such a confrontational bus campaign. Religion is a highly inflammatory subject here. Even careful reasoned arguments can get a violent backlash from a particularly vocal minority.

I remember the placard waving crowd that appeared outside the Four Courts every day during the High Court case around “Miss D” a teenager in state care who had been told her baby was suffering from an incurable condition and would not live long after birth. It made going into work an uncomfortable experience and must have been highly traumatic for the pregnant teen who had to run the gamut every day while she tried to simply avail of the right to travel out of Ireland for an abortion available to every woman in the State.

So I was surprised to learn that the HAI have reconsidered and posted ads on the DART commuter trains that form one of the main transport systems in Dublin.

The information campaign from the Humanist Association of Ireland during Easter week 2009

And here’s a close-up of the text of the ads.

Humanist Dart campaign close up

They might not be quite as eye catching as the London ads but they do make a very good point. There has been a campaign for the separation of Church and State here for years but it’s had only limited success. While you can affirm without use of a religious text if you swear in for jury duty, that option isn’t available if you take high office here. God is still firmly part of the constitution and will be for a considerable time to come.

However, it makes a refreshing change to see Humanist ads up where usually there would be “What think ye of Christ” ads promising a video presentation showing proof of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. The “What Think Ye”s were up but they’ve been taken down again so the Humanists are out on their own.

I thought a lot about posting on this subject. I had wanted to write about the initial London bus campaign but thought twice about it. Even touching on the subject of religion can open the flood gates and the vitriol can be extreme. There are some sections of society here that don’t like any viewpoint but there own seeing the light of day. Even though there are almost 190,000 people according to the most recent census, who say they have “no religion” making this the second largest group after Catholicism it’s still a largely ignored group.

Hopefully the DART ads will get people thinking and start a debate. I don’t hold out much hope though. Reasoned debate is often drowned out by the shrieks of those trying to drown it out.

A Matter of Censorship…

25th March 2009 / Abigail / 3 Comments

Today I’m jumping on a bandwagon. I don’t normally comment on matters that fall outside my own little world but this is a story that I just couldn’t let pass unremarked. I’m not the only person writing about this today and I won’t be the last.

If you’ve missed the saga of the guerrilla artist who managed to hang a two less than flattering portraits of our esteemed leader Brian Cowen in two separate art galleries then you could be forgiven. The story was just a bit of fun initially in the tradition of any good satirical stunt. It was a short item at the end of the 9 o’clock news on RTE, the state broadcaster on Monday. Something along the lines of the kind of “And Finally” stories they used to have on the ITN news just rather less cute.

What’s made things go a bit nuts is the reaction of Brian Cowen’s political party, Fianna Fail. Now if you’re not familiar with Irish politics Fianna Fail are the party that has been in power for the majority of Ireland’s existence as a republic. They’ve been in power in one coalition or another right the way through the Celtic Tiger years and are now presiding over the disaster area that is the Irish economy at the moment.

Since one party has been in power throughout the boom and now the bust the finger of blame has been pointed squarely in their direction by various commentators. Their popularity has plunged in the most recent polls. In February the Irish Labour Party passed them in the popularity stakes for the first time. The nation is decidedly pissed off.

So really it’s hardly surprising that this sort of thing happens and hanging a couple of pictures is hardly the same as taking to the street with burning torches…is it? Well, when the gardai turned up at the offices of Today FM radio station demanding to see emails between a researcher and the artist because he could be looking at various criminal charges including criminal damage and incitement to hatred. Apparently “the powers that be” wanted action taken.

And that’s not all. Yesterday RTE issued an apology after the 9 o’clock news for any offence they’d caused poor sensitive Mr Cowen. Since then the clip of the original segment has become harder to find on the website and captions have been changed.

The net result of all of this has been that picturegate has gone global. It’s made the London Times and the New York Times to name but two and the story looks set to run for quite some time especially since a 35-year-old teacher called Conor Casby has voluntarily turned up to talk to gardai. If it finds it’s way to court I will definitely write about it here.

