CRIME CONSTRUCTION FIRMLY ESTABLISHED BY GARDAI INNOCENT MEN CONVICTED WITHOUT EVIDENCE OF GUILT

Crime Construction Firmly Established By GARDAI

INNOCENT MEN CONVICTED AND JAILED WITHOUT PROOF 

'Inherently Illogical, To Demand Evidence That's Not There, Not Recoverable'

Author Joseph Anderson is an Independent, Investigative Journalist

In the UK, A dedicated national police team was assembled, under the code name 'Operation Hydrant, to investigate the link between allegations of historical child sex abuse and 'prominent public figures'. Operation Hydrant officers revealed that they are investigating 1,400 suspects, including 261 high-profile figures.

Wexford Nun- Nora Wall Wrongly Convicted of Rape and Later Cleared.

Since the Jimmy Savile scandal exploded into public consciousness in October 2012, the number of celebrities proclaimed in the media as being suspects of historical child abuse has grown almost exponentially. This is not surprising given the officialdom's obsession with unmasking celebrity paedophiles.

In cases of inquisitorial policing, the solving of a crime is a relatively minor issue. Inquisitorial policing is all about getting evidence against the target of an accusation. What is important is not the quality, but the quantity of spurious evidence in a raw and untested form. The greater the number of denunciations of a suspect, the greater the likelihood of a successful conviction.

Therefore, trawling is integral to inquisitorial policing because, seemingly corroborative statements provide the evidence used to charge and convict the accused. This dramatic reorientation of policing from solving reported crimes to searching for ones that have not been reported, is rarely noted.

Yet, large trawling operations, such as Operation Hydrant in the UK, are an active ongoing exercise in crime construction. Instead of crime solving, trawling attempts to uncover a crime's possible existence in order, to reinforce and strengthen evidence against a target. A trawling operation is not a response to an allegation of abuse voluntarily made by an individual.

Trawling for victims and searching for (retrospective allegations of CSA). Historical and 'previously unknown and unreported allegations' represent a disturbing development in criminal justice. It is an invitation (by police) to people to reinterpret their experience of their past life, as an experience of victimisation. It is an invitation that is likely to encourage many to interpret past life events through the prism of abuse, and that is just the beginning.

Chief Constable Simon Bailey, the national Police Chief's Council lead on child abuse, insisted that by the time Operation Hydrant gets into its stride, it will have 'discovered' hundreds of thousands hitherto unknown victims of child sex abuse.

Forum Needed to Find New Evidence Proving Innocence

There is often much obscurantism, involved in sexual assault/rape cases, especially, cases of historical abuses including, alleged child sexual abuse. It seems that the number of reports of child sexual abuse is likely to continue increasing into the indefinite future, driven by the highly controversial police method of trawling currently used in crime construction.

That's because the Operation Hydrant style of policing – which relies on inviting the public to come forward and report suspected child abusers – creates a constantly rising number of abuse allegations and an ever increasing the number of denunciations.

As Bailey said, “what we are seeing is an absolutely unprecedented increase in the number of reports being made”. Moral crusaders linked to Operation Hydrant and the child-protection industry, insist that the sheer scale of the accusations made against public figures and others shows that child abuse is becoming a pandemic. Little wonder, as the imperative of an investigation like Operation Hydrant, is actively to search for new allegations.

The traditional role of the police is the investigation of crimes brought to their attention – but that has been transformed. This new inquisitorial form of policing is orientated towards the discovery of alleged crimes not yet reported.  So, by regularly calling for people to come forth as victims of abuse, the police are indulging in a form of crime construction, creating or building a crime where in fact none may exists.

Moreover, they have sought to inflate the number of victims by using the attention generated by the naming of celebrity suspects and appealing for more of their supposed victims to come forward, such publicity, therefore, encourages more and more denunciations of the suspects.

It is likely, of course, that such operations may from time to time uncover genuine cases of criminal behaviour. But they will do so at a very high cost to the system of justice. The scale and scope of sexual abuse of children committed in the past can often seem overwhelming', noted Gabrielle Shaw, the chief executive of the National Association for 'People Abused in Childhood'. It seems, then, that there is an expectation that more and more people will be investigated as potential abuse suspects.

The myth that children lie about being sexually abused must be laid to rest. When children' allegations of abuse were discounted out of hand, they were victimised, not only by their abusers but by a society that neither believed nor protected them. Conversely, when allegations that have no basis in fact are believed, innocent adults can face a lifetime of imprisonment, shame, ostracism, and devastation.

Allegations of sexual abuse can also be inherently traumatic to the child when false. People falsely charged with sexual abuse often face numerous problems of their own. The nature of the crime levelled at them often evokes an overwhelming sense of betrayal.

The Dangers of Trawling for Evidence

In highly publicized cases, the public has a strong tendency to summarily assume the accused is guilty, leading to very serious social stigma. The accused, even if acquitted, risks being fired from their job and losing their friends and other relationships, having their property vandalised, and being shunned and abused by those believing them to be guilty.

Presently, (CSA) child sexual abuse cases present the prosecution with innumerable challenges in proving that CSA occurred; equally, the accused in (CSA) cases are confronted with the challenge to prove that the allegations against them are false. Overzealous attempts to hold child sexual offenders to account must not cause CJSs (criminal justice systems) to rule out the possibility of false (CSA) allegations, otherwise, a new myth would be created - that children never lie or are never mistaken about being sexually abused. Therefore, there is an urgent need to strike a proper balance between discarding the myths about CSA and ensuring that the swing of the pendulum does not lead to wrongful convictions.

Trawling is not a technical term, rather it is a convenient label used to describe the police practice of making unsolicited approaches to former residents from many of the institutions under investigation. Like in any investigation, including those into past institutional abuse, the police will contact persons named by the complaint in his or her statement of complaint. The term 'trawling' appears to have become associated with criticism of these investigations.

As such, it is not favoured by the police, who prefer to use the term 'dip-sampling'. Trawling refers to the process when police go one step further and contact potential witnesses who have not been named or even mentioned.

In a trawl, the police will contact all - or a proportion of those who were residents in the neighbourhood or were resident at some institution under investigation during the period when the abuse was alleged to have occurred. Methods of trawling for evidence lie at the root of the concerns that trawling produces unreliable evidence.

David Rose, Special Investigations Reporter for The Observer Newspaper, said that: “The problem with trawling, as it is now carried out is that it is an absolutely unregulated process and it is almost tailor-made to generate false allegations”.

David Rose guessed that 50 or more of the 120 or so former care workers convicted of sexual abuse had been wrongfully convicted.

Chris Saltrese a criminal defence solicitor specialising in these cases, estimated that over 100 people had been wrongly convicted.

Richard Webster, who singled out South Wales as the home to “one of the most dangerous trawling operations” said, that in excess of 80 or 90 % of the 581 or so suspects trawled by South Wales Police were “completely innocent”.

Claire Curtis-Thomas MP, Chair of the All-Party Group on 'Abuse Investigations' said “she had 20 cases in which, she believed, there was an overt indication that there have been significant abuses of the criminal justice system”.  Although she did not speculate about the statistics, she said that she was convinced that miscarriages of justice had occurred in these investigations.

The Book, Wrongful Allegations of Child and Sexual Abuse

Brings together contributions by academics and experts from different disciplinary backgrounds to fill a gap in the literature relating to false allegations of recent or historical abuse.

Child sexual abuse, rape and other abuse against vulnerable populations attract outrage around the world. It is right that efforts have been redoubled to prevent and intervene against them, but where so much reliance is placed on verbal evidence, mistakes can be made either way.

This article underscores the role of mental health professionals (MHPs) and meaningful cross-examination in striking this balance. Equally, it exposes the need for an appropriate forum in which new evidence is discovered with the effect of proving the innocence of wrongly convicted persons.

The adjective ''false' is used interchangeably with 'wrongful'.

Of the allegations determined to be false, only a small portion originated with the child, studies showed; most false allegations originated with an adult bringing the accusation on behalf of a child, and of those, a large majority occurred in the context of divorce and child-custody battles.

A False allegation of child sexual abuse is an accusation that a person committed one or more acts of (CSA) when, in-reality there was no perpetration of abuse by the accused person as alleged. Such accusations can be brought by the alleged victim, or by another person on the alleged victim's behalf.

Studies on the rate of recorded child abuse allegations in the 1990's suggested that the overall rate of false accusations at that time was approximately 10%.

Another possible motive is revenge by the person making the allegation against the accused person.  There is also evidence that the Irish (UK and formerly the New Zealand) systems of paying substantial compensation to alleged victims and their parents without requiring proof of the allegations, can provide a motive for making false allegations.

When there is insufficient supporting evidence to determine whether an accusation is true or false, it is described as “unsubstantiated” or “unfounded”.

Accusations that are determined to be false (based on corroborating evidence) can be divided into three categories:

*An allegation that is exhaustively false in that the events that were alleged did not occur.

*It could be done to get back at a teacher or employer who denied them a grade for coursework, a pay rise or promotion.

*It could also be done for the purposes of extortion or blackmail.

*Or, an allegation that describes events that did occur but were perpetrated by an individual who is not accused, and in which the accused person is innocent.

When a child makes this type of allegation it is termed “perpetrator substitution”.

*An allegation that is partially true and partially false, in that it mixes descriptions of events that actually- happened with other events that did not occur

*A false allegation can occur as a result of intentional lying on the part of the accuser, or unintentionally, due to a confabulation, (having a conversation or discussion), either arising spontaneously due to mental illness or resulting from deliberate or accidental suggestive questioning, coaching of the child, or faulty interviewing techniques.

Researchers Poole and Lindsay suggested in 1997, that applying separate labels to the two concepts, proposing the term “false allegations” be used specifically, when the accuser is aware they are lying, and “false suspicious”  (weasel word phrase; dissimulation) for the wider range of false accusations in which suggestive questioning may have been involved by prosecution officials who become convinced of the guilt of the accused.

Wrongful allegations involving alleged child victims may not be confined to sexual abuse.  A prominent British paediatric neuropathologist, Dr Waney[JA1] [JA2] [JA3] [JA4]  Squier, made headlines in 2011 by stating she believed that 'half or even more of those who have been brought to trial in the past for (CSA) have been wrongly convicted'.

False retractions of accusations by children who have been abused are suggested to occur for one or more of several reasons: out of shame or embarrassment, fear of being sent to a foster home, due to the reaction of adults leading them to feel their behaviour was “wrong” or “bad”.

A desire to protect the perpetrator who may be a close family member, fear of destroying the family, coaching by an adult- family member insisting the child withdraw the accusation. More false retractions are less common when the child receives timely and appropriate support following the statement of the allegation.

*International data regarding false allegations generally do not come from studies designed to estimate the prevalence of false allegations, rather they come from reviews of data regarding investigations and prosecutions within criminal justice systems.

The goal of such investigations is to determine whether, or not, there is enough evidence to prosecute, not to evaluate the case for which there is not enough-evidence to prosecute and classify such cases as “false” or “true”.

To convict an accused person based solely on the accusers unsupported allegations (one person's word against another's) has always been regarded as highly dangerous.

In England and Wales an official encouraged attempt to increase the number of rape cases being taken to court, seems to have produced an increased rate of “Not Guilty” verdicts as many of the cases collapse when the alleged victims are not believed by the courts. In many ways (these) problems come from the nature of rape as an offence.

To some extent it is unique, in that the only available evidence is generally the alleged victim's account, and there is an absence of 'independent' witnessing as most offences happen in private places, such as, the homes of alleged victims or alleged offenders.

Therefore, the Gardai and the DPP (Director of Public Prosecutions) must implant into the mind of the jury, that, this (the unsupported single word of the accuser) is the only evidence available to the prosecution and it must then be accepted by a jury as being 100% correct and truthful in all respects. Somehow, it must be totally safe to convict the accused on that basis - the sole, unsupported word of the accuser alone.

*Sexual abuse, also referred to as molestation, is usually undesired sexual behaviour by one person upon another. It is often perpetrated using force or by taking advantage of another. When force is immediate, of short duration, or infrequent, it is called sexual assault. The offender is referred to as sexually abusive or a molester.



An Estimated 86% of Reported Sexual Assaults Are Never Prosecuted

The term also covers any behaviour by an adult or older adolescent towards a child to stimulate any kind of involved sexuality. The use of a child, or other individuals younger than the age of consent, for sexual stimulation is referred to as child sexual abuse or statutory rape.

An estimated 70% of sexual assaults go unreported in Ireland, while internationally an estimated 86% or reported sexual assaults are never prosecuted, because police and state prosecutors simply do not believe the accounts of the alleged offence provided by the accuser.

According to recent court data available (in Ireland), there were 2,110 reported rapes and sexual assaults reported in Ireland during 2015, of these, 1,479 found their way into the Central Criminal Court, and just over a third (750) were resolved.

A few may have gone to the Circuit Court. Where in (2008, 134 sexual offences were heard).  The final tally somehow? leaves - 1,210 reported rapes and sexual assaults that were not resolved in court. There is a large discrepancy between incidents recorded by the Gardai and cases resolved in court.

'Resolved' means all cases that ended, whether they resulted in a conviction or not. A very low proportion of alleged sexual offenders make it to a point of final determination in court. In 2015, there were 839 cases of violent crimes resolved in the Central Criminal Court, of which 750 (89%) were rapes and sexual assaults.

Nearly one-in-five sexual assault cases ended because the accused died prematurely, possibly due to old-age, illness or suicide, (as is common in historical abuse cases), – six times the number of murder defendants who died during court proceedings.

Sexual assaults have one of the highest conviction rates at 78.5%, while rape, is middle-of-the-road at 54.8%. This means that around one-out-of-every-two people put on trial for rape gets convicted. Most of the remainder of the accused in rape cases are acquitted, or the offence is taken into consideration.

Returning to all rape cases resolved in the courts – including the ones that went to trial – the conviction rate is 25%. This is less than half the conviction rate for murders and manslaughters, and lower than the rate for sexual assaults (31%). (Author's note: Figures used may be unreliable).



Human Rights, Scarlet Women, Morality, Policing and Equality

In 1984, Majella Moyniham, was threatened with dismissal from An Garda Siochana because, as the formal charge against her put it, she “had sexual intercourse with” a fellow recruit “as a result of which you became pregnant and gave birth to a male child”.

She was, subjected to a demeaning and intrusive disciplinary process. She felt pressurised into giving up her son David for adoption while in a “distraught” state.

The current Garda Commissioner Drew Harris, rightly apologised in person on behalf of the force to Ms Moyniham The Garda Representative Association, which - should have defended her, instead, played its own part in shaming her, should do likewise and apologise.

A recent trawl through garda files revealed that other women members of An Garda Siochana were subjected to similar intrusive disciplinary processes and sanctions. It is important to remember that the sexism, misogyny (*hatred of women) that underlay her treatment went far beyond the Gardai.

Two years before Majella Monaghan's ordeal.  Eileen Flynn was sacked from her job as a secondary school teacher for becoming pregnant by a man to whom she was not married and in 1985, the High Court ruled her dismissal lawful and justified.

The double standard, whereby pregnancy was proof of a woman's sexual guilt, while men who had sex outside marriage could generally keep it secret, was not just social hypocrisy. It was a legal and institutional reality.

So was the wider duplicity of a State that put abortion into the Constitution the same year Moyniham conceived her child, while giving women like her and so many others every reason to avoid censure by terminating a “shameful” pregnancy.

This is not ancient history these social and official attitudes shaped and still shape the lives of far too many Irish women. “That pain”, as Moyniham put it during an RTE broadcast, “is still like it was yesterday”.

She has done a great public service in speaking so honestly and so eloquently about her experiences. She has helped us to remember that the sexist attitudes she encountered have been banished only because women have fought so long and so hard for equality.

That struggle can never cease. Some women pilots in Irish-registered airlines are being told that, they have a choice: terminate their pregnancy or terminate their employment, the president of the Irish Air Line Pilots Association (IALPA) claimed.

Capt. Evan Cullen told an Oireachtas Committee investigation into bogus self-employment that about half the pilots working in Irish-registered airlines were hired as self-employed contractors.

He said all Irish-registered airlines were involved to some extent in employing workers as self-employed contractors with many global airlines, who were “not household names”, setting companies and registering here to take advantage of Irish Labour Law. …

He said women pilots were being told not to get pregnant, and that women pilots who present as pregnant were told: “you have a choice, you terminate your employment, or you terminate your pregnancy”. Joan Collins TD said she deplored “what is happening to women” because of global companies “using Ireland as a tax haven”.

Memories May Be Impaired Due to Alcohol Consumption

The Director of Public Prosecutions Claire Loftus: said when her office decided not to prosecute in a rape case, it was only 'very rarely that there was any issue about the credibility of the complainant'. She was speaking at the annual prosecutor's conference in Dublin, (October 2018).

On rape cases, Ms Loftus said society had “a long way to go” in approaching rape and sexual assault cases with “an entirely open and informed mind”.

In Ireland over 80% of complaints and alleged offenders had consumed alcohol and/or other drugs, prior to the alleged offence.  This was the highest in a European study.

The courts are very clear, that intoxication is neither an excuse for nor a defence for rape. The problem may well be that the court of *public opinion as represented by jurors could have a different view.

“Thus it is often one person's word against another's” Ms Loftus remarked “Sometimes we will prosecute such cases because of the quality and consistency of the account given by the complainant and because we believe that the complainant will make a good witness, able to withstand the rigours of cross examination in the witness box” she said.

“In other cases, the complainant's accounts of events may not be clear, and the account may not accord with what other independent witnesses recall, making it less likely that the complainant would make a good witness or be able to withstand cross-examination”.

She also stressed, however, that the criminal standard of proof for a rape conviction was still “extremely high”.  Reiterating her concerns about public commentary about cases, Ms Loftus said, … 'her office could not lose sight of its responsibility to vindicate a defendant's right to a fair trial'.

“In rape cases, she said there were usually no other witnesses to the event, and memories may be impaired due to alcohol consumption and other factors”. Drunkenness may damage the credibility of an alleged victim.

The role of alcohol and/or other drugs which have been consumed prior to an alleged assault, is a striking noteworthy factor in a rape cases in Ireland. EU research found that a vast majority of suspects and complainants (80%) in Irish cases, had been drinking heavily around the time of the alleged assault. By contrast, in most European countries about a third of complainants had consumed alcohol and/or other drugs, prior to the alleged assault.

Author's note: the fact of the matter is that the criminal standard of proof in sexual assault and rape cases in Ireland, is far from high. The qualification of being a 'good witness' is achieved through the very much abused method of coaching and rehearsal often referred to as counselling. Such preparation renders evidence or the existence of such evidence as irrelevant.

