During my life so far, it has been my privilege to have met some interesting and special people. I’ve also met some brave individuals, Ann Travers for example, whose beloved sister was cruelly murdered coming home from Mass in leafy south Belfast by the IRA. Ann campaigned for a change in the law so criminals could not be special advisers to Northern Ireland government ministers. The issue arose after Sinn Féin appointed the woman convicted of her sister’s murder as a special adviser in Stormont. Thinking about the victims of the IRA has never been a Sinn Féin strong point and another brave woman, also a victim at the hands of the IRA, has just written a book which everyone in the British Isles should read.
Mairia Cahill was born in 1981 and grew up in a staunchly republican family (some would say republican royalty, but she hates the phrase, so I won’t!) in the Republican stronghold of West Belfast. She didn’t much venture outside of this world as a young person and then at the age of 16 years she became the victim of sexual abuse which lasted for months. The perpetrator was her aunt’s partner. He was also an IRA member and because of that he had power over Mairia and was able to perpetrate the abuse.
Mairia told a handful of people about the abuse and the IRA leadership learnt of the “allegation” against one of their own through them. What followed can only be described as a concerted campaign of torture of this young woman as she was interrogated about the abuse for days on end. Mairia hadn’t made a complaint but because her abuser was “in the Army”, i.e. the IRA. It was an issue her interrogators would not let go.
However, the pinnacle of this young woman's re-traumatisation came when several IRA members forced Mairia into a small room with her abuser and allowed him to dismiss and denigrate her. This was to allow the IRA members to judge the body language between the two. Cruel in the extreme.
To her credit Mairia kept going, I’m not sure how, and despite a few attempts at self-harm she confronted the republican leadership including Gerry Adams, who used his infamous “charm” to try and deflect her – thankfully she wasn’t deflected.
After an attempt to bring the rape and sexual abuse to the police and prosecution services, something which failed because of the complicated sequencing of charges, Mairia decided all that was left was to waive her anonymity and go public. She did this initially through the BBC and the Spotlight programme, then she met with numerous politicians in positions of leadership in Northern Ireland and the Republic and now she has written, despite its subject matter, a beautifully written account of her harrowing journey. Rough Beast is available in bookshops from today (Thursday).
It is all there: the abuse, the IRA investigation, the meeting with her abuser, the abuser fleeing Northern Ireland and being allowed to do so by his colleagues in the ‘Ra, her confrontations with Gerry Adams, her experiences with the criminal justice system, the “going public” phase and then the denials and blind loyalty to the IRA by Sinn Fein members who know what they are doing but because of their code cannot break ranks.
I have had to work with Sinn Féin for years and you might think by now I would have become immune to their disregard for the normal rules of politics, and public service. Reading this book again reminded me just how warped these people are – saying one thing and covering up something very different. Mary Lou McDonald for example, the Sinn Fein president, will tell us how she stands with women but has no problem justifying the murder of women in the past here in Northern Ireland, indeed recently Sinn Fein was celebrating the memory of the Hunger striker Thomas McElwee who killed a young woman Yvonne Dunlop who was working in the shop which he firebombed in Ballymena.
Now we learn from this book that when she met Mairia Cahill, eventually, in the Dail there was very little support for this young woman treated so badly at the hands of one of her own.
For Sinn Féin, the IRA always comes first. We saw it this summer when one of their MPs John Finucane went to commemorate the “patriot dead” in County Down. We see it in this book when they refuse to even acknowledge that an IRA investigation took place, because as Gerry Adams says the IRA 'has gone away' so there is no corporate way of verifying what happened.
That statement has wider ramifications than the Mairia Cahill story of course. The legislation that has just been passed at Westminster envisages IRA members coming forward and telling their victims what happened – do you think that will happen? Me neither.
The IRA victims of the past are not going to get justice from the criminals who were content to shoot people in the back of the head for the “cause” just as Mairia Cahill didn’t get justice from their twisted internal investigation, but what of the future?
The Irish Republic looks as if it is set to elect a political party to the Government that not only has a macabre past but still justifies what happened a short time ago because in the words of the putative First Minister for All, Michelle O’Neill “there was no alternative”.
As Cahill says towards the end of the book Sinn Féin is a political party which the Garda Commissioner and (the now former) Chief Constable says is still directed by the IRA. I hope my neighbours in the Republic realise what they are doing before it's too late.
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