Irish satire is generally a fairly toothless affair. During the years of prosperity the sharp jokes about politicians and politics that had always been such a feature of the Dublin sense of humour in particular became noticeably muted. People didn’t seem to want to rock the boat. Now that it’s rocking anyway that “fuck you” attitude has returned somewhat. The problem is that the politicians seem to have lost their sense of humour in the intervening years. Well, Fianna Fail’s po-faced attitude has made them look like the little tin gods they are. It was a well aimed pot shot that could have given people a chuckle but if the t-shirts available from Irishelections.net with the full frontal caricature from Allan Cavanagh are anything to go by, Biffo had better get used to seeing himself in the buff!

The Fourth Estate in Irish Courts

22nd March 2009 / Abigail / 0 Comments

Going into work yesterday was a little like being in school out of term. The Four Courts are buzzing any time they are in session and the quietness is particularly roaring out of hours. I’ve been to Saturday sittings before as well as Vacation Sittings (held during the two month summer recess) and always enjoy being in the building when the throng is noticeably absent.

Yesterday, there to wait for the jury in the Manuela Riedo trial to come to their verdict, it was one thing after another. A couple of things happened that really highlighted something that has irritated me for years…the attitude to the media here in Ireland.

Now I know there are places on earth where the authorities are a damn sight worse than here in Dublin, places where journalists work in danger of their life. I’m not suggesting I work in a repressive regime just that things aren’t as easy as they should be.

The main thing that happened yesterday that underlines my point was not particularly unexpected. In fact it happens on quite a regular basis if you work out of the courts. It shouldn’t…but it does.

We had taken our seats for the jury to resume their deliberations. As we had for the duration of the trial we all piled into the two benches where the accused sits. This is normal. There are no such things as press benches in the main courts of the Four Courts. It’s not like the English courts where a press bench is standard. We have to find space wherever we can but as press we’re allowed a much freeer reign than the public who have two allotted areas to watch justice being done from.

Usually the media sit either in the two benches behind the barristers or next to the accused. We have to hear what’s being said and since the acoustics in the 200 year old building leave something to be desired sitting as close to the judge as possible is preferable. If there are a lot of garda witnesses or the deceased in a murder trial had a large family the benches behind the barristers aren’t free. If the case is full of salacious detail the public benches fill up quickly as well. That leaves the seat beside the accused facing the jury.

Now to be honest this is probably the pick of the bunch anyway. The accused has to be able to hear what’ s being said about him so you can hear everything that’s said. Similarly you have a good vantage point to see reactions and the kind of details you need if you’re writing colour. There’s also a handy ledge that’s just right for a laptop or a computer.

It sounds, if you haven’t seen the courts, as if this means that we’re sitting on top of the accused. It’s not quite like that, these benches were designed to hold bunches of accused so they could potentially hold up to 20 people, if everyone squished a bit. These days, to give the accused a bit of space there wouldn’t be more than 10 of us sitting there. But sit there we do. The judge doesn’t complain, the defence don’t complain, the accused doesn’t complain. They all realise we’re just there to do our job.

That’s the way it usually is. But not yesterday. Yesterday we’d piled in as usual, leaving a large gap between us and Gerald Barry (as suggested by the regular prison guards since he had been known to lunge). The judge came in and sent the jury out again and we all settled down to wait.

Barry had been led back to his cell. He was in custody throughout the trial – he’s not a very nice man. We settled back with laptops, coffee and papers to wait it out. The regular prison officers weren’t in yesterday. It being a weekend. The guys who were in looked at us with contempt. We were cluttering up their nice courtroom with our junk.

One of them came over.

“Guys, seriously, the accused man deserves a fair trial. Youse shouldn’t be sitting there crowding him. You’re right across from the jury.”

“Yes, we know. We’ve been sitting here all week. We always sit here.”

“You shouldn’t be sitting there. It’s not right.”

And on it went for several minutes gathering more and more angry journos to argue the toss. Eventually we were left as we were, now rather irritated. We had been sitting there all week and we most definitely had not been crowding the accused. We’d been told not to by the weekday prison officers. For our own safety.