Distortion and disinformation are the elements to be learned in order to prosecute the allegations. There is usually an absence of corroborative witness or forensic evidence, whose evidence might shed light on differing accounts of the allegations.

Police and prosecutor's decisions about the veracity of statements made by the accuser and the accused are likely to be influenced by the prevailing cultural discourse and consequent preconceptions – about sexual predators and their alleged victims.

You can't prove that there is nothing there.

Proving a negative is impossible;

No weapons of mass destruction were found. 'But we could not prove there were no such weapons'.

The quest to find 'A Green Man' has continued from the beginning of time, but no such green man has been discovered 'so far'!

In recent years, there has been some concern that allegations of sexual abuse, particularly non-recent abuse, have not received an appropriate response among politicians, criminal justice agencies and charities. In the UK there is a collective sense of remorse that reports of abuse were often not properly investigated and that those who reported it were often not believed.

From this has emerged a new determination to correct past and – prevent further injustices of this kind. Allegations of serious criminality, especially alleged sexual wrongs are often their own convictions in the High Court of public opinion, because the stigma is so severe, and because definitively proving innocence in a disputes sex case is often impossible.

If found guilty of the crime of rape the accused person can be sentenced to life imprisonment.

Nora Wall, a nun and her co/accused an unfortunate man, who became a victim of his background and circumstances, were both accused of rape and convicted by a jury of the crime. But both people were acquitted when they appealed the conviction and sentence. The person who made the complaint retracted her allegations – saying that she had made the whole thing up.

The mild-mannered Waterford woman was sentenced to life imprisonment for rape and would be imprisoned yet had not a man come forward to say that one of her accusers had also falsely accused him of rape. The Director of Public Prosecutions indicated that he would not be contesting an application by Nora Wall for a certificate declaring a miscarriage of justice.

Before her conviction was quashed, a moving interview by RTEs Mary Wilson with some of Nora's children had planted doubts in the public mind that any woman who had inspired such love could be guilty of rape.

Yes, Nora has gone on with her life, but nothing, and certainly not compensation, will erase the scars of her experience. Wall was convicted  based on false allegations by Regina Walsh who had a psychiatric history and Patricia Phelan, who had a history of making false accusations.

Wall was the first woman in the history of the Irish State to be convicted of rape, the first person to receive a life sentence for rape and the only person in the history of the state to be convicted on repressed memory evidence. Wall and her co accused were granted a Miscarriage of Justice Certificate.

Author's note: According to the American Psychological Association. It is not possible to distinguish repressed memories from false ones without collaborating evidence.

The term repressed memory is sometimes compared to the term dissociative amnesia, which is defined in the DSM-V as an “inability to recall autobiographical information.

This amnesia may be localized (i e, an event or period in time), (selective, i e a specific aspect of an event), or generalised, ie identity and life history”).

According to the Mayo Clinic, amnesia refers to any instance which is stored in the long-term memory and are completely or partially forgotten, usually due to brain injury.

According to proponents of the existence of repressed memories such memories can be recovered years or decades after the event, most often spontaneously, triggered by a smell, taste or other identifier related to the lost memory, or via suggestion during psychotherapy.

Britain has also been convulsed with scandals involving sexual abuse too, the difference being that generally they have nothing to do with Catholic institutions.

A Muslim named Anver Sheikh had a conviction quashed. He had been convicted of a serious sexual crime against two boys. From 1979 to 1980, Anver Sheikh, a former soldier, had worked in a North Yorkshire care home. Twenty years later.

Police knocked on his door, charges and conviction followed, and he spent 20 months in prison. His case was taken up by the Historical Abuse Appeal Panel, a newly formed group of legal people (in the UK), who share expertise on these kinds of cases.

Very rapidly, they were able to establish that he had not been working in the care home at the time that the claimant alleged an- the assault had taken place. Why had Anver Sheikh not been able to point that out at his original trial.

Well, how would you like to give a detailed account of what you did on 08/02/1984?  For Anver Sheikh, the time he worked in the home was part of a distant past, and of no significance.

The appeal team were also able to establish evidence that indicated heavily that the second claimant had absconded from the institution at the time he claimed he had been abused. Given the evidence, one may ask how careful the police investigation was.

Anver Sheikh is not the first to his conviction overturned. Over 100 cases involving carers and teachers accused of sexual abuse are up for review in Britain.

People become willing to believe any tale of depravity, so a person like Anver Sheikh, with no previous convictions or any complaints from the other institutions where he worked, it was still easy to convict him. The parallels with Ireland are obvious.

According to the support group Falsely- Accused Carers and Teachers (FACT) in 2000 there was a 90% conviction rate for alleged child sex abuse, as compared to just 9% for cases of adult rape. The prevalence of false allegations and the publicity given to them is driving experienced staff out of teaching, and presumably, deterring others from seeking to enter it.

In the words of a primary school teacher from Kent: “The increasing occurrences of allegations is one reason why I will be leaving the profession sooner than I would like to”.

It is not unusual for the testimony of rape victims to be the key evidence in rape trials, equally it is not unusual for it to be inconsistent. Sexual assaults are traumatic events. As such they damage rather heighten memory, so incoherence in the victims' accounts are inescapable.

This is an issue of some significance. If victim accounts do not conform to what justice personnel regard as “credible evidence” not good witnesses, then they will not pursue the cases.

And if they do, victims come under intensive cross-examination over the detail of their accounts. This, they experience, as oppressive, traumatic and unfair and an additional layer of victimisation.

However, the overall problems in the criminal justice response are those of under-reporting and attrition. The non-reporting by alleged victims whether real or imagined? remains frustratingly high at around 70% of alleged incidents.

The method used to calculate figures and by whom they are estimated, is open to many serious questions. The decision of alleged victims to drop the case and the decision of the prosecution service, not to pursue them are the others.

Former Garda whistle-blower Sg. Maurice McCabe, (now retired) has been paid considerable damages following the state apology that was given to him in 20018.  It has been claimed, after he was defamed by what was said about him by the then most senior police officer in the land, who (12 years earlier) had engaged in a  campaign of calumny against the Sargent as well as what the Justice Minister called “the reprehensible” behaviour of some other members of An Garda Siochana towards him.

The State has reached an agreed out-of-court settlement with former Sgt McCabe, who also took a case against Tusla - the child and family agency, after it grossly mishandled an erroneous allegation against him. Tusla has already formally apologised. Both The State and Tusla reached an out-of-court settlement with Mr McCabe in 2019.



Louis Walsh (The Ireland's Got Talent) judge has opened- up about being falsely accused of sexual assault, saying that the experience “nearly finished him”. The pop guru (65) was wrongly accused by Leonard Watters in a 2011 tabloid newspaper article. Watters was jailed for six months for the false claims.

In June 2003, Paul Anderson made a statement to Gardai at Dublin’s  Kevin Street, falsely accusing a priest of indecent assault and buggery between February and May 1981 while he was being prepared for First Communion.

The priest said his ordeal had given him “a deeper insight into the mind of Christ” who had also been falsely accused. In his victim impact statement to the courts the priest said that he would have preferred to have been shot through the head rather than go through what he had since the allegation was made.

He had to stand down from public ministry, leave the presbytery where he had lived for four years, and deal with rumour, and rumours of rumour. The priest, who was not named in court proceedings but who was and remains, deeply respected in the Archdiocese, made his impact statement at the trial of his accuser (Paul Anderson) who was jailed for four years in 2007, reduced on appeal to three years.

Nine priests who were wrongly accused of abuse have died by suicide, a cleric who was the subject of a false allegation has claimed. Fr Tim Hazelwood, a priest in the parish in the parish of Killeagh in Co Cork, was falsely accused of the sexual abuse of a child in 2008.

An anonymous complaint was made about him to the Diocese of Cloyne and forwarded to the Health and Safety Executive and Gardai. Fr Hazelwood, who was in his 50s, took a civil case in the High Court Dublin. His accuser then admitted making up the complaint and made-a donation to charity.

The priest told RTE's Live-line programme that priests are presumed guilty even if they have not done anything wrong, are still struggling under the strain. “It is still happening today...

Nine priests have taken their own lives...I am not saying that that was the case in all of them, but in some cases, people had breakdowns”. The priest said that a” plethora” of clerics had been wrongly accused, citing 14 other cases in the Diocese of Cloyne alone, that he had “seen the effects it has had... tragic in some cases”.

The priest who claimed he had had no official support from the Catholic Church as he tried to clear his name, said he was speaking out in a bid to “ensure that this type of thing doesn't happen again”.

During his ordeal, Fr Hazelwood received anonymous phone calls and a letter and ended up seeing a doctor.  He said he has been undergoing therapy as part of his recovery. He said: “My initial reaction was to get a bible and I swore on it that it wasn't true. Going to sleep was the hardest part. I am getting on well now... life has changed”.

In New York City, The 'Innocence Project'  (www.innocencenceproject.org)  which advocates the use of DNA testing to exonerate wrongfully convicted people, lists 310 exonerated individuals (as of July, 2013). These individuals were typically convicted based on eyewitness testimony and spent an average of 13.6 years in confinement before being released.

They are thought to be only a small sample of the total number of wrongfully convicted people, as DNA evidence is only available in a limited number of cases, e. g. those involving sexual assault.

The Innocence Project is a non-profit litigation organisation in the United States and other countries including Ireland. According to their data, after release there is very little support or assistance provided for them.

The average compensation, which is not guaranteed, amounts to $24,000 a year for each year spent behind bars, often capping at a maximum of 10 years. This does not take into consideration money exonerees have spent on legal fees.

Not only have they lost precious and prime years of their life, many exonerees are never acknowledged as victims of legal injustice. They find it difficult to regain a normal life after release from prison.

Many have lost friends and family over the years of confinement and bear the social stigma of a criminal, which leads to difficulties finding employment, even after their record is cleared. Eyewitness testimony plays a role in roughly 75% of all cases in which individuals are wrongfully convicted. The Innocence Project aims to reform the criminal justice system by raising awareness of these issues and advocating for a change in public policy.

In Ireland, The Irish Innocence Project, The Law School, Griffith College Dublin, South Circular Road, Dublin 8. E-Mail: innocenceproject@griffith.ie Contact Administrator Tanya Voloshyna).

There are certain rules which apply to the maximum length of time allowed between the date of an offence and the date by which the Gardai must commence criminal proceedings.

If such limits did not exist and you were accused of an offence, you might have the offence hanging over you indefinitely, not knowing if the Gardai were going to prosecute you or not.

S(section 7 of the Criminal Justice Act 1951 (as amended by Section 177 of the Criminal Justice Act 2006) states that the time limits that are provided for summary offences do not apply to an indictable offence that can be tried summarily (an indictable offence is tried by a judge and jury in the Circuit Court or the Central Criminal Court).

Technically, therefore, there is no time limit for the commencement of proceedings in the case of an indictable offence unless specific legislation provides one. However, in the case of historical abuse, cases are often brought decades, often 60 years and more after the alleged offence is claimed to have happened. If there is an excessively long delay in prosecuting an offence, the judge may decide not to hear the case. In making the decision, the judge considers whether the delay has reduced your chances of a fair trial, for example, if the delay means that key witnesses are no longer available to give evidence or if the delay could have affected their memory of what happened.

Though, child molestation is a monstrous crime, there are good reasons for a 'Statute of Limitations' in sexual assault cases, mainly that the longer you take to prosecute any crime, the more stale the evidence gets and the less reliable it is.

Historical allegations of sexual assault/rape are usually incontrovertible - impossible to deny or disprove and may indeed be incredible hard to believe or imagine. Estimated figures regarding the numbers of false allegations of sexual assaults/ rape vary internationally between 2% and 10%.

Memory Recall Unreliable in Criminal Trials

Aya Guber, a professor at the University of Colorado Law School, says that when a charge is based on the word of an alleged victim, timing can be especially important, for example, if a person comes forward with a claim of sexual assault when he was seven years-old, 20 years after the fact, arguably the charge is suspect from the beginning. Guber points out, “the person's memory has been subject to change and influence, essential witnesses might have forgotten the events or even be dead, it may be impossible to get physical evidence in the case and the like. “Furthermore, Guber says, “a long-delayed charge lessens the retributive and deterrent value of conviction”.

The deep frustration of victims, their desire to be heard and believed, gradually but understandably make all of us less sensitive to the rights of those who are accused. If we are ever to achieve closure on this issue, we need to acknowledge that there are two vulnerable categories here, the alleged victims and those thrust into a living hell by false accusations. We cannot damage one group to serve the needs of the other.  In order to protect the rights of some, we are in danger of damaging the rights of others.

Memory is Imperfect and is Susceptible to Distortion and Loss

Our understanding of the complex mechanisms that underline learning and memory has progresses dramatically in recent decades, and studies have not provided evidence that memories are indelible.

Quite the contrary, it is becoming clear that there are several ways through which memories can change. The 'imperfection' of memory has been known since the first empirical memory experiments by Ebbinghaus whose famous 'Forgetting curve' revealed that people are unable to retrieve roughly 50% of information one hour after encoding.

In addition to simple forgetting, memories routinely become distorted. The public perception of memory, however, is typically that memory is akin to a video recorder.

This distinction between the perception and the reality of memory has important consequences in the context of a courtroom. In the legal system, like among the general public, it is generally assumed that memory is highly accurate and largely indelible, at least in the case of 'strong memories.

 Memory distortions can occur in different ways.  Most distortions involve some form of explicit or misleading information. One form of this phenomenon, the 'misinformation effect', has been closely studied for the past 30 years.

This effect refers to a distortion in the original memory having been exposed to misleading information related to that memory, e.g. an impairment in the memory of the face of a perpetrator after being exposed to a photo of a Police suspect who was not the true perpetrator.

This 'misinformation' is considered misleading in that it distracts from the original memory, not because it is purposefully deceitful.  Laboratory studies have shown that it is possible to induce memories in a participant that are entirely false, such as a special hospital visit at the age of 4 when no such visit happened.

 Misleading information is often given unintentionally and can be as subtle as slight variations in the wording of a question. Memory distortions in humans may also occur simply with the passage of time.

This is partly because over time memories typically become less episodic (highly detailed and specific) and more semantic, more- broad and generalised as the information is repeated retrieved and re-coded in varying contexts.

Misunderstanding about memory can have effects on criminal cases even before they make it to court. The belief that confident, detailed memories are always accurate and reliable is contrary to research that suggests the opposite is possible – confidently recalled recollections can sometimes be inaccurate and real memories are not always highly confident and detailed.

Especially in cases involving violence and high levels of stress, real traumatic memories – which can be disjointed and may sound unreliable to law enforcement personnel and to the general public, therefore may never make it to court.

One striking example of this is that an estimated 86% of sexual assaults are never prosecuted on the grounds that the alleged victim’s testimony does not seem to be reliable.

In many countries, the justice system relies on judges and jurors weighing evidence from multiple sources and with varying levels of credibility. The belief that a confident memory is always highly accurate and resistant to distortions or loss is an unfortunate misunderstanding of memory that has important consequences in court. The testimony of eyewitness whose memories may have been distorted can lead to the conviction of innocent persons while true perpetrators remain free.

Memory distortions can also occur simply with the passage of time and with repeated recounting of events. Although it might not be surprising that mundane memories become weaker and more susceptible to distortion over time, emotional and traumatic 'flashbulb memories' are also susceptible to these automatic distortions.

The fallibility of memory has implications for the question of how much weight should be given to eye-witnesses testimony in court cases.

In addition, jurors are subject to memory biases. For example, when mock  jurors listened to audio recordings of a mock trial, they 'recalled' 15% of details that were not mentioned in the trial, but that fit a typical crime description e. g., “pulled out a gun was never stated, but fits the description of a robbery.

This reflects people's natural bias to “fill in the gaps” of a memory but such fill-ins are inaccurate accounts of actual events. The occurrence of 'false memories” can be increased by leading questions, such as those that might be asked by prosecutors.

Mock jurors 'recalled' 25.8% of details that were implied in leading questions from the prosecuting attorney in a mock trial but that were not stated by eyewitness at the trial, suggesting that jurors have difficulty in sorting statements from eyewitnesses and attorneys.

Moreover, even when mock jurors were given explicit instructions to focus on the testimony of witnesses and not on information implied from attorneys, they still 'recalled' 20.4% of details that were not mentioned in the eye-witnesses testimony.

Thus, such instructions to jurors only marginally reduced the effect of leading questions and did not prevent it. It is important to remember that the courtroom also places large demands on the memory of judges and jurors.

Jurors are often faced with complex legal instructions and procedures. Simple, clear written instructions from judges help to clarify the deliberation process.

Given the data described above concerning misinformation, jurors should be warned of the effects of misleading questions by attorneys.

Jurors are subject to both prosecution and defence attorneys who may deliberately try to confuse them, redirect their attention and play on their emotions.

There are opportunities for retroactive and proactive interference as lawyers interject arguments during the court proceedings. Misleading questions may imply that facts were presented in evidence by a witness, which were not actually presented.

Although such education does not eliminate the tendency to incorporate information based on biases, it does reduce its effects. Jurors should likewise be instructed that the memory of an eyewitness should not be considered to be indelible, even if the event was traumatic, that a person's biases and expectations will change with time and new information (misinformation) and this can alter the memory.

 It is recommended that jurors be allowed to take notes as the sheer amount of information presented to jurors often exceeds reasonable demands on memory capacity.

As jurors are eyewitnesses to the events in the courtroom, their memories of these events may also be vague and may be reconstructed based on biases, prior beliefs and expectations, and misinformation.

 Courtroom transcripts may be available but are often not useful because jurors have difficulty finding the pertinent information in the lengthy transcripts.

 Taking notes not only provides a source of reference but improves the memory itself (references) Although some might argue that a juror who takes notes might dominate deliberations, encouraging all jurors to take notes could overcome this problem.

Like eyewitnesses, a juror espousing great confidence in his/her recollection is more likely to be trusted (if he/she has taken notes).

Memory is imperfect and is susceptible to distortion and loss. The neurobiological mechanisms that underline the occurrence of distortions in memory also allow memories to be updated and strengthened.

Unfortunately, in the courtroom 'memory' is often misunderstood and undue assumptions are made about its veracity. Thus, there needs to be greater education and awareness of memory processes in judicial and in daily life.

Society would benefit from better understanding of what factors affect memory accuracy and of their complexity and potentially traumatic counter-intuitive nature.

Secondly, the legal system needs to re-evaluate the probative value of memory. Witnessing a potentially traumatic event does not produce an unbiases, indelible memory of the event.

Memory is an adaptive process based on reconstruction. It works well for what it is intended, guiding current and future behaviour. However, it is not infallible, and therefore should not be treated as such.

For these reasons, some have argued that the legal system should not convict individuals on eye-witnesses testimony alone, but rather should require corroborative evidence.

More research ought to be carried out on the complex mechanisms that underlie memory so that we can better understand its limits, improve its reliability, and detect when it has gone awry.





March 29/ 2018:  Belfast Northern Ireland:

Rugby stars Paddy Jackson, Stuart Olding were found not guilty of raping a young student at a house party. Paddy Jackson (26) was also found not guilty of sexually assaulting the then 19-year old woman. Blane Mcllroy (26) was found not guilty of exposure, while Rory Harrison (25) was acquitted of perverting the course of justice and withholding information.

 After nine weeks of evidence and more than 30 witnesses, it took the jury of eight men and three women just three hours and 45 minutes to reach a unanimous verdict.

In the Irish Republic, the public would not have been allowed into the court nor would the defendants have been identified. Irish law has an established practice designed to protect anonymity and of requiring that those accused of rape cannot be named before conviction, and then only if doing so will not identify the victim or, alternatively, with the victim's assent. 

A criminal justice system that deters alleged victims from reporting crime is failing at the most fundamental level.

Yet the rape trial that concluded in Belfast, with not guilty verdicts for all four defendants, has underlined the wider structural flaws that contribute to such a low rate of reporting of sexual offences.

 Some features of the Belfast trial were peculiar to the legal regime north of the (Irish) border. A review by a senior NI judge into how the north's criminal justice system deals with serious sexual assault cases has recommended the exclusion of the public from court proceedings. The review followed the acquittal if Irish Rugby Internationals, Jackson and Olding of rape charges.

November /2018. The conviction of a man who used social media to name the woman at the centre of the ‘Ulster Rugby Rape Trial’ should act as a deterrent for future cases.

Police have said, Sean McFarland from Belfast pleaded guilty to breaching the lifetime ban on naming a complainant in a sex offence case. It is understood to be the first ever conviction for such an offence in Northern Ireland.

The 36 year -old was fined £300 and ordered to pay an additional £15 offenders' levy at Belfast Magistrates Court. Former Ireland and Ulster players Paddy Jackson, 26 and Stuart Olding, 25, were both acquitted of raping the woman after a high-profile trial in Belfast in (2018). Complainants in rape and sex crime cases are entitled to life-long anonymity.

 Police Service of Northern Ireland Detective Chief Inspector Zoe McKee said, “We welcome the conviction of Sean McFarland after he pleaded guilty to one charge of breaching the lifetime ban on reporting the identity of a complainant in a rape trial which took place in Belfast earlier this year”. “This is the first time that anyone in Northern Ireland had been prosecuted for breaching this right to anonymity and it should act as a deterrent to anyone who names a complainant in any serious sexual offence, who are entitled to lifelong anonymity.

The PSNI is fully committed to investigating offences of this nature. “We understand how difficult it can be for anyone to report a rape. I would encourage anyone who has been the victim of any sexual crime either recently or in the past to contact police or to speak to someone about what has happened”.

The Head of the Northern Ireland Public Prosecution Service's serious crime unit, Marianne O'Kane urged social media users to avoid public commentary on any live court proceedings and to respect a complainant's right to anonymity.

“Complainants of rape and other sexual offences are automatically guaranteed anonymity for life, except in very limited circumstances,” she said. “The public, the users of social media, need to be acutely aware of the importance of that right.

“This case underlines that it is a criminal offence to publish the name, address or image of any complainant of a serious sexual offence if it is likely to lead to the complainant's identification and we will prosecute for such an offence where the test for prosecution is met”.

McFarland, who could have faced a maximum fine of £5,000, was one of two people investigated for alleged breaches of the anonymity law, but prosecutors in Northern Ireland decided not to pursue the other case due to “insufficient evidence”.

The players also lost their court bid to recoup the legal costs of their defence. They wanted ‘Northern Ireland's Public Prosecution Service’ - to pay their legal bills totalling hundreds of thousands of pounds, claiming the failed prosecution had caused them serious financial hardship and limited their earning potential in the future.

Lawyers for the players insisted their prosecution was not warranted, alleging multiple failings in the police and Northern Ireland Public Prosecution Service's handling of the case. Judge Patricia Smyth rejected their applications. She concluded that the decision to prosecute the men was justified. “This was a highly complex police investigation and the prosecution was warranted albeit the jury did not consider that the charges had been proved beyond reasonable doubt,” she said. “Having considered all of the relevant factors, I am satisfied that there is no basis for exercising my discretion in the applicant's favour.

The applications are therefore dismissed”. “In those circumstances, there is simply no evidence upon which this court could conclude that the financial circumstances of either Mr Jackson or Mr Olding have been irrevocably changed as a consequence of the prosecution for rape and that this is a relevant factor to take into account in determining the applications”, she concluded.

After the jury unanimously found them not guilty, Jackson and Olding were sacked by club and country for involvement in explicit (WhatsApp) chats that were revealed during the marathon trial.

Both players then headed to France where Jackson singed for Perpingnan in June 2018.

 London Irish Rugby club's decision to recruit Paddy Jackson has cost the club a near 30-year relationship with the drinks giant Diageo, which had been one of its main sponsors.

Another sponsor, (Cash Converters UK) said it was discontinuing its association with the club, saying it was “committed to the highest possible standards when it comes to our investments in any sponsorships and collaborations.

“London Irish, said “it has been open and honest with all of its sponsors, … “London Irish will be moving on without the support of Diageo, who have chosen to stand down after a nearly 30-year association with the club.

“It is regretful that this relationship has ended in this manner”.

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Women are entitled to go out, have fun, get drunk and get home (to put themselves at risk of serious harm?) One Irish mother, a journalist asked. How do I, as a parent advise my girls about staying safe? 

Why do I have to tell them to be careful - when they shouldn't feel any less safe than men their age. I find myself having conversations with my daughters, that I really resent. Yet I have no choice but to talk to them, making them aware about the dangers. (look both ways before crossing the road, stay away from the hot stove, careful – don't pull down the kettle of boiling water on top of yourself.  cross the railway line by the footbridge only, and so forth?).

To try not to get so drunk that they are incapable.

Stay in a group, and not to go off with strangers, and try to ensure that their friends do likewise. To watch their own drinks, while keeping an eye to their friends drinks also.

I raised them NOT TO BE AFRAID of the world, because there are more good people than bad in our world. I tell them to be - wary of strangers. Gardai have apparently 'also advised' people to “take care of themselves” while socialising.

WHATEVER THAT MEANS

You can lead a horse to water.

Dress code, when combined with the consumption of alcohol and other drugs, will certainly raise a huge red flag, especially, when it presents in places of public entertainment, where the danger zones have well established themselves.

 There is a social and personal obligation on people, young and not so young to dress and act in a manner which will not cause unsolicited and unwanted public attention to be drawn upon them.

Dressing in a manner commonly termed as 'over-sexualisation' is a term that is generally understood as referring to teenage girls, although, it will apply to boys also.

This over-sexualisation in a person's dress code when combined with their  levels of sobriety, certainly affects their judgement in a manner that is likely to endanger themselves or/and other people, resulting in negative and undesirable outcomes.



The Trial Process Must Vindicate Rights of a Complainant and Accused

A 2009 Study by Senator Ivana Bacik for the Dublin Rape Crisis Centre, looking at 40 rape cases in the Central Criminal Court between 2003 and 2009, showed the high frequency with which judges granted defence applications to introduce evidence about complainants' sexual history, often on the basis of a defence lawyer's claim that the complainant was promiscuous.

Any trial process must vindicate the rights of complainant and accused. But it's difficult to see whose interests are served by forcing the parties through a traumatic adversarial courtroom process where their sexual histories, clothing choices and general behaviour are all treated as fair game.

Jurisdictional differences not-withstanding, by insisting that rape and sexual assault be dealt with in much the same way as a car robbery, both systems fail to recognise the singular sensitivities involved in cases such as these.

Sexual violence is believed to be widespread in Ireland. The availability of statistics on patterns is patchy at best. The last comprehensive study on the subject, the 2002 ‘Sexual Abuse and Violence in Ireland Report’ found that 42 per cent of women had experienced some form of sexual abuse.

Yet only 10% of alleged sexual offences were reported, it found. In 2009 – the last year for which we have figures – the conviction rate in rape cases in the Irish Republic was 8%.

Together, these figures suggest a systemic problem, one that can only be fixed by a sweeping review of how the ‘Irish Criminal Justice System’ deals with sexual offences.

 Other countries have adapted their investigative methods to reduce the risk of further traumatising victims or dragging out the pre-trial stage unnecessarily. Delays in gathering evidence, having it examined by the Director of Public Prosecutions and getting a date for the hearing all worsen the ordeal.

After a trial, sentencing can be inconsistent and opaque. Otherwise, rape will continue to occupy the same ambiguous territory to which many of our darkest scandals were consigned.

Hidden, But Hidden, In Plain Sight

THERE WERE ALMOST 14,000 contacts to the Dublin Rape Crisis Centre in the year (2018) from people who allegedly suffered rape and sexual violence, according to new figures from The ‘Dublin Rape Crisis Centres ‘DRCC’ Annual Report, which shows an increase in the numbers of male and female victims contacting the centre and attending counselling services.

 The DRCC, which operates the country's National 24-Hour Freephone Helpline through a network of staff and volunteers, dealt with 13,367 contacts – about 270 every week in 2018.

 Of those callers, 77% were female and 22% were male; more than half (7,423) were first-time contacts; and almost 8% (1,040) contacted the DRCC via text message. Of those who provided their location, 65.7%, were from Dublin while 34.3% were from elsewhere in Ireland. Of those who disclosed the alleged type of abuse suffered, 44.8% claimed to have experienced rape as adults, while 33% claimed that they had been victims of childhood sexual abuse.

Of the 4,228 individual counselling appointments delivered, the majority (2,187) were crisis appointments for people who allegedly experienced a recent rape or sexual assault (eg, in the past six months).

The DRCC saw 582 individual clients for face-to-face counselling in its centres in Leeson Street as well as in its outreach centres in Coolock, Tallaght and Dochas Women's Prison.

Almost half (45.9%) of the clients using the service were under 30-years-of-age. 19.7% of adult rape victims cited their alleged abuser as being a boyfriend or a partner.

Minister for Health launched a new e-health initiative 'Moving Forward from Sexual Violence' – a programme of online psycho education backed up by a telephone assessment and counselling. 'Moving Forward is being developed by DRCC in collaboration with UK trauma consultants and e-health solution developers, KRTS International Ltd. This innovative new service will commence on a pilot basis in late 2019.

The Importance of the Presumption of Innocence

A MAN JAILED for raping a woman he met after she became lost on a night out in Dublin City has had his conviction quashed on appeal. Justice Edwards said it was “almost inconceivable” that one of the most experienced criminal trial judges on the bench at that time would simply forget to give the jury several important instructions, he said the failure to instruct the jury 'at all' on the presumption of innocence was a  “fatal flaw”, that rendered Okda's trial unsatisfactory and his conviction unsafe.

 Giving judgement in the Court of Appeal, Justice John Edwards said 'that although both sides referred to the presumption of innocence in their closing speeches, the trial judge “unfortunately” omitted to do so. He (Okada), had been unanimously found guilty on all counts by a jury following a seven- day trial and sentenced to 11 years imprisonment with the final year suspended by Justice Michael Moriarty on 23 October 2017.

Justice Edwards, who sat with President of the Court of Appeal Justice George Birmingham and Justice Brian McGovern, quashed the man's conviction, and ordered a retrial. Justice Edwards said the failure to instruct a jury on the presumption of innocence had previously occurred in a 2003 trial that led to a successful appeal. In that case, the late Justice Adrian Hardiman said the failure to instruct the jury on the ‘Presumption of Innocence’ risked “understating its importance and perhaps relegating it to the status of a mere technical rule”.

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In 2018 France's Catholic bishops set up a commission in response to scandals that shook the Church in the country and worldwide.

The independent commission began its work in 2019 of looking into the sexual abuse of minors and other vulnerable individuals - committed by French clerics stretching back into the 1950s.

“For the first time in France, an independent institution is going to launch, over the course of a year, an appeal for witness statements about sexual abuse”, said commission president Jean-Marc Sauve.

 He promised that the commission – made up of 22 legal professionals, doctors, historians, sociologists and theologians – would deliver its conclusions by the end of 2020. “It is important action to be able to give victims psychological or legal help”, he told AFP news agency.

The commission opens after Pope Francis in May 2018 passed a landmark new measure to oblige those who know about sex abuse in the Catholic Church to report it to their superiors, a move which bring countless new cases to light.

The Bishop's Conference of France agreed in (November 2018) to set up the commission after the scandals of the clerical CSA shook the Catholic Church in France and worldwide.

The move sparked mixed reactions from victims' associations, who applauded attempts to encourage survivors to speak out, but questioned the French government's willingness to act.

 A Statute of Limitations Exists Covering Such Offences in France

“I am hopeful this will help to break the silence, but I am also concerned about whether anything will come of the commission's findings”, said Veronique Garnier, who represents a group of victims invited by bishops to the south-western pilgrimage town of Lourdes.

Fr Oliver Savignac, from the same association, said “This is the first time that such a substantial consultation has been created and we're hoping to see a wave of (alleged) victims come forward”, he said. 'I hope that public authorities will consider this problem in all areas of society'.

Francois Devaux, president of La Parole Liberee (“The Liberated Word”) association agreed the project was a “step in the right direction” but doubted “if people who have been betrayed by authority will be inclined to testify”.

 “I'm worried that it'll be brushed under the carpet, like counselling services” set up in churches, he added, criticising the commission's failure to include survivors' representatives.

French cardinal Philippe Barbarin was handed a six-month suspended jail sentence for failing to report sex abuse by a priest under his authority. 

The Vatican's former number three, Australian Cardinal George Pell, who was sentenced to six years in prison by a Melbourne court for the “brazen” sexual abuse of two choirboys, has launched and lost his appeal against his landmark conviction.

Branding the charges against him as “bizarre” and “impossible”. Pell (77) left his prison cell under police guard to attend the two-day hearing, battling his conviction on five counts of sexually assaulting the choirboys in Melbourne's St Patrick's Cathedral in1996 and 1997.

Pell, the Vatican's former number three – who managed the church's vast finances and helped to elect two popes – was sentenced in March to six years in prison, becoming the most senior Catholic cleric ever jailed for child sex abuse.

His lawyer, Bret Walker, detailed a long “catalogue” of elements he said should have prevented his client's conviction. Walker argued mainly that Pell's jury verdict was unreasonably based on the testimony of a single surviving (alleged) victim and that the judge in his trial unfairly disallowed defence evidence.

Pell's second (alleged) victim died of a drug overdose in 2014 and never officially disclosed the (alleged) abuse. Walker said the timing of the alleged abuse in the Cathedral and it's sacristy following Sunday masses was “impossible” given the dates and Pell's publicly verified movements on the days in question.

Walker said Pell was mingling with congregates at the Western door of the Cathedral when the abuse purportedly took place.

“The word is alibi”, Walker said, adding that the entire case against the cardinal amounted to a “bizarre unlikelihood”. Pell and his legal team also claim it was not possible for the two choirboys to have left their group unnoticed, or for any sexual assault in the sacristy to have gone undetected when the Cathedral was busy following mass. The three judges hearing the appeal had visited St Patrick's Cathedral to understand the evidence that was considered by the jury.

Jeremy Gans, a criminal justice expert at the University of Melbourne, said before the hearing, that there was “a good chance that Pell will succeed” in his appeal. “it's unusual for such convictions to be based solely on the account of the (alleged) victim, with no other evidence of the accused's guilt whatsoever”, he said “and it's especially unusual for that to happen when there was a second (alleged) victim (who) never spoke of any abuse and cannot testify.

“That doesn't mean Pell is innocent or that the jury made a mistake. It just means that the appeal court is likely to find that the jury's verdict is an unsafe verdict”. Outside court, (alleged) victims of church sex abuse were distressed by the spectre of Pell being acquitted on appeal. (AFP 2019).

It is widely accepted that to be described as a paedophile will be damaging.

As false allegations are likely to affect every aspect of a person's life, psychological, material and physical.

The lives of people so accused are, to put it simply, WRECKED. To be wrongly convicted of child sexual abuse has immediate and long-lasting effects on the life of the accused, including lengthy prison terms, registration as a sex offender and the conditions and consequences that follow, which may include the loss of professional licenses, inability to live within certain areas, and a life-long stigma.

Evidence/Proof is the prerequisite, before allegations, arrest, or prosecution of any criminal matter.  There is much obscurantism, (deliberate concealment / distortion of facts) involved in sexual assault/rape cases, especially, cases involving allegations of historical abuses.

The CJS system should not convict individuals on the unsupported word of an accuser, but rather should require corroborative evidence.

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The purpose and effect of a 'Statute of Limitations' is to protect defendants against false allegations. There are three reasons for their enactment.

A plaintiff with a valid cause of action should pursue it with reasonable diligence. By the time a stale claim is ligated, a defendant might have lost evidence necessary to disprove the allegation/s. The longer you take to prosecute any crime, the more stale the evidence becomes and the less reliable it is.

 For example, if a person comes forward with a claim of sexual assault when he was 7 years-old, 20 years after the fact, arguably, the charge is suspect from the beginning.

In Ireland, both the investigative and the trial process fail to provide protection for the accused person. The 'Statute of Limitations' that was installed into civil law to provide such protection was repealed, with nothing put into its place to protect a citizen against false and malicious claims.

Because of the lesser standard of evidence/proof brought about in alleged historical abuse cases, professional criminals can and do exploit fully the gaping loophole in the law, where little or no evidence needs to be produced, in order to secure a criminal conviction, which in turn, leads to a civil court action - where the criminal conviction is used as the sole  evidence that ensures conviction in the civil courts leading to the payment of compensation.

More to the point, there is no mechanism built into the criminal justice system in Ireland to prevent the current widespread and ongoing abuse and exploitation of accused persons in relation to alleged historical sexual abuse. Child Sexual Abuse, (CSA) is highly monetised and has become a billion- euro industry, spanning the Criminal Justice Systems (CJS) in all jurisdictions to the extent that it has the power to and does subvert the administration of justice.

Perverting the course of justice is a serious crime but receives little attention from Irish Authorities.