It might have been a storm in a teacup but it really isn’t an isolated occurrence. Earlier in the week we had been excluded for court while the defence looked for a day’s recess. Not only were the jury present while this request was granted, the press are allowed to sit through legal arguement (though we usually choose not to since we can’t write anything when the jury’s not in place).

Over the past two years while I’ve been down in the courts I’ve encountered this kind of attitude more than once. Prison officers who’ve tried to exclude me from rape cases (that happens quite a bit and has sometimes required the judge’s intervention), the whole court personnel moving into the judges chambers to hear evidence and having the door shut in my face. Gardai who’ve confiscated computers because they could secretly broadcast proceedings.

You really have to know what you are and what you are entitled to if you work that beat here in Ireland. As happened yesterday the familiarity of the challenge can result in quite a bolshie response but for god’s sake, we shouldn’t have to fight for our right to cover public court proceedings (and in the case of “in camera” cases like rape, we stand for the public who aren’t allowed in out of deference to the sensitivity of the evidence.

Justice is supposed to be done in public and that means that the general public should be able to read it when it comes wrapping their fish and chips, or listen to it or watch it. It’s a pretty basic right and it’s mixed up in a person’s right to a fair trial. It’s important.

Which makes it so irritating when the powers that be don’t seem to understand this. There is a definite attitude out there that the media are vermin who should be at the very least discouraged, at worst banned entirely.

Last year a debate took place, I think, in the Sugar Club in Dublin. It was organised by one of the legal organisations and the motion was whether or not the media were out of control. I don’t have the full details because the media were not invited. Not one of the journalists who work in the Four Courts on a daily basis was invited and the owners of the two new agencies are there on a permanent basis were not even informed. Only one poster went up and that was on the day of the debate itself.

We heard about it over the next few days though. Apparently the event was mainly attended by newly qualified barristers who did not think much of the media as a whole. The one account that appeared in the press (which I’ve been unable to locate but will post if I ever do) described a baying mob calling for the media’s blood in the wake of the sensationalist coverage of trials like Joe O’Reilly and Brian Kearney.

OK the coverage has got somewhat lurid on some occasions but that’s the nature of the press. When that has happened editors have been called in and knuckles have been rapped by the judge. But that’s obviously not enough for some people.

I get on well with a lot of barristers and court staff who I’ve got to know over the past couple of years. We all understand that we each have a role to play and it’s easier to do that if everyone plays nicely together. Apart from anything else, when you’ve waited hours upon hours for juries to come back the barriers tend to come down.

But some of the younger barristers treat us with suspicion and some of the Courts Service staff treat us like cockroaches. Getting some information or facilities can be like getting blood out of a stone. Almost any journalist I know who has had occasion to deal with different justice systems has stories about how wonderful it is to deal with press offices anywhere else. When I was researching Devil I couldn’t believe how easy it was to get court documents in the U.S. Here we’re dependent on the whims of the individual teams.

It’s easy to feel as if we are only allowed in on sufferance. The absence of press benches wasn’t an oversight it was simply because someone felt then, as now, that the media didn’t have a place in the courts.

And just to make it very clear. I’m not hitting out at any of the wonderful staff who help get my job done on a daily basis. This is just something that exists underlying things. An attitude that seems to be fairly endemic in certain quarters. This is a rant about that perception. If it’s allowed to spread it could be very damaging not only to the Irish media but also to Irish justice. Justice needs to be done in public, as does politics but that’s another matter entirely. We forget that at our peril.

Justice Is Served

21st March 2009 / Abigail / 1 Comment

Gerald Barry was found guilty of the murder of Manuela Riedo today. The Swiss student was found semi-naked throttled to death in October 2007. Barry has denied her her murder throughout, saying that it was the accidental outcome of a casual sexual encounter.

Manuela’s parents had to sit in court and listen to him on the stand describing fondling their daughter’s breasts and vagina – something that simply didn’t happen, at least, not while she was conscious.

She had been heading into Galway City to meet friends the night she died, only three days after she had arrived in Ireland for a two week language course. It was the first time she had been away without her parents, she was only 17.

In an incredibly powerful victim impact statement her father Hans-Peter told the court that he and his wife had always been protective of their only child. “As her father, I often drove out with the car at night to pick her up so that she would arrive safely back home. No way was too long for me to bring her back.”

The courtroom was emotionally charged as he talked about his beautiful and special little girl, the girl who only wanted to help others, who had made particular efforts to include a classmate with a physical handicap in all her activities. He described a Manuela who loved to dance, a girl who “had a special place in the hearts of many people.” She was the centre of her parent’s life, their “sunshine”.

As he read out the statement in German, translated by their garda liaison, Manuela’s mother Arlette clutched a set of rosary beads and wept. There were many in the court who wept as well.

Passing his sentence the trial judge, Mr Justice Barry White was unusually strong. He told Barry he agreed absolutely with the jury’s verdict as would anyone who had read about the case during the trial.

He told Barry that he trusted he had not been “unmoved by the evidence given by Mr Riedo of the devastating impact of his criminal behaviour.” “One often loses sight when somebody loses one’s life violently; that person is somebody’s son or daughter, somebody’s brother or sister, somebody’s grandparent, or somebody’s child.”

It’s unusual to see a trial judge speak so personally after a verdict but this a been a trial that everyone involved, except perhaps Barry himself, has found this a traumatic trial to follow. Judge White also said that the Courts Service had been receiving mail for the Riedos throughout the trial offering messages of sympathy and support. This doesn’t usually happen.

Speaking outside the courtroom in the usual media scrum Hans-Peter and Arlette Riedo thanks the Swiss and Irish authorities and the people who had supported them through what can only have been a horrendously difficult time. Asked how she was coping Manuela’s mother said a little better than she had been but she always had the support of “her man, her husband.”

Throughout the trial they’ve presented an extremely close picture. I’ve sat across from them, in the seat we press shared with the accused and watched Arlette take her husband’s coat from him as they arrived in court after a particularly hard day’s evidence, folding it tenderly and placing it behind him as a cushion. At the more traumatic pieces of evidence they would sit with hands clasped. It’s not often you see a couple that close. It seems all the more unfair that they should lose their only child.

Barry was a tragedy like this waiting to happen we were told today. He grew up in a severely dysfunctional family, and when I say dysfunctional I mean potentially Fritzl level dysfunction. Superintendent P.J Durkan, who gave evidence of Barry’s more serious previous convictions, which I’ll get to in a moment, agreed with defence counsel Martin Giblin that if the social service had got involved with the Barry family when Barry was young we might not have been sitting where we were today.

You hear sob stories every sentence hearing. It’s hardly a surprise that a lot of people up on criminal charges come from less than ideal homes. But ultimately it can only be so much of a defence. Barry had a string of convictions that took quite some time to go through. The most serious three gave an indication of someone with little or no respect for human life.

In 1996 Colm Phelan, was attacked on Eyres Square in Galway. He died from his injuries. Barry was one of five people who were charged with “violent disorder” and the only who didn’t plead guilty.

Two years later he broke into the house of an elderly man who only had sight in one eye. After Barry had finished with him he was blind.

Then in 2006 he was given six months for a sexual assault on his then partner. An accident waiting to happen or a loose cannon? Barry was definitely heading for a bad end.

As Manuela’s parents told the press outside the Four Courts after the verdict, Ireland is a safer place tonight. Irish children, Irish women are safer.

And Back to Jail he Goes

7th March 2009 / Abigail / 0 Comments

The papers today are screaming about the failure of Joe O’Reilly’s appeal. O’Reilly, for any non Irish readers, is a notorious wife murderer. He was the first of the recent batch of high profile cases of this kind and ticked all the sex and violence boxes necessary for a media frenzy. O’Reilly also had an unusual level of arrogance which led him to chat happily to various media outlets and even appear on the Late Late Show, Ireland’s foremost chat show.

Anyway, the appeal was heard back in December and the judgement delivered yesterday. To read today’s front pages you would think that O’Reilly was the devil incarnate. The Sun even goes so far as to call him “Devil Joe”. Yesterday’s Evening Herald went into an orgy of satisfied gloating with eight pages of “analysis”. It’s all standard tabloid hyperbole but the judgement was hardly much of a surprise.