In March 2017 a new study on the prevalence of false rape allegations in the United States, for the period 2006 – 20010, was published on the Journal of Forensic Psychology. The goal of the research was to obtain recent figures on the prevalence of unfounded allegations of rape and compare these figures to unfounded allegations of other crimes.

Under headings such as “unfounded” or “unproven” DiCanio (1993) states that while researchers and prosecutors do not agree on the exact percentage of cases in which there was a sufficiency of evidence to conclude that allegations were false, they generally agree on a range of 2% to 10%.  Due to varying definitions of a “false accusation”, but the true percentage remains unknown.

The ‘Historical Abuse Appeal Panel’ is confident that many of these convictions will be overturned too.

The Innocence Project aims to reform the criminal justice system by raising awareness of these issues and advocating for changes in public policy.

According to the data provided by the FBI, between 4,400 and 5,100 allegations of rape every year were deemed false or baseless after investigation, out of a total of 87,000 to 90,000 corresponding to an average of 5.55%. The figures were at least five times higher than for most other offence types. Cases of disputed consent were not included in the results as they were subject to judicial review in court.

A classification as false accusation, resulted in these cases being combined with other types of cases, e.g. where the accuser did not physically resist the suspect or sustain injuries.

CSA MONOTISED

Imagine this situation; you are accused of a heinous crime, of sexually abusing young and vulnerable children. You become a figure of hate, to the extent that you are attacked in the street, and death threats are issued against you. It takes years for your case to come to trial.

Meanwhile, your health breaks down and you fear that you are going mad, as one accusation becomes dozens of accusations. The trail itself is protracted, but the jury takes a mere hour and a half to return a unanimous vote of not guilty. Sympathy and support from the public pours in, but nothing can go back to the it was before. The wounds are too deep, and the damage to yourself and your family too great.

Then out of the blue, you receive a letter from the Residential Redress Board (or solicitor) that informs you a claim for redress names you as the person accused.

The person claiming compensation is the same person, who originally made allegations that destroyed your life.

 As you read on in disbelief that this nightmare can be beginning again, you see that if you make an application to the board, you will be given a copy of the allegations that destroyed your life. The letter specifies that you must reply within 14 days with any written evidence that you choose to offer but also tells you that you are not obliged to reply. This is a certain indicator that while you are being consulted, you have no power over the outcome. The letter also informs you that this is highly confidential, and that it is an offence to do anything that could be construed as revealing the identity of the person making the application to the redress board.

For one person, this is not an exercise of imagination but the excruciating reality. Nor can I (Author) reveal the identity of this person, or I too will be in breach of the legislation governing the redress board. The anger and frustration felt by this person is immense. Even if the claim for money is eventually thrown out the idea of having to defend your good name yet again, despite a unanimous jury verdict of not guilty, is a shattering prospect. Meanwhile, the identity of the person making the claim is protected by law.

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In June 2019, the news agency AFP reported:

ITALIAN POLICE arrested 18 people including a mayor, doctors and social workers for allegedly brainwashing vulnerable children into thinking their parents had abused them so as they could then be sold to foster parents.

Police in the northern city of Reggio Emilia made the arrests after an investigation started in 2018 revealed an alleged network of carers who used methods including electro-shock to make the children believe they had been sexually abused.

 The network then allegedly gave the children to foster families in exchange for cash, while keeping gifts and letters sent to the children by their real parents hidden in a warehouse that was discovered by police.

The alleged abuse was reported by Italian media and confirmed to AFP by police in Bibbiano, near Reggio Emilia.

“These accusations, if confirmed, are frightening and shocking”, Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte said at the G20 meeting in Japan. The accused include psychotherapists working for a social work association in Moncalieri, near Turin, and the mayor of Bibbiano.

To brainwash the children, those arrested allegedly forged child-like drawings with sexual connotations and used electro-shock therapy as a “little memory machine” to create fake abuse memories, while the therapists are accused of dressing up as “wicket” children's story characters.

The probe codenamed “Angels and Demons” revealed a scheme to “pass off as a model welfare system for abused minors, what was an illegal business to the children's detriment”, La Repubblica newspaper reported.

 “According to investigators, the aim of the arrested group was to take children away from families in difficult social situations and give them, for money to other parents,” said Corriere Della Sera newspaper. Some of the foster parents have been accused of sexually abusing the children they paid money for, La Repubblica reported.

 Police declined to say how many children were involved, or of what age. Hundreds of thousands of euros were involved, Italian media reported.

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Ireland has been identified as a destination for victims of child trafficking networks in a new (2019) report published by Europol. Criminals operating out of countries including China, Afghanistan and Russia were reported to be involved in networks smuggling minors in through southern EU countries including Spain and Italy.

 Victims were later transported to other countries, including Ireland, France and the UK where they are exploited into a world of criminal activity including prostitution and begging.

Ten countries, including Ireland, France and the UK were revealed as end destinations for Nigerian minors brought to Europe in this way.

EUROPOL Director Catherine DE Bolle said  “vulnerable children were being preyed upon by criminals who want to exploit them, boys and girls between the age of two and 17 years old are targeted by traffickers for different purposes, to be sexually abused in prostitution, pickpocket or stealing from shops,” she said.



Brainwashing - The Power of Persuasion

The key to successfully brainwashing someone is persuasion, but the problem with persuasion is the fact that everyone has their own concrete, unchangeable beliefs. It takes a lot of persuasion to alter someone's core beliefs.

These American soldiers in the Korean War, for example, were once proud Americans. What changed them? How did the Koreans change their core beliefs of being American;

Brainwashing has been spotted around the world and continues to be reported. For instance, imprisoned nationalistic American soldiers during the Korean War were reported to having pledged allegiance to the concept of communism.  Also, after those imprisoned American soldiers were set free, they refused to return to the US (Layton).

In psychology, brainwashing is viewed as “thought reform” which has to do with changing someone's original thoughts. Brainwashing and the Stockholm syndrome are closely related effects of abnormal power relationships.

In the case of publishing heiress Patricia Hearst, who was kidnapped in the early 1970's by the political extremist group Symbionese Liberation Army. Experts have cited both Stockholm Syndrome and brainwashing as potential reasons for her actions.

After Hearst was locked in a closet and severely abused for weeks, she joined the SLA, changed her name, became fiancé with one of its members and was caught robbing a bank with the group.

But after the police arrested members of the SLA and Hearst was returned to her family, she reversed her position. Instead of defending the SLA and holding police officers in contempt, she distanced herself from the group and condemned their actions.

It's possible that what Hearst experienced was neither true brainwashing nor Stockholm syndrome, but instead was a series of choices she made consciously that were designed to ensure her survival.

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Youth Often Remain Bored, Unfulfilled and Lonely

Coming to grips with one's identity has always been a part of adolescence, but today's youth face difficulties compounded by the massive cultural and social upheavals that characterize the contemporary world, especially during the last decade.

Despite the boom in entertainment and the pervasive impact of the mass media, youth often remain bored, unfulfilled and lonely. … The tendency to drift in and out of work, college and sexual relationships; uncertainty and anxiety regarding the future; discontent with economic and political structures, all contribute to isolation and loneliness.

Other precipitating life experiences that increase vulnerability, include such things as a recent divorce of one's parents or similar serious problems in the home, the extended or critical illness of a family member, a breakup with a girl or boy friend, poor academic performance or failure, or unpleasant experiences with drugs or sex. 

When someone is feeling exceedingly anxious, uncertain, hurt lonely, unloved, confused or guilty, that person is a prime prospect for those who come in the guise of religion offering a way out, or peace of mind.



The techniques used in modern brainwashing are not like the medieval torture of the rack and the tum-screw. They are subtler, more prolonged, and intended to be more terrible in their effect.

 They are calculated to disintegrate the mind of an intelligent victim, to distort his/her sense of values to a point where he/she will not simply cry-out “I did it” but will become a seemingly willing accomplice to the complete disintegration of his integrity and the production of an elaborate fiction. (Source; Dr Charla W. Mayo, (The Rape of the Mind).

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A MANIPULATIVE THERAPIST - has been accused of “brainwashing” the daughters of rich families into thinking they were abused as children.

Anne Craig deliberately implanted false memories into the women's minds in order to “drive a wedge” between them and their families, a court heard.

The court was told it led to at least one woman, the 27-year-old daughter of an aristocratic family to completely sever ties with her devastated parents.

Mrs Craig denies any wrongdoing and claims the allegations are part of a campaign of harassment against her.  The case reached the High Court as the Countess of Caledon – mother of the 27-year-old- sought evidence to back a civil case against Mrs Craig.

Her barrister Mark Jones said: “My client's case is that the evidence she has obtained from investigations disclose a methodology whereby memories or events are falsely and deliberately implanted in the minds of impressionable, perhaps vulnerable, young women (or 'Men)! “Part of the intention of so doing is to sunder their natural relations of affection with their families.

One former patient referred to only as (S) told the PI (Private Investigator) she and others had been talked into believing their parents were guilty of “horrendous” behaviour towards them. She said: “We were so brainwashed by her constant pressure, we ended up believing it. “She took things that happened and twisted them until we saw ourselves as only victims”.

 Another young woman said Mrs Craig had “dictated” her every move, isolating her from family and friends. The aristocrat's daughter, who cannot be named, had come to believe she was the victim of violence in childhood and she had not spoken to her family for years, the barrister said. Mr Jones said: “If true, it appears manipulative, controlling and deeply malign. “If that's correct, the untrue allegations would be made wholly or in part with the intention of discrediting the family members said to have done terrible things”.

Intensive indoctrination, usually of a political or religious nature, applied to individuals to develop in their minds a specific belief and motivation. Any mental manipulation intended to change, and ultimately control, the mind of another person, who is held against his/her volition and subjected to psychologic pressure or torture, may be considered as brainwashing.

Stockholm- Syndrome, is a condition that causes hostages to develop a psychological alliance with their captors as a survival strategy during captivity.

 These alliances, resulting from a bond formed between captor and captives during intimate time spent together, are generally considered irrational in- light of the danger or risk endured by the victims.

The FBI's Hostage Barricade Database System and Law Enforcement Bulletin shows that roughly 8% of victims show evidence of Stockholm syndrome.

This term was first used by foreign media in 1973, when four hostages were taken during a bank robbery in Stockholm, Sweden. The hostages defended their captors after being released and would not agree to testify in court against them.

Stockholm syndrome is ostensibly paradoxical because the sympathetic sentiments captives feel towards their captors are the opposite of the fear and disdain an onlooker may feel towards their captors.

 Stockholm syndrome is considered a “contested illness” due to many law enforcement officers' doubts about the legitimacy of the condition.

 Stockholm syndrome has also come to describe the reactions of some abuse victims beyond the context of kidnappings or hostage-taking.

*Th key components that generally lead to the development of Stockholm syndrome:

* A hostage's development of positive feelings towards their captor/s.

* No previous hostage-captor relationship.

* A refusal by hostages to co-operate with police forces and other government authorities.

*A hostage's belief in the humanity of their captors, the reason that when a victim holds the same values as the aggressor, they cease to be perceived as a threat.

*Actions and attitudes similar, to those suffering from Stockholm syndrome have also been found in victims of sexual abuse, human trafficking, discrimination, terror, and political and religious oppression.

A Severe Corruption of Policing Within Gardai

Journalist, Jim Cusack writing in the Sunday Independent, 26/03/2017; Citing the Garda Inspectorate's report of 2014, which was largely ignored.

 Cusack concludes his article thus; “The almost 15,000 wrongful traffic summonses and the fake breath test data is on any reading of the Garda Inspectorate's other reports, the least of the serious issues surrounding the severe corruption of policing.

The inspectorate also found that Gardai have been corporately covering-up and lying about serious crime, including rape. This has yet to be addressed. In addition, the CSO (Central Statistics Office) published Garda crime figures (Under Reservation).

This (NEW) categorisation indicates that the quality of these (Garda) statistics do not meet the standards required of official statistics published by the CSO.

A REVIEW of crime statistics (by the CSO) has found that the Gardai inaccurately recorded all categories of crime between 2003 and 2016. The review found that the most dramatically affected were homicide incidents, which increased by 18% from 2003 to 2016.

Additionally, an online link is provided regarding this matter, to an article under the title; Garda analysts 'were belittled and disrespected when they tried to highlight inaccurate homicide figures.

More recently, in January 2019 newly appointed Garda Commissioner Drew Harris apologised for the failure of the Gardai to prosecute thousands of crimes, including one rape, committed by juveniles over a seven - year period between 2010 and 2017.

Cases would now be examined and may lead to disciplinary action against some of the Garda members involved; some 3,400 Gardai or a quarter of the force. Justice sources said it was possible the debacle may could result in legal actions from child offenders and their victims, which include 2,492 people and 988 businesses.

Asked if there may be large number of crimes involving adult offenders that were also not acted upon, Ms Feehily said she was concerned. “It's unlikely that Garda behaviours seen to exist on a wide scale, - judging by the numbers involved here, are confined to Gardai dealing with young people”, she said.

 “It must at least be an open question as to whether similar behaviours, and therefore similar lapsed cases and similar opportunities to re-offend, have occurred in relation to adult offenders” The lapsed cases had been identified during a review of all children referred. some multiple times, to the Garda youth diversion programme.

 It deals with children from 12 up to their 18^th  birthday, seeking to divert them away from crime and also away from the criminal justice system proper.  In order to be accepted into the programme, youth offenders must admit their crimes.

The internal Garda review examined all 158,521 referrals, involving 57,386 children, into the diversion programme between 2010 and 2017.  Some 103,515 referrals were deemed suitable for the programme and 55,506 were deemed not suitable.

These unsuitable cases should have been progressed through the wider justice system, mainly via prosecutions. But in 7,894 cases nothing further happened despite there being grounds, and enough evidence, to pursue the cases.

The crimes the children committed included one rape and one other sexual assault as well as drugs and firearms offences. A total of 55 crimes not pursued were deemed serious but most, were less serious criminal damage, theft, public orders and others.

Changes in Garda practice and the force's Pulse database over the last two years (2016-2017) have ensured far fewer cases were overlooked towards the end of the seven-year-period under review.

In 2017, for example, just over half of 1% of cases resulted in no action, though that was as high as 7% of cases in 2010.





The Chairperson of the Policing Authority Josephine Feehily has said 'that the failure may be replicated across the wider adult criminal justice system’.

Ms Feehily was speaking after it emerged 7,894 criminal offences committed by 3,489 child suspects (under 18 years – old) were not progressed because of “Garda inaction” over the seven- year period.

Some 57 of the suspects are now dead, with most dying after they turned 18-yrs-old. However, Ms Feehily said some of them would still be alive had their cases been progressed properly and interventions made to help them.

 Garda Commissioner Drew Harris described the debacle as a “failure” on the part of his force, adding it was “embarrassing” and “professionally humiliating”.

He apologised to the child offenders, their victims and the public. “We have failed, and failed by a very considerable margin, in a large number of cases” he said.

Only 4% of child sex abuse cases reported to the Gardai resulted in a conviction in court, the Garda Inspectorate has found in a sample study. In a mostly damming report.

The Inspectorate found that some 66% of all sex crimes in Ireland involved a child victim, in those cases 44% of the perpetrators were family members, 25% were neighbours or family acquaintances and 14% strangers. Clerical sexual abuse was now (2019) statistically negligible.

The Garda inspectorate noted an exponential increase in internet-based offending and dangers to children from social media since its first review in 2012. The inspectorate has also concluded that too few Gardai were deployed in trying to catch child abusers grooming and exploiting children online.



THE GARDA INSPECTORATE

Has Started an Inspection of Counter Corruption Practices Within An Garda Siochana. (Reported June/2019).

The examination will focus on the effectiveness of the organisation at preventing, detecting and mitigating against internal corruption.

Chief Inspector Mark Toland said, “that there is “no doubt that the overwhelming majority of garda members and staff are honest, professional and committed to the values” in the garda code of ethics.

He said the inspection will provide an independent forward-looking report on the effectiveness of An Garda Siochana in dealing with internal corruption.

As part of the review, the inspectorate will examine vetting in selection processes and supervision and will assess the force's capability to investigate corruption in terms of confidential disclosures, intelligence and information sharing.

It will also look at substance testing, transparent decision-making and the maintenance of professional boundaries. The inspectorate will rely on the definition commonly used by government agencies and departments in Ireland, that corruption is “an abuse of a position of trust in order to gain an undue advantage”.

Tolan said this investigation will complement the “ongoing work of the Garda Commissioner in putting in place the processes to prevent and tackle corruption within An Garda Siochana”.

 Reported: May 2019. The Commissioner Drew Harris last month also confirmed a new anti-corruption unit is be set up by the end of the year. He said this unit will investigate allegations around drug abuse, the flow of information outside of the Garda organisation and inappropriate associations with criminals.

 His comments came just a week before three gardai, a Superintendent, an inspector and a rank-and-file member were arrested and questioned on suspicion of being involved in the commission of one or more criminal offences.

The Superintendent was arrested on suspicion of breaching legislation which relates to passing information obtained in the course of garda duties, the inspector was questioned over suspected breaches of the Misuse of Drugs Act and the garda is being investigated under suspicion of perverting the course of justice. All three were released without charge but have been suspended from duty as the investigation, part of a wider investigation of a Munster-based crime gang.

EDIT LINE:



Reports From The Court-Room

When a citizen is called upon to serve as a jury member in adjudication in a criminal trial, it indeed can be a very daunting task. In selecting the jury, the State and the accused may challenge up to eight jurors each. Then when the final twelve (good and true) jurors are selected – empanelled - sworn-in. The judge may caution them, that if they are likely to be prejudiced by the subject matter of the trial or may hold strong views regarding the nature of the subject matter,  sexual assault/rape/murder  and so-on they should excuse themselves from hearing the case, or at least, that is what we are told. In reality, this caution may be overlooked, and the jury may continue to hear the case regardless of the fact that either themselves a family member or friend may have been the victim of this type of crime in the past. To have allegations of  sexual assault or rape, hanging over an person, creates very significant personal and professional difficulties for that person. Regardless of the final verdict delivered by the jury, or the factual innocence or guilt of the accused, the seeds of a life-long stigma have been planted and the damage caused by such a stigma cannot

be erased.

A Rape Trial Collapsed in Dublin's Central Criminal Court due to an allegedly prejudicial newspaper report that linked the case to the ongoing debate around the fairness of rape trials. The trial involved a Dublin defendant accused of raping a woman he met on a night out in 2015. His trial had run for six days and was at the closing stages, with the jury sent out on Friday to begin deliberations.

Lawyers for the defendant told the Court that on Saturday a comment piece appeared in the Irish Independent newspaper that suggested implicitly that he was guilty and that “the complainant is, in fact, a victim”. Acceding to an application to discharge the jury, Mr Justice Paul McDermot said the article came close to to scandalising the court. He said the article, with the headline 'A tipping point has come from high-profile cases shining painful spotlights', stated “society has had a bellyful” in relation to rape trials.  He said while people are entitled to have views about these matters, it was unacceptable to juxtapose an ongoing trial with those views and other cases with a level of notoriety. Mr Justice McDermot said the unprecedented media coverage included references that a fair trial was not being conducted.  He told the jury of four men and eight women that it was unacceptable that a trial was subjected to such comment. He said the publication of this article had caused a situation to arise in which difficulties presented to the complainant would have to be revisited and the defendant would have to await a potential retrial. He said the trial had been conducted with commendable professionalism by both the defence and the prosecution. He said the cross-examination on any relevant material was done responsibly and if it wasn't, the court would have intervened. He said there was an implicit criticism of mounting a defence on behalf of an accused and this was the fundamental core of the right to a fair trial He added that the suggestion that this trail was conducted improperly was simply wrong. Opposing the application on behalf of the Director of Public Prosecutions, Mr James Dwyer SC submitted the court could remedy the situation by instructing jurors to put any comment or articles out of their mind when deliberating in this case.  Earlier, Anne-Marie Lawlor SC, defending, told the court her client had been awaiting trial since 2015 and that the trial had been listed to go on three previous occasions. Ms Lawlor, defending said the article appeared to advance a position that society has had enough of incorrect or wrongful acquittals of persons.“It advances that society will change, and and that this case, being used as a pivot for this opinion, may operate as a bellwether for change”.  She said that the article amounted to an exhortation to the jury to convict the accused. Ms Lawlor said the article alongside an accompanying editorial contained a criticism of the trial process.  She said that, this process presumed a person to be innocent and gave an opportunity to test the evidence against the accused. Ms Lawlor said the court could not remedy the situation, because to ask the

jurors if they had read the article at this stage, would be a trespass into their role in an unprecedented and unlawful way. Mr Justice McDermot said that there was no precedent for the court to make inquiries into the state of mind of jurors once deliberations had begun. The court heard that such inquiries have been made in previous trials where potential prejudicial information or commentary was published during the course of the trial, but before evidence had finished.

(December 5' 2018) A retired 68 -year-old EX – Australian Bishop cleared of covering – up child abuse during the 1970's , he had been sentenced to 12 months imprisonment, after being convicted of concealing child abuse.  His sentenced was quashed, after he won his appeal. The Appeal Judge noted; “inconsistencies” with the accuser's statements regarding an alleged conversation, he had with Mr Wilson about the abuse. Adding “This Court could not be satisfied beyond reasonable doubt that this conversation took place at all”. (Mr Wilson) a former Archbishop of Adelaide, resigned in July 2018).

A Co Clare man was was cleared of sexually assaulting his then-teenage cousin at a hospice, while the man's father lay dying on his deathbed in an adjoining room at the care facility. At Ennis Circuit Court, a jury took just over two an a half hours to deliver a unanimous 'not guilty' verdict in relation to six counts of sexual assault against the 35-year-old. Judge Gerald Keys told the man he was free to go.

Tuesday, November 06, 2018: A 27 year-old man who denied raping a 17-year-old in county Cork wept loudly as he was found not-guilty by a jury at the Central Criminal Court In Cork. The jury of eight men and four women took one and a half hours of deliberation  to reach their unanimous verdict. Ms Justice Carmel Steward thanked the jury in the case – dominated by the issue of consent.  Ms Elizabeth O'Connell SC (defending) told jurors that they should have regard for the underwear the complainant wore on the night. “Does the evidence out-rule the possibility that she was attracted to the defendant and was open to meeting someone and being with someone? You have to look at the way she was dressed.

She was wearing a thong with a lace front.” Mr Creed SC for the prosecution said to the jury. “You decide if there was sexual intercourse between them. You decide if there was consent. You have heard her say she did not consent. You have heard him say she did consent. The major issue you have to deal with is whether she consented to sexual intercourse. It is one way or the other. Either she did or did not . If you are satisfied she did not consent and that he knew she did not consent then you convict. “She is quite clear she did not consent. She said she never had sexual intercourse before. “It has been alleged by the defendant there was lots of kissing going on. In terms of kissing there is not one witness in this case who can say they were kissing.”

July 2019: The rape trial of a Dublin man collapsed after the complainant left the country half way through her cross-examination. In directing the jury at the Central Criminal Court  (CCC) to acquit the accused, Ms Justice Carmel Stewart noted a High Court judicial review had found 'inexcusable and blameworthy delays in prosecuting the case. The man, who cannot be identified, was aged 15 when it was alleged he raped his then girlfriend at a park near his home in August 2014, He was aged 18 when he was charged before a District Court in January 2017. He had pleaded not guilty to rape and before his trial began, his lawyers had brought Judicial Review proceedings, seeking to restrain the prosecution on the basis of delays which meant, he was now before the court as an adult rather than as a child.

In a ruling, made in May 2018, Justice Paul McDermot said the delays in prosecuting the case were inexcusable, unreasonable and unsatisfactorily explained. “They amounted to blameworthy prosecutorial delay in the case of a child”.  He said, the case of an alleged serious sexual offence committed by one minor upon another had obvious sensitivities, adding “this is the type of case that should have attracted a very high priority”. Mr Justice McDermot allowed the case to proceed after concluding that the delays were not sufficient to outweigh the public interest in allowing the charge to proceed to trial. At the CCC, Michael Bowman SC, defending, told Ms Justice Steward that the High Court had found there was no sense of urgency or priority given to the case. He made his comments as part of a defence application to the court to direct the jury to return a verdict of not guilty on foot of the young woman's absence. … John O'Kelly SC, for the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP), told the court he was not instructed to oppose the defence application. Ms Justice Steward noted the woman had been uncontactable, and the only fair outcome was to direct the jury to acquit the man.

(December 2018);  A Murder Trial Collapsed at the Central Criminal Court in Dublin, due to the content of a TV Current Affairs programme, which the judge said was likely to have influenced the deliberating jury.  Ms Carmel Stewart criticised what she described as “a parallel Justice System in the court of public opinion” which operated “without any regard to the courts at trial”. She was responding to a defence application to discharge the jury following a 10 day trial, due to a segment on RTE's Prime Time programme, when a discussion was held about different cases. The Barrister Defending said the segment “rubbished” the defence of provocation on which he was partially relying. The jury had begun deliberating the previous day on whether the man who stabbed a musician on either side of his neck, was guilty of murder or manslaughter. The judge had explained to the jury that provocation could reduce murder to manslaughter.

New Gender Neutral School Uniform Policy

A County Wicklow primary school is introducing a new gender neutral school uniform policy which will allow boys to wear (kilts ?) skirts or girls to wear trousers from the new school term (2019). St Brigid's National School in Greystones, Co Wicklow, said the new approach aims to ensure that any children with gender identity issues feel happy and accepted at school. Maire Costello,the school principle, said the move was prompted by the school's student council and had been agreed by the school's board of management and parents. “We have children who are questioning their sexual identity. It is happening at an earlier age. We want all our children to have a happy experience in school,” she said. “If that means girls wearing trousers or boys wearing skirts, so be it. The most important thing is that children should feel comfortable and happy over how they are dressed”... The school is also phasing out boys' and girls' toilets and replace them with gender neutral versions.

FREE LEGAL  AID

The simplest was of describing the free legal aid scheme is that it is openly operated on a basis which can only be described 'as fraudglent' with legal teams trying to get innocent clients to plead guilty to the very  serious charges that they face, regardless of innocence or guilt. The Irish CJS fails to provide for an independent investigation system ( Independent of the Gardai) and operated under instruction from an accused person and their legal defence team. A guilty plea allows, the legal teams to pocket their considerable fees and move on to their next case – to do likewise. 98% of convicted prisoners who took the 'plead guilty' advise from their legal teams, were dissatisfied with the representation which they received, and those accused persons who insisted upon pleading not guilty received a poor and totally inadequate legal representation and a long prison sentence.  However, for some accused persons, the €65,000 legal fee that they paid to their legal team to cover the cost of a trial in the Circuit Criminal or the Central Criminal or the Special Criminal Courts, did not bring about a better standard of legal representation, than they would have received under the free legal aid scheme. One elderly man, who had a small farm and agricultural business was asked for an additional €65,000 to cover the cost of his appeal, this was in addition to the fee he had already paid in respect of his trial. He decided to serve his four-year prison sentence, waiting until he was released to take legal action against the woman who had made a false and malicious allegation against him in order to be able to claim compensation

*In Ireland, only 4% of child sex abuse cases reported to the Gardai resulted in a conviction in court, the Garda Inspectorate has found in a sample study. In a mostly damming report, The Inspectorate found that some 66% of all sex crimes in Ireland involved a child victim, in those cases 44% of the perpetrators were family members, 25% were neighbours or family acquaintances and 14% strangers. Clerical abuse was now statistically negligible. The Garda inspectorate noted an exponential increase in internet-based offending and dangers to children from social media since its first review in 2012. The inspectorate has also concluded that too few Gardai were deployed in trying to catch child abusers grooming and exploiting children online. Making some form of apology, expressing regret or saying that 'that you are sorry' for something is in fact a legal admission of guilt or liability, making [amends for something that you have done wrong, civil or criminal ,  and as such can be taken as an admission of guilt in a criminal trial or a civil action*. For example, you will be asked by the police during, before or after questioning; Would you not say that you are sorry for what you have done?. Do you have any regrets about what you have done?.  Will you apologise to your victim for what you have done?. Will you accept the jury's guilty verdict?. These are all subliminal terms related to mental processes of which the average person is not aware of. For example; THE SENTENCING OF a former scout leader who allegedly sexually abused his 13-year-old neighbour was delayed over confusion surrounding whether or not he accepts his guilt. The man (55) of Sheephill Avenue, Blanchardstown, Dublin was found guilty of three counts of indecently assaulting a then 13-year-old boy at the man's former home on Maryfield Avenue in Artane on dates between May and September 1981. The man had pleaded not guilty, but was convicted on all counts by majority verdict after a trial at Dublin Circuit Criminal court in December 2018. Judge Paulien Codd was due to sentence the man, but adjourned it pending a new probation report. The man would have been asked 'a trick' question by his own legal team, if he agreed to accept the guilty verdict, this in fact was an open admission of guilt in spite of his claims of innocence. 'Do you accept the jury's verdict'?.  “There is an acceptance of wrongdoing”,   Fiona Murphy SC, defending, said the man had no recollection of the offences, but 'accepted the verdict of the jury' and knew he must take responsibility for his actions. she said. ( Author's comment, collusion with the prosecution?).

However, Judge Codd cited a previous probation service report saying, the man “adamantly denies” his guilt, and said she could not pass sentence without clarity on the man's position. “I'm getting conflicting messages”, said Judge Codd. The man had no previous convictions.

Authors notes: June 04/ 2019:  Scouting Ireland to make public apology for CSA in legacy organisations County Fermanagh. NI : June 04 / 2019: PSNI begin investigations into historical allegations of CSA across county between the 1960s and the late 1990s. (currently there are 19 such allegations on their files pending investigations by a specialist team of detectives). Previous historical CSA allegations were not prosecuted (by the NI Crown Prosecution Service) because of insufficient evidence. To be wrongly convicted of child sexual abuse has immediate and long-lasting effects on the life of the accused person,  including lengthy prison terms, registration as a sex offender and the conditions and consequences that follow, which may include the loss of professional licenses, inability to live within certain areas, and a life-long stigma. Recent Research has shown, in Ireland the number of people imprisoned on the basis of 'false' allegations  especially involving historical sexual assaults/rape  is at least, between 20% and 30% of the total (current) number of people convicted of such crimes, as are, based upon false and uncorroborated evidence presented to juries. For the factually innocent defendants who are wrongly convicted and imprisoned, but who can not legally demonstrate this, the consequences are likely to be great indeed. Given the nature of child sexual abuse, such convictions can destroy families. The accused individual, is not the only victim of wrongful convictions. A spouse who refuses to believe an accusation may loose custody of the child involved or other children in the family. She herself may be wrongly criminally charged for refusing to 'protect' the child from harm. A DUBLIN MOTHER who faced 61 charges relating to the neglect and abuse of her two youngest children was found unfit to be tried. The 50-year-old woman (who cannot be named for legal reasons), was due to stand trial at Dublin Circuit Court in relation to one charge of causing or encouraging a sexual offence upon a child, three counts of reckless endangerment and 57 counts of neglecting the children, on dates from 2002 to 2010. The children, a boy and a girl, were aged seven and ten when they were taken into care in December 2010. The woman has had no contact with the children since. A number of psychiatrist gave evidence to the court. The judge said, having considered the reports from each of the doctors and their testimonies before the court, that he accepted that the woman was unfit to be tried.   A 78-year-old man came before the court on similar charges.

'Inherently Illogical, To Demand Evidence That's Not There, Not Recoverable'

'They had been refused redress on the grounds that the school employee who had abused them, had not been the subject of a prior complaint. Mr Justice O'Neill said the position adopted by the State involved “an inherent inversion of logic and a fundamental unfairness to applicants”. Mr Justice Iafhlaith O'Neil issued a finding that the 'State's interpretation of the (2014) European Court of Human Rights decision in relation to Ms O'Keeffe, was  wrong', and it was 'wrong to make the terms of the ex-gratia scheme so restrictive”.  Fianna Fail leader Micheal Martin said the State had placed unreasonable barriers to people achieving justice. In its 2014 judgement the European court criticised the State for not having a complaints procedure. There was, therefore, the judge said, no records of complaints that were made, and a chance that many complaints were not  made “because there was no State-controlled complaints procedure in place to receive such complaints”.  The Government had argued that the ECHR decision applies only to people who were abused after an initial complaint was made against a teacher and no action was taken. Retired Judge Iarfhlaith O'Neill found, “I have no hesitation in concluding that judgement of the ECHR does not expressly or by any permissible or possible implication contain such reasoning”. The Judge added, that in his opinion, had a system to report abuse “been in place in the years before 1992 when all of the historic historic child sexual abuse occurred in national schools … the prevailing culture of impunity which these crimes occur, could not have existed or survived”. In January 2014, the European Court on Human Rights ruled that the Irish State failed to protect Louise O'Keeffe from abuse by her school principle. In its judgement, the ECHR said that the State “had to have been aware of the level of sexual crime against minors” as a result of a number of reports from  the 1930s to the 1970s. Following the ECHR ruling, the State said it would make settlement offers of up to €84,000 to people with cases similar to O'Keeffe, but only seven people have received settlements in the four years since.  The religious orders that ran the schools and might have records of complaints “have demonstrated an unwillingness to reveal those records”. “Thus it is inherently illogical for the State to demand the very evidence which is not there or cannot be recovered”, he said. Conor O'Mahony, deputy director of the Child Law Clinic of University College, Cork, who made a submission to Mr Justice O'Neill, said 360 people had taken cases against the State seeking compensation for being sexually abused in day schools.  Mr O'Mahony added, he presumed that the State would drop all insistence that people had to show a prior complaint. He said that as far as he was aware, most cases involved abusers who had been convicted for their offences.  The 13 cases covered by Mr Justice O'Neill's report involved people who had complained to him in his position as Independent Assessor, about their not been given redress. Ms O'Keeffe had sued the State because she was sexually abused while in school, but the State argued that it should not be held responsible. She lost in both the High Court and the Supreme Court. Following a ruling in her favour by the European Court of Human Rights in 2014, the then Taoiseach, Mr Kenny apologised to Ms O'Keeffe, and an ex-gratia scheme for providing redress to other claimants was put in place. However, critics said the scheme was impossibly restrictive. The consequences of Justice O'Neill's decision is that the 13 people who had been denied payments under the ex-gratia scheme, will now most likely get payments. What remains unclear is how the decision will affect others.