When the grounds for appeal were announced last year the general consensus in the Media Room at the Four Courts was that it was all a bit lacklustre. The defence had even applied to have the verdict over turned on the grounds that O2 Ireland, which was O’Reilly’s mobile phone provider and supplier of some of the most damning evidence, might not have been a legally licenced company at the time. It really wasn’t the most inspiring set of grounds to appeal.

The thing was that before the details of the appeal were announced speculation was rife that there would be some strong grounds to appeal on the use of mobile phone evidence to position him in frame for the murder or the seizing of emails from his work.

With the grounds that finally did go forward I doubt there were many surprised, except apparently O’Reilly himself, that the appeal was unsuccessful.

The murder of Rachel O’Reilly was a particularly nasty and brutal one. It’s hard to understand how any husband could do that to their wife but these things happen and they happen with alarming regularity. Personally I don’t think that makes him evil though, and certainly not demonic. Joe O’Reilly is arrogant and obviously thinks he is a little bit cleverer than anyone else.

The facts of the case prove otherwise. He may be a sociopath but to call him evil or demonic elevates him to somewhere he shouldn’t be. He’s simply an Irish man who killed his wife rather than go through a marriage breakup. He’s not the only one and he certainly isn’t anywhere near being the last. He’s no different from Brian Kearney or Anton Mulder, nasty cheap little men all. But as the first he’ll always be beloved of the tabloids…well at least there’s no retrial on the cards!

Another Sentence Controversy in the Irish Courts…

29th January 2009 / Abigail / 6 Comments

Yesterday 45-year-old Philip Sullivan learned that the life sentence he had received for the rape and violent sexual assault of two young boys had been over turned. The Court of Criminal Appeal once again decided to go on the light side when it came to the sentence a convicted sex offender should serve.

Sullivan will now serve 12 1/2 years of a 15 year sentence. He’ll probably be out sooner than that. As a prisoner under Irish law he’s entitled to an automatic quarter off his sentence and today he Minister for Justice announced that he would wouldn’t be touching this automatic entitlement any time soon.

In fairness this isn’t all that much sooner than he’d be back on the streets if the life sentence had been left intact. The average length of jail time for Irish life sentences is about twelve years. That includes those who received mandatory life sentences for murder.

The subject of minimum sentences has been buzzing around for years and there are arguments on both sides. Certainly sitting in court on a regular basis and watching the sentences handed down I’ve often heard Judge Paul Carney voice his displeasure of the Court of Criminal Appeal’s tendency to knock down the more punitive sentences to an arguably lenient average.

Take the Sullivan case. I covered that sentence last year and the story was immediately the fact that a life sentence had been handed down and the speculation about whether it would stick. This was a particularly nasty case. Sullivan was in a position of trust as a caretaker to an apartment building. He was a repeat offender. The victims were only nine and eleven years old and his crimes were of a particularly nasty type.

The guy is a predatory paedophile who had served time on previous occasions and yet went on to abuse these two boys over a period of over two years. 12 and a half years just doesn’t seem enough.

With the Finn Colclough sentence there was some surprise when the figure turned out to be ten years. Quite a few of those in the press bench had been speculating a lower figure. The sentence for manslaughter can be anything from a suspended sentence to life. It seems to average out at around seven or eight years. Wayne O’Donoghue served three for the accidental killing of 11-year-old Robert Holohan.

Rape sentences are usually in and around eight years but have notably been a lot less. Adam Keane hit the headlines in 2007 after his three year suspended sentence for rape was activated and subsequently extended by the Court of Criminal Appeal to seven years after it emerged he had made a triumphalist gesture at his victim as they caught the same train home.

That’s another trial I followed and coincidentally yet another sentence handed down by Mr Justice Paul Carney. Looking back on the cases I’ve cited here they’re all his sentences. He’s often quoted as making side swipes at the CCA as he hands down sentence and it’s easy to see why. He’s the most vocal of the judges who dislike having their sentences more often than not reduced.