A PAEDOPHILES PARADISE

SCOUTING IRELAND CHILD SEX SCANDAL

Scouting Ireland wrote to Minister for Children Ms Zappone following an article in the Irish Times, which reported evidence from the internal review pointed towards child abuse being covered-up. A review of alleged historical child sexual abuse at Scouting Ireland has indicated that files related to some cases went missing and

that some scout leaders appear to have “colluded” to facilitate abusers preying on children. One scout leader who held a senior position is suspected of facilitating a “known abuser” in molesting children in a scouting organisation that predated the formation of Scouting Ireland.  It is suspected another senior volunteer, who is facing abuse allegations, used their access to confidential files to interfere and influence how child protection complaints were handled. Findings from the ongoing review, including indications that crimes were covered-up, were outlined in a briefing note that Scouting Ireland chief executive Dr John Lawlor sent to Minister for Children Katherine Zappone. “There are suspicions that, in the mid 1990s, files relating to child abuse went missing,” Dr Lawlor told Ms Zappone, in a letter dated 12/12/ 2018. The organisation's ongoing review of historical abuse, led by safeguarding expert Ian Elliott, has identified 313 alleged victims and 237 alleged perpetrators. Scouting Ireland was formed in 2004,  following a merger of the Catholic Boy Scouts of Ireland and the Scout Association of Ireland, and the majority of allegations relate to a period between the 1960s and 1990s. (Authors notes): Scouting Ireland is the National Scout Association for Ireland and a member of the World Organisation of the Scout Movement. The organisation has over 53,000 members in late 2018 including over 13,000 adult volunteers. Of the 750,000 people between the ages of 6 and 18 in Ireland, over 6% are involved with the organisation). Dr Lawlor, sought to assure the Minister there was a “strong record of reporting, and appropriate maintenance of Legacy files,” since the establishment of Scouting Ireland. The review into past abuse included an audit of surviving historic case files, interviews with former volunteers and staff, and new information provided by a large number of alleged victims that have come forward in recent months. Serious child protection concerns raised by Tusla (The Child and Family Agency) in a letter to Scouting Ireland  were not mentioned at a subsequent meeting it held with the youth organisation, a week later, it was claimed. Labour leader Brendan Howlin asked in the Dail why these safeguarding issues were not discussed with senior officials of Scouting Ireland  if they were of such concern that Minister Katherine Zappone, had to publish the letter.  The Child and Family Agency is now (2019) to conduct a full review into how the voluntary organisation supervises children and deals with disclosures of abuse after serious concerns were raised about current practices and found shortcomings in “live cases”. Child protection standards in the organisation, which has 53,000 juvenile members were sharply criticised by the child and family agency (Tusla), which said an assessment by its officials had found “live cases” where poor practice had “left children exposed to risk of harm”. The criticism was part of a letter sent by Tusla  on February 18/2019   to Scouting Ireland  chief executive Dr John Lawlor. The letter made a series of urgent recommendations over existing safeguarding failings at Scouting Ireland. Scouting Ireland's interim safeguarding manager Ian Elliot wrote to Minister for Children Katherine Zappone seeking to have the letter from Tusla criticising the youth organisation “withdrawn”.  He told the Minister of Scouting Ireland's  “complete  surprise” at the Tusla Letter, and said the organisation was “very anxious to sit down and talk through the evidence on which it was based”. Mr Elliot, who has worked with Scouting Ireland since 2017, said he was not aware of any current practices “to justify the levels of concern from Tusla”. Scouting Ireland met with Tusla officials in (*early March 2019) in an attempt to address concerns over its child protection standards. In the February 18  Letter, Tusla officials questioned the standard of supervision on overnight trips, due to incidents in recent years, where children had been subjected to sexual assaults by other juvenile members in camping tents. The agency also criticised Scouting Ireland's procedures around disclosures of child protection allegations. Mr Elliot said the reality was (*that) providing constant supervision to children on camping trips would be an “impossible task” for any organisation, adding that Scouting organisation is as “safe as it can be and getting safer”.  Mr Elliot, said it is also important to address the impression that young people involved in Scouting Ireland were unsafe. He said there were stringent and robust policies and procedures in place that he believed were best practice in the field, and that were strongly adhered to. Mr Elliot admitted that was not always the case, but said he was satisfied that things had changed. However, Pat Rabbitte, the newly appointed chair of Tusla, defended its handling of the matter and the concerns raised by its officials. “I have satisfied myself that the agency has acted professionally”, he said. The Government's Special Rapporteur on Child Protection, Geoffrey Shannon,  Speaking on RTEs Six-One News he said the “issues raised by Tusla were troubling, ... and struck at the heart of child protection”,  “Where we have access  but don't fully comply with the law, there are vulnerabilities for children,” He called on Scouting Ireland to work with Tusla and said “any issue of not engaging with the statutory child protection agency would be of great concern”. ...”We are talking about not just historic as allegations and that's what's going to trouble listeners. The policies that have been identified in the Tusla letter are policies that deal with the processing of current and live cases. The other big issues is how disclosures are handled”.  He also underlined that parents have a responsibility to protect their children. But he indicated that they need to be assured that their children are safe from child abuse while engaged in scouting activities. “We need to provide reassurance to parents that where they send their children to the Scouts that children are safe- that is the basic requirement. “I believe scouting provides huge opportunity for children. What I'm urging now is that we ensure the highest standard are in place for those who are responsible for children” Mr Shannon added. Meanwhile, the Executive Director of an abuse survivors' support group has expressed shock and alarm that Scouting Ireland was in conflict concerns put forward about child safeguarding in the organisation by Tusla. Maeve Lewis, of One in Four, said that she was “very, very concerned” by Scouting Ireland's response to yesterday's revelations from Tusla, and said the organisation must take the concerns seriously.  Also speaking on RTE's Today with Sean O'Rourke, Ms Lewis observed that she was “always uneasy” with the fact that Scouting Ireland itself provided a helpline for alleged victims of abuse, as generally survivors would “not be at all comfortable” accessing help from the organisation that has allegedly caused harm.

She also noted the “very inappropriate ways” it appears Scouting Ireland interrogated children about alleged matters of concern. Ms lewis said that if she had a child involved in scouting this weekend, she would not be very comfortable letting them go off until this matter was resolved.  Scouting Ireland has maintained (*that) the organisation has robust child protection practices, and observes all statutory reporting requirements. Up until now Scouting Ireland has kept its head above water, barley, on the defence that the historical abuse scandal engulfing the organisation relates only to past sins. Over the past year the organisation, has reiterated that it complies fully with safeguarding standards and requirements. However, repeated reassurances that parents of children currently in scout troops, across the State had nothing to worry about was blown out of the water by Minister for Children Katherine Zappone. The latest revelations from Tusla, that it holds “serious concerns” over the ability of Scouting Ireland to keep children safe from harm may well prove a death knell for the organisation as it currently exists. Tusla's concerns were set out in a letter sent to Scouting Ireland chief executive Dr John Lawlor on February 18/ (2019). It recommended that the organisation undertake an “immediate review” of how children are being supervised, and that Scouting Ireland “consider the viability of continuing with overnight trips”. Tusla cites several indecent assaults and cases of indecent exposure, both involving juveniles abusing other juveniles in the mixed-sex organisation. Responding to a question tabled by the Labour Leader (Brendan Howlin T D) *Tanaiste (*deputy prime minister) Simon Coveney said, … Minister Zappone had taken the decision to publish the letter so that the issue is dealt with in an “open and transparent way”. “There are still remaining concerns in terms of the need  for Scouting Ireland to put procedures in place to make sure they are fully consistent with Tusla recommendations on child protection because we know there has been real concerns, and cases of real concern in the past”.  The findings follow an assessment of standards in the organisation by Tusla child protection officials, which began last month (January 2019), on foot of a major scandal over historic child sex abuse at the organisation. “There are indications that an adult member, against whom a number of credible allegations have been made, allegedly colluded with a known abuser of children and facilitated that abuse”, Dr Lawlor told Ms Zappone. Dr Lawlor said the “suggestions of a multiple cover-ups relate to actions and cases prior to the establishment of Scouting Ireland.” The review was agreed to at a meeting between Tusla and Scouting Ireland officials at their head office in January. Tusla sent a “feedback report” to Scouting Ireland on its compliance with Children First Legislation on January 17/2019, which said its adherence to the legislation was “insufficient” around the reporting of child protection concerns, and procedures for managing allegations of abuse. The letter from Tusla states that no response was received to the report. In a separate letter on January 16/2019.  Tusla officials informed Scouting Ireland their “child safeguarding statement”, which sets out procedures to keep children safe from harm, was only “partially compliant” with requirements.  Ms Zappone first got sight of the highly critical letter sent by Tusla in February  on Wednesday morning, hours before she read its contents into the Dail record. Her speech in the Dail took nearly all corners by surprise, and the Minister had come straight to the chamber from a meeting on the matter with her officials. The idea that a Scouting Ireland organisation would have to cease overnight camps is unprecedented. The ethos of the youth organisation is based around developing young people into responsible adults. Central to that idea is children and teenagers becoming independent, and learning to to cope away from the comfort zone of their homes.  But parents' trust in the organisation – to place their children in the care of scout leaders on weekend trips away will likely be tested by the concerns flagged by Tusla.  How Scouting Ireland responds to what is essentially a charge of not being able to adequately protect children in its care will define whether it survives or not. Privately, those inside the organisation are preparing to make a strong defence against the charges from Tusla. In a statement responding to the letter, the organisation said the concerns raised “serious questions”. Scouting Ireland stressed that it wished to see the “evidence” behind a number of Tusla's recommendations.  A threat looms over the organisation of it facing huge financial costs if a significant number of historic alleged abuse victims take legal actions. Scouting Ireland has been in the spotlight over the past 12 months since the Irish Times published details of a confidential report into the handling of a rape allegation concerning two adult leaders. The 2018 report by safeguarding expert Ian Elliott found the organisation's handling of the complaint to be “deeply flawed,” and it criticised the organisation's safeguarding policies. Mr Elliott is Scouting Ireland's interim safeguarding manager. Scouting Ireland's response to the controversy has been plagued by infighting at its top tire, and Ms Zappone has twice suspended its State funding over a lack of confidence in how it is governed. If Scouting Ireland fails to take action on Tusla's latest recommendations, it is likely that State funding, and by extension its survival, will again be in the cross-hairs.

The internal review found evidence that alleged  abusers ( not adults) moved from “one local group to another”, and in one case between the two legacy scouting associations. “In doing so they appear to have been facilitated  by adult members, against who there are now credible allegations,” Dr Lawlor wrote. Allegations pointed to abuse “committed by adult members at all levels in both organisations,” he said. Forty former scout leaders accused of child sex abuse are alleged to have molested multiple victims, according to a breakdown of figures from the review, recently sent to the Oireachtas Committee on Children and Youth Affairs. The figures show there are an additional 66 alleged victims of youth-to-youth sexual abuse, not included in the headline 313 figure of alleged victims. There are also suspicions that legacy scouting organisations failed to document reports of abuse made at the time. “In one particular case from the mid- 1990s, there are indications that an adult member, now deceased, sought to protect a known abuser by threatening and putting pressure” on another volunteer, who was on a team responsible for child protection cases, Dr Lawlor said.  The adult member held “high office” in the organisation for several decades, and was a “close associate” of several other leaders, (whom if still alive), would now also be facing “credible” abuse allegations. [But] Both the senior figure and his associates are now dead . In another case a deceased leader, now facing credible abuse allegations dating from the 1970s to 1980s was “restored” into one legacy organisation, having previously been 'withdrawn.  (Author's notes; The correspondence was obtained following an Irish Times request under the Freedom of Information Act). Source; Irish Times 01/03/2019). A high-ranking French Catholic cleric, Cardinal Philippe Barbarin, was convicted in March 2019 of failing to report (helping to cover-up) allegations of child sexual abuse in his diocese over a two-year period, between 2014 and 2015.  Barbarin, Archbishop of Lyon and the heighest-profile cleric to be caught up in the paedophilia  scandals that in recent years have rocked the French Catholic Church, was handed down a six-month suspended prison sentence. said he would submit his resignation to Pope Francis.  The 68-year-old's legal team said that he would appeal the judgement. “The reasoning of the court is not convincing,” his lawyer, Jean-Felix Luciani, told reporters. “We will contest this decision by all means possible”. During the trial, victims accused Barbarin of being aware of the abuse allegations from at least 2010, and then trying to cover-up the scandal under orders from the Vatican from 2015.  The historic allegations relates to the (alleged historic) sexual abuse of boy scouts in his diocese by a priest who is due to go on trial later in 2019. “I have decided to go to see the Holy Father to hand him my resignation. He will receive me in a few days' time”, Barbarin told a news conference after the verdict. Independently from my own faith, I wish once again to stress my compassion for the victims,” he said. Barbarin, “in all conscience” chose not to tell authorities about the abuse allegations “in order to preserve the institution to which he belongs” the verdict read. … “By wanting to avoid a scandal caused by a priest's multiple sex offences, and probably in seeking to conform to inadequate decisions taken by bishops before him, Philippe Barbarin preferred to take the risk that justice would be unable to uncover a great number of victims of sexual abuse and prevent them from voicing their pain”, it added. Barbarin,who was not in court for the verdict, will contest the decision. “We'll see you here in a few months' time for an appeal”, defence lawyer Jean-Felix Luciani told reporters outside the courtroom.  At his trial, Barbarin, had denied concealing allegations that Fr Bernard Preynat abused dozens of boys more than a decade before he arrived in the Lyon diocese in 2002. Barbarin, told the trial he only became aware of Preynat's abuses in 2014 after a conversation with one victim. Before that he said he only heard rumours. He removed Preynat from his post a year later, when allegations became public. Two other senior French religious figures have been convicted of failing to report child abuse in the past: the Archbishop of Bayeux-Lisieux, Pirre Rican, in 2001, and the Former Bishop or Orleans, Andre Fort, last year.  “I cannot see what I am guilty of”, Barbarin told the court at the start of the trial in January 2019. “I never tried to hide, let alone cover-up these horrible facts”. Preynat was first interviewed by church leaders in 1991 and was prevented from leading scout groups, but he was allowed to teach children again and held positions of authority. Five former aides who were also on trial were all found not guilty, either because the alleged crimes were too old or unproven.  Barbarin, had faced a maximum three years in prison and a fine of €45,000. He suggested that it had been difficult  for the court “to resist pressure” from public opinion, which has long been debating the case. A feature film about the case has already hit cinemas. Preynat has admitted sexual abuse, according to his lawyer. Lyon prosecutors had previously investigated Barbarin, but dropped the investigation in mid-2016 without a detailed explanation.  However, an association of alleged victims called Parole Liberee (Free World) used a provision in French Law to compel the cardinal to stand trial. “This will send a strong message to the church and to the Pope,” said abuse victim Francois Devaux, applauding the verdict.  Barbarian's trial has put Europe's senior clergy in the spotlight at a time when Pope Franci's is under fire for the churches  response to a sexual abuse crisis that has engulfed the institution and damaged its standing around the globe. The Pontiff, last month ended a conference on clergy abuse of children by calling for an “all-out battle” against a crime that should be “erased from the face of the earth”. It follows long-standing allegations from victim's groups that he failed to report a priest under his authority to police after learning of abuse that took place in the 1980s and 1990s. However, prosecutors judged that those crimes were beyond the Statue of Limitations -meaning they were too old to prosecute – and declined to press charges. Francois Devaux, who leads a victim's group in Lyon, called the verdict a “major victory for child protection”. (Author's note: additional reporting AFP 2019). Pope Francis has defrocked a former cardinal over accusations that he sexually abused a teenager 50 years ago, the Vatican has confirmed.  Theodore McCarrick, 88, resigned from the College of Cardinals in July (2018), and is the first cardinal ever to be defrocked for sex abuse. He was found guilty in January by a Vatican court for sexually abusing a teenager, a decision confirmed by the pope in February, with no further recourse”, according to the Vatican statement. It said McCarrick was guilty of  “sins against the Sixth Commandment with minors and with adults, with the aggravating factor of the abuse of power”. The announcement marked a spectacular fall from grace for the once influential cardinal and comes ahead of a Vatican conference which brought together bishops from around the world to discuss protecting children within the church. Sex abuse scandals around the globe, and more recently in the United States and Chile, have shaken the Church, with Pope Francis promising a policy of “zero tolerance” even for high-ranking church members. McCarrick, former archbishop emeritus of Washington, was barred from practising as a priest in July 1998, after which he resigned his honorary title of cardinal. He was known for having sex with adult seminarians before he was accused of sexually abusing at least one teenager. Prosecutors in the US state of Pennsylvania last year found 300 priests were involved in child sexual abuse since the 1940s, crimes which were covered-up by a string of bishops. Prosecutors in half a dozen other US states have announced plans for similar investigations.

Pope Francis has admitted that Catholic priests and bishops had sexually abused nuns.

A leading French nun has accused the Vatican and Catholic Bishops of having sanctioned the Spiritual and sexual abuse (including rape, prostitution and forced abortions) of women religious in many countries and on every continent for over 20 years and probably much longer. any criminal organisation would not have done worse, said Dominican nun Sr Veronique Margron,  President of the French Conference of Men and Women Religious (CORREF). She accused the Church Leadership of responding to reports if such abuse of nuns with silence, cover-up and in-action. It was shocking, she said. In an accompanying statement the (liberal Catholic) 'We Are Church' (WAC) international group noted how in the 1994 (County Clare Ireland) born Medical Missionary of Mary (REPORT) Sr Maura O'Donoghue presented a detailed report on the abuse of nuns by priests to the Vatican, based on six years experience in 23 countries and five continents. In 1998, Scottish nun Sr Marie McDonald of the missionaries of  (Our Lady of Africa) presented another (REPORT) on the abuse or religious women by priests in Africa to the Vatican. It recalled how, in 2001 the European Parliament wrote to the Vatican calling for action to be taken about the sexual abuse of religious sisters by priests. but all to no avail. Just more silence, more cover-ups and more in-action. But in recent years courageous women who have spoken out despite the pressure to remain silent have highlighted this disgraceful behaviour it said. In a statement it continued:

'It is a horrifying litany of spiritual and sexual abuse against women religious by men who claim to be servants of Christ, but were in fact servants of lust and power. There must be no more silence, no more cover-ups and No more in-action. The people of the church demand repentance and justice. Following the recent (2019) Vatican meeting on child safeguarding, attended by Catholic religious leaders from around the world WAC regretted that it had resulted in an absence of concrete actions to safeguard children. The clear message remains that any concerns about clerical child abuse should be reported to the civil authorities ant not to the church authorities it said.

The founder and the entire editorial board have quit a Vatican women's magazine that has drawn international attention for exposing the abuse of nuns,, citing a climate of distrust and progressive de-legitimisation of their work inside the Vatican's communications office. In a letter to Pope Francis, Lucetta Scaraffia, the founder and editor of the (Women Church World), wrote that the editorial board members,  [all women], felt in the last few months, that a hierarchy dominated by men was marginalising them (*women) and did not value their work. it seems to us that a vital initiative is being reduced to silence, to return to the antiquated and arid method of the top-down selection, under direct male control, of women who are perceived as as being reliable.  Ms Scaraffia wrote in the letter, dated March 21/2019, which was provided to the New York Times. Instead of promoting fruitful discussion, the Vatican preferred to return to a clerical self-referential mode, she wrote. The monthly magazine, published by the Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano, has focused on women's issues and on the role of women inside the Roman Catholic Church. Recently, it has become a forum for revealing and discussing hardships faced by some nuns around the world, including the exploitation of their labour and sexual abuse by priests. The magazine was created under Pope Benedict XVI, and Scaraffia said that until recently (2019), it had editorial independence and papal support, First from Benedict and then from Francis. That changed when Andrea Monda, became the new director of L'Osservatore Romano in December (*2018), Ms Scaraffia said in an interview. She said that Monda began participating in the magazine's editorial meetings along with journalists from his newspaper. The Magazine staff felt controlled. No one has ever imposed on us people from outside, she said. In a statement issued by the Vatican press office, Mr Monda denied that he had tried to meddle with the magazine, which he said enjoyed the same total autonomy and the same freedom that has characterized the monthly insert since it was born.  He said he had limited his involvement to suggesting possible themes and  contributors to Scaraffia. After the board of the magazine threatened to resign in January, they pretended to accept our autonomy she said. But the board felt its work was being undermined when L'Osservatore Romano began publishing its own articles about women's issues, with a different editorial slant.  They were trying to de-legitimise us in every way they they could, they wanted to sabotage the magazine, so we decided to leave, before they took us out, she said. The  resignation letter was to be announced in the next edition of the magazine. The Holy See's Chief spokesman and his deputy resigned In December (2018). They wanted us out because we were autonomous, they want only people controlled by them, Ms Scaraffia said. - (Source; New York Times). There are some priests and also bishops who have done it,  the pontiff said in a response to a journalist,s question on the abuse of nuns. He was speaking on a return flight from his trip to the United Arab Emirates. His admission followed a rare outcry, from the Vatican's women's magazine over the sexual abuse of nuns, leaving them feeling forced to have abortions or raise children not recognised by their priest fathers.

The issue hit the headlines last year 2018 after a nun accused an indian bishop or repeatedly raping her in a case that triggered rare dissent within the country's Catholic Church. The February issue of Women Church World, a supplement distributed with the Vatican's Osservatore Romano newspaper, warned that nuns have been silent over abuse for decades for fear of retaliation. It said the Vatican received reports of priests abusing nuns in Africa in the 1990s. if the church continues to close its eyes to the scandal  made even worse by the fact that abuse of women brings about procreation and is therefore at the origin of forced abortions and children who aren't recognised by priests the oppression of women in the church will never change  editor Lucetta Scaraffia wrote.

Francis said the problem could be found  anywhere but was prevalent in Rome new congregations  and in some regions  He added: I think it's still going on,  because it's not something that just goes away like that, on the contrary, he said the Church has  suspended several clerics and the Vatican has been  working (on the issue) for a long time.  'Must do more.'  I don't want to hear it said that the church has not got this problem, because it has. must we do more? Yes! Do we want to? Yes! he said. He said it was a cultural problem, the roots of which lie in seeing women as second class. In the indian case, Bishop Franco Mulakkal was arrested on September 21 in the southern state of Kerala on suspicion of raping the nun in question 13 times between 2014 and 2016. Pope Francis suspended him the day before his arrest, appointing another bishop in his place. Mulakkal, 53 who headed the diocese of Jalandhar in the northern state of Punjab, has denied the allegations. The nun first spoke out in June but police only started formal questioning in September, as fury over the case mounted. Five nuns, in a rare public show of dissent within the Indian Church and dozens of supporters staged days of protest. Failure by Church officials to take action on sexual abuse allegations has been one of the biggest scandals to hit Roman Catholicism globally in recent years. Tens of thousands of people arrived in Dublin (2018) to attend events as part of the World Meeting of Families, a triennial gathering of members of the Catholic Church. The six-day event was rounded off by a visit from Pope Francis, the first visit to Ireland by an active pontiff in almost 40 years, and the first since the countries relationship with the Church began to deteriorate. Ahead of the visit, there was particular focus on how the pope would address child sex abuse, one of the most significant factors behind the Irish public's lapsed Catholicism. However, despite the pope meeting a small number of abuse survivors, several groups expressed dissatisfaction with how he addressed the issue of abuse. But what was it that the survivors were looking for, and how likely is the church to address the issues they continually raise?  (Here I attempt to explain).

On an official level, child sexual abuse by members of the clergy was discussed multiple times. In a speech at Dublin Castle, the pope said he could not fail to acknowledge the grave scandal caused in Ireland by the abuse of young people by members of the Church, particularly those responsible for their protection and education. He added. the failure of ecclesiastical authorities, Bishops, religious, superiors, priests and others to adequately to address these repugnant crimes has rightly given rise to outrage and remains a source of pain and shame for the Catholic community. I, myself share those sentiments  At the same event, Taoiseach Leo Varadkar said there was still much to be done to bring about justice and healing for survivors of clerical abuse. He made specific reference to Magdalene Laundries, Mother and Baby Homes, Industrial schools, illegal adoptions and clerical child sexual abuse as stains on our State, our society and also the Catholic Church. In one of his final engagements during his first day, the pope held a private 90-minute meeting with eight survivors of clerical, religious and institutional abuse, during which he compared the cover-up of abuse by church authorities as caca (or excrement).

And during the papal mass in the Phoenix Park, the pope asked for forgiveness for abuses of  power, conscience and sexual abuse perpetrated by members of the Church.  What do survivors of abuse want?: Some groups who advocate for survivors, also calling on the Church to deal with issues such as Magdalene Laundries, Mother and Baby Homes and illegal adoptions. On these issues, groups would like to see the Vatican support any Government action, such as an inquiry into Mother and Baby homes, particularly in Tuam County Galway.  But when it comes to the Vatican on its own, survivors also want to ensure that [*alleged abuses] won't be repeated, that [*alleged abusers] within the church are held accountable, and that redress that is owed is paid by the church. Deirdre Kenny of the advocacy group (One in Four) told [The Journal. ie]   that “the bottom line” for for survivors was ensuring that none of the issues raised by survivors and advocacy groups *ever happen again    “For that to happen, procedures like mandatory reporting [of child sexual abuse] and other structures for the safeguarding of children and vulnerable people need to be put in place” she said. The incorporation of mandatory reporting of abuse into Cannon Law (ie, to make it part of the law of the church) is one of the biggest issues for survivors, because it would show that the Church actually wants to hold alleged abusers within its ranks to account.  Abuse survivor Marie Collins – who resigned from the Vatican's child protection commission last year (*2018) – suggested the move would be a reversal of the system the Church had in place to protect abusers?. “Sadly, more often Cannon Law has been used to protect the abuser than to punish them” she said. “Here in Ireland in the 90's, we saw bishops being told by the Vatican not to report abusing priests to the Gardai as it was against Cannon Law, and that is just untenable”. Similarly, survivors groups also say the Vatican still holds a considerable amount of information about *clerical abusers which it has refused to release.  Given the Vatican's past refusal to co-operate with enquiries into clerical abuse in Ireland, survivors here believe the release of this information  would show the Church is actually serious about fighting the problem. Finally, there is alls the issue of redress. According to a recent report by the Controller & Auditor General, just €209 million had, at the time, been paid to the Government by the Religious groups to address historical child abuse. This compares to €1.5 billion that has been spent by the Government, for whom the policy toward financial redress has long been that all costs should be split between the State and religious groups.   However, many groups believe they owe significantly less than this, while others, such as, the Christian Brothers, argue that the C&AG report does not cover periods during which it made “significant payments” to survivors. It is important to note that financial redress is not any more a priority for survivors than seeing those who (allegedly) perpetrated abuse held accountable, or to ensure the Vatican implements structures to prevent similar (clerical) abuse in the future. In other words, survivors won't simply be bought off, but the payment of an agreed amount of compensation would be seen, at least, as a symbolic acceptance of  accountability. (Authors note; and an admission of guilt in law?). The State “effectively singed a blank cheque” in agreeing the controversial 2002 indemnity deal with 18 religious congregations, the then attorney general Michael McDowell said. Under the deal the congregations paid €128 million in return for a state indemnity against all future actions by people who, as children, had been in institutions run by them. Compensation so far has cost the State more than €1.4 billion. In a RTE documentary, Rome v Republic, Mr McDowell said he and other senior ministers were kept out of the negotiations. In the same documentary former president Mary McAleese recalls how senior clerics in Rome had said to her that “the devil works through children” abused by priests. It was “a preposterous thing to say”, she commented.  The documentary, presented by Mr McDowell, traced the history of the Catholic Church in Ireland from the late 18  century to the present. It describes the deal agreed during the “dying days”  of the 2002 Fianna Fail – Progressive Democrats administration, Mr McDowell said, the then  minister for education Michael Woods effectively capped the liability of the religious orders. “The simple fact of the matter is that the result was that the State effectively signed a blank cheque which us (taxpayers) €1.4 billion in the end, in exchange for a promise of a contribution of €128 million from the religious orders”, he said. In October 2001, Dr Woods announced the setting up of the redress board to compensate people who had been in the institutions. Lengthy and difficult negotiations took place with  the 18 congregations that had run the orphanages, reformatories and industrial schools concerned, concluding in January 2002 with the €128 million indemnity offer. The church “wilfully turned its back on the laws of the land” when faced with the child sex abuse scandal, preferring “to use its own secretive cannon law precepts instead”. This was something I discovered during my own time in government”, Mr McDowell said, adding “No church is entitled to say to the Irish State: 'Our law is superior to your law”.  In the documentary, Mr McDowell recalled how he lost confidence in the authority of the Catholic Church in 1968 after the publication of the Humanae Vitae encyclical which coper-fastened the church's ban on artificial contraception. He was a pupil at Gonzalez Jesuit College at the time and well informed on religious matters. “On hearing news (of the encyclical on a transistor radio). That day in my mind the whole authority of the Catholic Church disappeared in an instant”. Meanwhile, former President Mary McAleese said, ' the then Vatican secretary of state (Angelo Sodano) was attempting in 2003 to secure an agreement with  Ireland that it (Ireland) would not access church documents. During a State visit by her to Italy, he raised the matter of reaching a concordat (agreement or treaty between the Vatican and another state) with Ireland. “ I asked him why?- and it was very clear, it was because he wanted to protect Vatican and diocesan archives. … I immediately said 'the conversation had to stop” Ms McAleese said. Saying that she was “really quite shattered,, that this was the number two after the pope in the church I belonged to”, Ms McAleese said: “There was nothing about him that was holy. There was nothing about him that was godly. There was nothing about him that was admirable. Everything about him I found horrifying”. Dr Woods, who retired from politics in 2011, has frequently defended the 2002 deal, saying it was the best that could be done, since the majority of abuse cases were not the responsibility of the State alone. “That was the right decision for the people of Ireland. … there were people dying who were quite elderly and they had a very bad time”, said Mr Woods, in an 2011 interview.  So far, (2019) the 18 religious congregations who ran orphanages, reformatories and industrial schools have yet to fully fulfil the terms of the 2002 indemnity deal and of later offers  they made to the State. Of the €128 million they agreed to pay at the time, €4.21 million (3%) is still outstanding. Negotiations over the handover of remaining properties is continuing. More significantly, following publication of the Ryan report in May 2009, all 18 congregations were called in by the government of the day and asked to increase their contributions to redress costs. It followed a recommendation by Mr Justice Ryan in his report that the congregations pay half the costs of redress, with the taxpayer paying the rest. Combined the Congregations offered a further €352.61 million, of which €103.17 has been paid over in cash and property), or 29%.  As of (2019) Negotiations are continuing over the transfer of ownership of nine properties. The redress scheme has cost the taxpayers €1.5 billion with 15,579 people, who had been in institutions managed by the 18 congregations as children, receiving awards which averaged €62,250 each. (What happens next?): It's very hard to say, but survivors and advocacy groups won't be holding their breath following events during the papal visit to (Ireland).Marie Collins revealed that the pope was not familiar with the *histories of the Magdalene Laundries or the industrial schools, when he was told about them during his meeting with abuse survivors. The Irish clergy has shown some awareness of the scale of the problem. Archbishop of Dublin Dr Diarmuid Martin said he believed that more could be done to make the judicial system easier for those who had *(allegedly) been abused to come forward. One more dispiriting note, Dr Martin also suggested that the true scale of clerical abuse was still not apparent, as the majority of those who (*allegedly) suffered clerical abuse had still  not come forward. Between the silence of a greater suspected number of victims and a pope who was unable to apologise to victims of abuse, it seems like the Church has a long way to go before it achieves redemption in the eyes of victims of clerical abuses. (Deference); The instinctive human need that drive, to find someone to look up to seems at least as strong as the human need to dominate,  and it appears that you can't have one without the other. But it can also be toxic – when we treat a class of people (example, police or clergy) with complete deference, we give them a free pass when it comes to their moral behaviour, because we assume they can do no wrong. What goes on behind that veil of deference can, when the veil is pulled aside, leave us shocked and left wondering how we failed to see the truth. The recent Vatican conference on the protection of minors, and by the reports of physical and sexual abuse of women. An important Buddhist leader, Sogyal Rinpoche, author of the classic; The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying. For him the veil was ripped aside in 2016 when he punched a Buddhist nun in the stomach in front of 1,000 people. According to a report by David Leser in the Sydney Morning Herald, one witness suggested he may have lashed out because his footstool was incorrectly placed. He had weathered previous allegations and suspicions of abuse and continued to find many, many deferential followers but this very public act was the end. He announced he would go on a three-year retreat. His friend the Dalai Lama, described him as a “disgrace” and urged that misbehaviour should not be hidden. Former Vatican treasurer Cardinal George Pell was sentenced to six years in jail ( March 2019) for sexually abusing two choir boys in Melbourne (Australia) in the 1990s, and will be registered as a sex offender for the rest of his life. County Court of Victoria Chief Judge Peter Kidd,who handed the sentence in a live television broadcast, said there was a real possibility that at age 77, Pell could spend the rest of his life in prison. Pell, a former top adviser to Pope Francis, is the most senior Catholic to be convicted for child sex offences.

His downfall brings to the heart of the papal administration a scandal over clerical abuse that has ravaged the Catholic Church's credibility in the United States, Chile, Australia and elsewhere over the past three decades. “In my view, your conduct was permeated by staggering arrogance,” said Kidd in handing down the sentence after Pell was convicted of five charges of sexually abusing two children. “Viewed overall, I consider your moral culpability across both episodes to be high,” he told the packed court-room. Pell, who appeared in court without a priest's collar for the first time during the case, showed no emotion during the sentencing hearing that ran for more than one hour. He had maintained his innocence and has filed an appeal that is scheduled to be heard in June (2019). The offences against two 13-yea-old boys, took place after Sunday mass in late 1996 and early in 1997 in a room and a corridor at St Patrick's Cathedral in Melbourne, where Pell was Archbishop. One of the victims died in 2014. The other victim, who testified and was cross-examined at the trial, issued a statement through his solicitor saying he found it hard to take comfort in the verdict for now. “Being a witness in a criminal case has not been easy. I am doing my best to hold myself and my family together”, said the victim, who cannot be identified under Australian Law protecting the identity of sex abuse victims. During the trial the victim described how Pell had exposed himself to them, fondled their genitals and masturbated and forced one boy to perform an oral sex act on him. Pell was found guilty by a jury on four charges of indecent acts and one of sexual penetration. He had faced a maximum of 10 years in jail for each charge. “Cardinal Pell, I find beyond reasonable doubt that, on the specific facts of your case, there was a clear relationship of trust with the victims, and you breached that trust and abused your position to facilitate this offending,” Kidd said, adding- as Archbishop Pell would have “cast a powerful shadow” and thought he could control the situation if caught. He also probably believed his victims would not complain.  During his trial, Pell's own lawyer described the burly (6ft 3ins) tall Cardinal as the ”Darth Vader” (Towering Hero or Strong Man) of the Catholic Church. Kidd said that as Pell had maintained his innocence, which was his right, he had not shown remorse or contrition for his actions and that his sentence reflected that. The dead victim's father, who was in court for the sentencing, was a bit disappointed with the jail term, his lawyers told Reuters news agency. “When he compares what his son and his family and he himself went through, it seems quite a light sentence”, said Lisa Flynn, a lawyer at Shine Lawyers, working for the victim's father on a potential civil law-suit against Pell and the Catholic Church. The surviving victim said everything was overshadowed by Pell's upcoming appeal. After the sentence was handed down, Pell singed paperwork related to his registration as a sex offender, bowed to the judge and then, aided by a walking stick, was escorted out of the court by five correction officers. Pope Francis, leader of the world's 1.2 billion Catholics, ended a conference on sexual abuse in February (2019) by calling for an “all-out battle” against a crime that should be “erased from the face of the earth”. Pell's fate within the church has yet to be decided.  The Vatican has said it will not comment on the case until after the appeal. If defrocked, Pell would be the highest profile figure to be dismissed from the priesthood in modern times and only the second Roman Catholic prelate to loose the title of cardinal in nearly 100 years. Kidd made it clear that Pell's sentence was based solely on the crimes he was convicted of by the jury, and that Pell was not to be made a scapegoat for the failings or perceived failings of the Catholic Church. “In my view,the first episode in the priest's sacristy involved a brazen and forceful sex attack on the two victims” Kidd said. “The acts were sexually graphic. Both victims were visibly and audibly distressed during this offending” he said, adding Pell's behaviour had a “nasty element” to it. He set a non-parole period of three years and eight months. Pell would be registered as a sex offender for life. “I am conscious that the term of

imprisonment.. carries with it a real, as distinct from theoretical, possibility that you may not live to be released from prison, the judge said. The TV broadcast was cut immediately after the sentence was delivered.  It's a significant day for survivors and victims of child sexual abuse, particularly within the Catholic Church, because what it shows them is that they can come forward, that the courts will believe them and the perpetrators of the crimes against them will be convicted and sentenced and held accountable for what they did, regardless of the position of authority they hold. Flynn said. Pell was convicted in December (2018), but the verdict was suppressed from being made public in Australia, by a court order until (26/02/2019) , when further child sex offences charges against Pell dating back to the 1970s were dropped. ( Source; Reuters).

April/ 5: 2019). Third-Level colleges in Ireland are under orders to work at making their campuses free from sexual violence and harassment through the implementation of a range of measures, including offering students classes in consent and calling-out unacceptable behaviour.  A drive to create campuses where everyone feels safe and supported is not a box-ticking exercise they have been told, and compliance with the new Framework for Consent in Higher Education Institutions will feature in annual funding discussions between individual colleges and the  Higher Education Authority (HEA). Higher Education Minister, Mary Mitchell O'Connor said they had “a duty of care to their students and staff and this framework is about instigating change”. She said: “I want the results to be comprehensive and game-changing”. Funding of \400,000 is being made available over 2019-2020 to help colleges to deliver on the aims of the 'Safe, Respectful, Supportive and Positive. Ending Sexual Violence and Harassment in Higher Education Institution's framework. The framework was developed by an expert advisory group, led by Dr Anne Looney, dean of education at Dublin City University, and comprising academics, students, and leaders in the area of sexual health among students, and draws from international best practice and research. Classes on consent or calling-out unacceptable behaviour as a bystander are not being made mandatory for students, but they will be encouraged to attend, particularly  first year耀students.  As well as awareness-raising initiatives, the framework requires institutions to have supporting structures and processes in place, including a senior member of management assigned responsibility for implementing the framework, guidelines for addressing student complaints, and transparency for all involved. Colleges will also have to record statistics on sexual harassment, assault and rape and report them to the HEA, and ensure that support services are visible.

CREEPY SURGEON ! JAILED FOR SEX  ASSAULTS:

A 56-year old man who alleged that he was sexually abused as an eleven-year-old boy by a (now retired) surgeon, previously convicted sex offender,  Dr Michael Shine, during medical examinations at Our Lady of  Lourdes Hospital in Drogheda, Co Louth in 1974. Mr Shine (86)  of Ballsbridge, Dublin, had pleaded not-guilty at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court to 13 charges of indecent assault committed during medical examinations at the Co Louth Hospital and at two private clinics in Drogheda on dates between 1971 to 1992. On day 17 of the trial a jury of two women and eight men returned guilty verdicts, having deliberated for just over six hours. Michael Shine was jailed in November 2017 for indecently assaulting two patients in the 1970s. However, he was granted bail pending an appeal against his conviction and sentence a month later.