I’ve often wondered if some of the more lenient sentences he imposes are there to make a point on the assumption that they’ll end up the standard length on appeal. The Adam Keane sentence would fall into that category.

But back to the subject of minimum time served. I noticed another news story this evening while I was checking the rss feeds on my phone. A judge ruled today that a man who raped and murdered a women should serve at least twenty two years in jail. As soon as I saw the headline I knew it wasn’t an Irish story. No matter how bad the crime, here a judge won’t be able to say how much of a life sentence the accused should serve. Sure enough it was a court in Belfast.

Mandatory minimum sentences do exist under Irish law but only in very specific circumstances. Murder carries a mandatory life sentence but as I’ve already said that can end up meaning as little as twelve years. Some drug sentences have mandatory minimums but that’s about it.

Covering rape after rape after rape and seeing traumatised women watch their attacker walk off to serve a sentence that doesn’t usually even hit double digits, it’s hard not to be in favour of minimum sentences. Rape is considered serious enough to be dealt with by the Central Criminal Court, the highest criminal court in the country. But the sentences don’t always reflect that. Of course every case is different but the average sentences for sexual offences in this country tend to be pathetically low.

I’m generally madly here but it’s something that you see again and again. A man who stole the childhood of his now adult victim gets a pitiful couple of years compared with the lifetime of damage he’s inflicted. Those who have held a woman against her will, terrorised her, traumatised her get a sentence in single figures once all the mitigating factors are taken into account. I’ve watched trials that would fit these descriptions and each of them has helped to make up my mind on this one.

The subject of sentencing is always going to be a minefield, once again by virtue of the fact that each case must be judged by it’s own merits but as long as stories keep appearing that this one has been released early or that one had their sentence reduced on appeal it’s going to feel as if an attitude exists that sex crimes are somehow less serious.

I wouldn’t be in favour of mandatory life for any rape conviction but there should be some that deserve the same automatic penalty as murder. In the meantime these stories will keep cropping up and the perception that you can commit a crime in Ireland and be out in a flash will prevail.

Trying to Do Things Properly!

21st September 2008 / Abigail / 0 Comments

It seemed like such a good idea, book due out soon so setting up a blog to get in on this whole author blog thing. It’s been something I’ve been wanting to do for ages to be honest but you feel a bit daft setting yourself up as a fount of knowledge when you’ve got nothing published to your name. It’s hard to be a credible source of writing wisdom when the only thing you’ve ever written is stuffed in a box under the bed. Not that I’m planning on becoming an oracle of course but I did think that a moderately attractive website containing the inner workings of my fevered little brain would be a good idea, besides, everyone’s doing it and since the books due out before the end of the year…

Well for the past week I’ve been trying to set up this famous blog. Emphasis on the word “trying”. I’m currently recovering from the whole writing frenzy in the South of France so I was planning on stopping trying while I was here but here I am, sitting inside while the sun splits the stones outside, the husband getting increasingly annoyed that I’m not getting ready for a romantic candlelight dinner – you get the picture. Instead I’m sitting here, writing this, in the full knowledge that I’m not even writing to anyone at this stage because the bloody blog’s still up on the blocks so to say.

I’m beginning to think I missed a trick, spending all those years studying journalism then working in newsrooms until I’d learnt my craft and all that jazz. What I actually should have been doing is studying web design, then I would know what the hell I am doing here.

I’m used to writing a WordPress.com blog. Hosted and mindbogglingly simple to set up. I thought it would be a better idea, with my plan for self promotion, to register my own domain and install the WordPress application from wordpress.org. That was my undoing.

I’ve spent the last week and a half batting emails back a forth with a tech support person with my domain provider who is managing to answer every sodding question but the one I’ve actually asked her. My poor blog still sits unread because up until today the domain provider have been insisting to the world there’s nothing there.

I’m fed up with tech support and I’m fed up with technical problems. I don’t even particularly want to be writing this blog. I want to be out enjoying the September sun with the husband and forget for a couple of hours that there’s a book coming out all too soon.

Ah well…maybe tomorrow…

The Books

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