Patrick Cusack, was one of the alleged victims who gave evidence (anonymously). Speaking as to why he has now chosen to tell his story publicly?, Cusack said: “The pain will never go, but I hope that it (his story) will give a beacon of light to other (allegedly sexually abused) people to come forward, … it's most important because these things (alleged cases of abuse) disappear. Reflecting on his reaction of seeing Mr Shine before the courts. He added: “I just hope for his (Shines) alleged victims and their families who suffered, this gives them closure”. Speaking of the news after the guilty verdict was announced, he said: “It means that I can put it to the back of my mind, it just means closure and I can get on with my life. It's just relief, vindication”.

Authors note: strangely enough, not one single word of the evidence given by Mr Cusack during the trial of Dr Shine in court or his (account to the media after the trial) seems to have been corroborated. Nor was the truthfulness or otherwise about his (supposed life events and experiences) supported by  corroborative evidence or such independent witnessing from (suitably qualified) opinion. His claims of various mental and physical sickness is presented to the courts and the public at-large as self-diagnosis and self righteous  testimony  of his  good standing in society.?. Most important of all is that all of his (lifetime of  misfortunes) are blamed upon Dr Shine, based solely upon self- assessment without (supporting corroborative evidence). His becoming a member of the Gardai is most unlikely, and becoming a psychiatric nurse is one for the birds. More likely, he was a patient in a mental health facility in the UK?. However, Like many others claiming to be victims of (Child Sexual Assault). Following  prolonged periods of coaching, reading and rehearsing the (Child Sexual Abuse Script), he would become what prosecutors call a good witness, an asset to the Child Sexual Abuse Industry.

Constructing The Crime: Common Similarities of Statements:

In 1974, as an 11 year-old-boy, Patrick Cusack began experiencing stomach cramps and was referred to Dr Shine at Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital in Drogheda.  “In 1974, as an 11 year-old boy, I couldn't tell my mother. I couldn't tell my dad. I wasn't sure what was really happening. Such was times them days that you didn't really discuss them things”, he said. Asked at what stage he began to realise that he had been abused, Cusack said: “I was between 12 and 13. I began to realise that something serious had happened. I had no way to share it with anyone. When I went to high school then I realised that - (Shine) had abused me. I realised that when all other lads were happy in school, I was kind of fucked-up. That's the way I was. From then on, a roller-coaster of psychological hurt and pain began,” He said. As he progressed through his teenage  years and began hanging around with girls, he “still felt there was something wrong”.I realised that he had taken my innocence away. “It mentally had me questioning everything about my sexuality, it used to go around in my brain, every single time I closed my eyes he'd (Shine) be there,” he said. When he was around  14 or 15 ('in an attempt to block out the pain') He began abusing solvents.  During his early 20's, he continued drinking and taking drugs, at this stage, he had also started self-harming. At the age of 19, He claims to have developed meningitis and was admitted to hospital again, where he claims that he was again sexually assaulted by Dr Shine. Speaking in court, He claimed that in 1974, he, fainted at home because he wasn't well and was taken to Drogheda Hospital where he stayed for 21 days. Dr Shine would carry out examinations on his surgery wound and each time, he (allegedly) sexually assaulted his patient Cusack, (for each of the next 19 days?). After finishing school, He claims that he (briefly) joined An Garda Siochana, but by the age of 23 he had changed careers and moved to England where, he claimed that{he worked as a psychiatric nurse?}. He and his (first) wife returned to Ireland in 1991. At the age of 25, he had married his (first wife) and they went on to have 5 children together?.

He never told her about the alleged abuse. “When I came home, at that time there was a huge scandal going on with the church. All the (institutional abuse) started to come out”, he said. It was almost a relief to find out, even though it was as sickening as it was, that this was commonplace. He said he lost his sense of faith as a result of the abuse. “That was robbed, as well … key figures in our lives that time would have been your parents, teacher, priests and doctors” he said. “I would have lost my trust and faith in those people. They were supposed to cocoon you and keep you safe, but that 'trust' was all blown away”. As the years passed, He continued to struggle with his (mental health issues), which he *attributed to the alleged abuse committed against him by Dr Shine]. “In 2004, I felt that this had become overwhelming and that I was a disaster, as a husband, a father, which I wasn't, (self-praise?) I was a good, loving dad”, he said. Cusack said he now felt suicidal (2004) and that the hurt and pain wouldn't go away.  After looking at himself in pub mirror, he 'told himself, he was a good man, who hurt or harmed none but himself,' and he made a solemn pledged to the (reflected image) of himself gaping out  from the pub mirror “that he would sort himself out”. He said this was (in the pub) where he reached, a 'turning point'.

About the alleged abuse he had suffered, some decades years earlier. He did so during a (counselling session) with a nun. “This nun facilitated me in moving forward and for the first time, she said to me 'Life's going to be OK, you're going to deal with this”, he said. At about the same time, He was becoming somewhat more vocal about his alleged experiences. An advocacy group called (Dignity 4 Patients) was set up in 2008 to provide support to people who allegedly had been affected by inappropriate sexual behaviour by doctors, nurses or other medical professionals] while they were patients. Cusack also attended a number of meetings with this group. Prior to these experiences, e;g  (counselling sessions with the nun while in (rehab), and the meetings with this group]. He blamed his multiple mental-health issues and other, troublesome aspects of his being as causative of  his dysfunctional lifestyle. However, this was the first time (he accepted) that it was because of the  historical sexual abuse, which he now alleged. -  Claiming that the retired surgeon had caused him a “roller-coaster of psychological hurt and pain.”-“I cried, sobbed my heart out, let it go”, he said. “being in rehab set out a path for me for my recovery”. His {first marriage] ended when he left rehab. In 2005, he met his *current wife, with whom he went on to have (three children). “With her, I felt all the *natural things. “I opened up to her from the beginning. She was very supportive, and understanding. I told her everything”, he said. (*Believe nothing of what you hear and very little of what you see).  Around this time, he also tried to contact the then-Minister for health Mary Harney TD to discuss the alleged historical abuse, However, he received no response. In June 2009, He campaigned outside Dail Eireann until the Minister met with him. Later that year, He gave a statement to Gardai about the historical abuse by Dr Shine that he was now alleging.

Touched By A  Little Madness:

A 1901 report, 'The Increase of Lunacy in Ireland' compared census returns from 1851 and 1891, showing “nearly three times as many 'registered lunatics', both at large, and in asylums, in the latter year”. In 2019 'The Irish Times'  published a useful extract from it's archives concerning mental health. The article informs us; Legally, according to the 'report' a “lunatic”was defined as to mean any person “found by inquisition, idiot, lunatic, or of unsound mind, and incapable of managing himself or his affairs”. “The following are some of the reasons usually assigned for the spread of insanity in Ireland”. “It has long been recognised by the medical profession that in one predisposed to nervous ailments or insanity anything which causes a great lowering of the vitality of the individuals tends to produce these evils, or to aggravate them if once produced. In Ireland, the poorer classes are often very badly fed, and have to work very hard, and the combination of these two circumstances so lowers their vitality, that they readily become prey to various forms of neuroses or nervous complaints”. “The children of insane parents are often themselves insane, and also the children of parents who, though not insane, are yet eccentric, or perhaps drunkards or epileptics, often develop insanity. The off-springs of unsound, imperfectly developed, or degenerate parents are liable to show signs of insanity. “Now, as the the emigrant population of Ireland is very large, and as those who leave the country are for the most part strong and healthy individuals between the ages of 18 to 30 years, it follows that only the weaker or the old and more degenerate are left behind to propagate the race, and hence the greater tendency to all kinds of neuroses and insanity”. “In districts where families inter-marry to any great extent insanity is surely produced, and this holds good in several districts in Ireland. In the Barony of Forth, for example, near the town of Wexford, the people form a colony, as it were of themselves, and they rarely mix with outsiders, and inter-marriages have been going on for some considerable time, with the result that insanity in this district is exceedingly common.” ANXIETIES of LIFE: “In the struggle for life which exists now-days, when we live at such a high pressure, and education is pushed amongst the poorer classes to such an extreme extent – in many cases making competition for the various appointments/*jobs so very keen and severe that it taxes the strengths of the very fittest among us – we find a most deleterious effect produced upon highly-strung and nervous individuals, and in this constant strain we find a cause which is responsible for many cases of insanity which we are met with.” ALCOHOL: “ This as a cause of general insanity has been very much over-rated. It is an easy way out of a difficultly sometimes to say that drink has been of a case of insanity. No doubt, the children of drunken parents are often predisposed to insanity, but few cases are directly traceable to drink. It often happens that when a man's reason is tottering in the balance, if he has the opportunity, he will take to drink or other forms of vice, but these cannot be said to be the cause of insanity- the *insanity is rather the cause of them”. THE PUERPERAL STATE: “This cause of insanity is fortunately a fairly rare one, when it does occur, it is usually accompanied by some other predisposing cause, such as heredity-insanity, or a lowered and greatly constitution from poor living, too long nursing after previous pregnancies, a too rapid succession of pregnancies,  or possibly sepsis (blood poisoning).” CERTAIN DISEASES: “... such as “influenza, gout, syphilis and rheumatism, have also been said to predispose suffers to insanity”; But, without producing a sufficiency of evidence to prove this.  THE ABUSE OF CERTAIN DRUGS: “The abuse of drugs, such as cocaine, opium/heroin and excessive tobacco smoking has been said to be responsible for a number of cases of insanity”. But (again) the insanity is far more likely to be the underlying {cause of the abuse}of the drugs.

The presumption of guilt has overtaken 'the presumption of innocence'  by a huge margin. (“It's a significant day for survivors and victims of child sexual abuse, particularly within the Catholic Church, because what it shows them is that they can come forward, that the courts will believe them and the perpetrators of the crimes against them will be convicted and sentenced and held accountable for what they did, regardless of the position of authority they hold” Flynn said). This statement by an Australian lawyer who specialises in civil claims for compensation for victims of historical sexual abuse, leaves no room for any possibility of the innocence of an accused person. ???(Where a child discloses abuse within the family, this disclosure will in many cases result in his or her family breaking up).  All told , this means that we can expect that a significant proportion of family separation and child custody cases going through our family courts, involve the rape and sexual abuse of children by family members in the absence of a parallel criminal conviction. The Family Court Services process on average 11,600 guardianship, custody and access cases every year, but we have no statistics from the Courts Service on how many of these cases contain evidence of domestic and sexual violence. These family courts are held [in camera]. This means that apart from the very welcome Child Care Law Reporting Project and the work of the Child Rapporteur there is little by way of transparency for insight and reassurance.

(The statistics on how many private family law cases involve allegations of child sexual violence is an imperative matter of justice, child protection and public interest ). The fact is our family courts are handling criminal matters of a child protection nature in unknown numbers, in the absence of standardised and fully regulated specialisation. Almost all advocates are agreed that our family courts need improved specialisation to deal with these complex matters. (Ensuring transparency, accountability and specialisation would form part of a national strategy on child sexual violence. Such a strategy does not exist). A national strategy would place responsibility 'somewhere' for oversight of whole-of-government child protection activity. This oversight responsibility is currently not held by any specific government department or agency.

(What we have is a system lacking transparency and is poorly joined-up which, in short, is a system vulnerable to failure). Where a system suffers from this flawed design, it is not only  likely to fail to achieve its child protection objectives but, as history teaches us, it often causes further harm to the very children it is meant to serve. 'We need action urgently'.

Imprisoned OAP Wins Supreme Court Challenge Over Cuts To Pension Payments

An Imprisoned old-age-pensioner successfully challenged the unconstitutionality of The State stopping his Old-age-pension payments – worth some €243.30 a week (if on the top rate)  in the Supreme Court; which ruled that, stopping his pension payments, was an additional  punishment not imposed by the court and therefore was in breach of the (Irish) Constitution. The man had been jailed for 12 years after he was convicted of  sexual assault against a family member. The five judges declared that the relevant legislation – section 249(1) (B) of the Social Welfare Consolidation Act 2005 – was invalid and awarded the man  €10,000 in compensation in addition to his unpaid pension entitlements. The verdict mat mean millions of euro in (cut) benefits could be paid to inmates who saw their payments stopped when they started serving their sentences – but not necessarily the full amount of benefit. Fine Gale Senator, Colm Burke, who is a  practising solicitor, said “Other prisoners wouldn't have to take actions, it would be paid out if the law is gone”. The ruling is currently being considered by the Department of Social Protection and a new Law could be on the horizon. Criminal Lawyer Joseph Coonan, from Coonan Morgan Solicitors. In Celbridge. Co. Kildare predicts a flood of applicants, similar to the slopping-out case currently before the Supreme Court.  Where a former prisoner claims he's entitled to damages, as it is “inhuman” to manually have to empty out his (human) waste. Mr Coonan said of the recent pension cash case; Potentially you could now get a flood  of applicants. Fine Gale Senator and Solicitor Colm Burke, said “If you look up section 249 (1) (b) of the Social Welfare Consolidation Act 2005, the definition clearly states they are denying the prisoners the right to all payments.  As this section has now been found to be unconstitutional  it'll mean a huge number of applicants, (similar to the slopping-out cases). “As the ruling  now puts social welfare on a footing of an absolute right, rather than something you are entitled to after earning the requisite number of stamps from working. (Author's note); With or without stamps, citizens are entitled to receive a wide range of social welfare payments and/or other non-cash entitlements. “To close the loophole they're  going to have to draft legislation, that is constitutional but also in line with the European Convention of Human Rights”. The Supreme Court has heard an appeal by a former prisoner, who had to slop-out over some eight months in Dublin's Mountjoy Jail in 2013. About another 1,000 other slopping-out cases remains on hold until (that) appeal is decided. The former prisoner said in his appeal to the Supreme Court that he was subject to conditions that were “disgusting, brutish, inhumane and degrading” and he is entitled to damages.

The State has said any findings against it would have “huge” consequences for the State and the Mountjoy regime. The five-judge court reserved judgement last month.  Mr Coonan said the European Court of Human Rights is likely to have to make the final decision on inmates' rights to cash for slopping-out and social welfare payments. He explained: “The slopping-out cases have been taken to the Supreme Court following a massive trial before Judge Michael White in the High Court and in my opinion these - (social welfare payments) will eventually be decided by Europe also”. But Senator Burke has called on the Justice Minister to move quickly to fix the benefits loophole created by the imprisoned OAP's pension payments judgement. He said:  “The judgement by the Supreme Court in favour of convicted offenders, serving prison sentences, may open the floodgates from prisoners for their unpaid State benefit payments.   “The ball is now is now in the hands of the Minister for Justice and the Oireachtas (Irish Parliament). “When I first heard of the ruling I wondered where the Supreme Court was coming from, but after reading the judgement it made sense to me. It is a double penalty”.  All prison inmates could be in line for social welfare payments, regardless of the the severity of their sentences or of the types crimes committed by the offender/s, which would have no baring on the outcome of a potential appeal. In his judgement, Mr Justice Donal O'Donnell indicated that any new law would probably have to contain some level of payment to convicted offenders, but not necessarily the full amount of any benefits. He said; that it would be permissible to have at least some adjustment to the welfare entitlements of persons detained by the State. The (then) 71 year-old OAP who brought the challenge was described in court as having a life-time devotion to hard work and sporting activities. During his working life, he paid PRSI contributions and, when he retired in 2005, he received the State contributory pension, but after his conviction in 2011, his pension was stopped.  He took High Court proceedings over that, seeking a declaration that Section 249 (1) (b) is incompatible with the Constitution and the European Convention on Human Rights and he sought damages. After the High Court rejected his challenge, he appealed to the Supreme Court. The core issue before the court was whether a prisoner has a Constitutional right to the State contributory pension. The State opposed the challenge. The man's weekly prison allowance is €11.90, less than the normal weekly allowance of \18. 90 due to his inability to work in prison. He claimed he had insufficient funds to buy items in the prison tuck shop and relied on clothes provided by the prison service or St Vincent de Paul. He also argued some other prisoners had access to non-State pensions.  In July, Mr Justice John MacMenamin, giving the unanimous judgement, said while the State argued the law was intended to prevent unjust enrichment of prisoners, its true effect can be described as punitive, retributive, indiscriminate and disproportionate.  And the Supreme Court found the measure is an extra punishment not imposed by a court and is therefore in breach of the Constitution. Justice Donal O'Donnell said he hoped the Oireachtas would address the question in a comprehensive and humane way and would produce an outcome consistent with the Constitution.  The judge also said the man would have had an entitlement to the old age pension had it not been for the existence of section 249 (1) (b). 'While his capacity to recover damages was significantly limited, they found he was entitled to recover unpaid pension arrears and in total should receive  €10,000 in compensation. The Department of Employment and Social Protection said it is considering the implications of the Supreme Court ruling. Patients detained at the Central Mental Hospital in Dundrum, South Dublin, (Hospital for The Criminally Insane) also receive welfare entitlements of up to \198 per  week. At their trials, they were they were found 'not guilty' by reason of insanity, meaning they have not committed a crime, They are instead deemed to be 'patients'  and as such, are entitled to receive disability payments.

Author's clarifications; Had physical abuse been included in the legislation, that would have left schools run by the state and religious libel  for assaults in schools and other church/state institutions - that at one time was considered, reasonable corporal punishment. So, the  (Child Sexual Abuse Industry was born). In Ireland, the Court of Criminal Appeal and the State run Free Legal Aid scheme are littered with issues rendering them  (not fit for purpose) that needs to be addressed with a great degree of urgency.

*Many defendants are  deprived of crucial legally factual evidence that could prove their innocence.

Several different forms of miscarriages of justice that can and do occur.

The worst  problem for acussed persons was caused 'when the Government of the time' accepted in principle a Labour Party Bill to remove the Statute of Limitations from  (alleged victims) of child sexual abuse with regard to the time limitation have to take legal action.

In general, within three years of the abuse or within three years of reaching the age of 18 – years. “How could anyone suggest that victims of child abuse should be free to go to court if they are 20, but not if they are 22”? Ms Jan O'Sullivan asked. ...  *However, the Government is not willing to include physical as well as sexual abuse in the Legislation.

*The Minister for Justice, Mr O'Donoghue, said that he would introduce an amendment at committee stage to confine the Bill's application to sexual abuse as “other forms of abuse are likely to  similar  inhibiting effects on an alleged victim long into adult life, that is also known to occur in many instances of childhood sexual abuse”.

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