Disclosures tribunal: Martin Callinan *did* say Maurice McCabe was sex abuser

Seth Brundle

(figured I'd start a new thread rather then resurrect the old one)

Just out this afternoon

The Charleton Tribunal has found that the then Garda Commissioner Martin Callinan told a Dáil deputy in early 2014 that whistleblower Sgt Maurice McCabe had sexually abused his own family.

In a report published on Thursday, Mr Justice Peter Charleton said he accepted what the former head of the Public Accounts Committee, John McGuinness, said in evidence of a meeting in a car park in West Dublin.

The finding is devastating for a former head of the police force. The abuse claim against Mr McCabe was completely without foundation.

https://www.irishtimes.com/news/crime-and-law/disclosures-tribunal-martin-callinan-told-td-that-maurice-mccabe-was-sex-abuser-tribunal-finds-1.3660053

My own view is that the man should be personally liable to a claim by the state and McCabe for this. Disgusting!

LuckyLloyd

Took far too long to get to this point. It will probably take far too long for him to see justice.

Captain Obvious

Report also found the campaign was between Callinan and Taylor. No evidence O'Sullivan had any involvement.

Hitman3000

Has the report made mention of Noirin's missing phones/ SIM cards?

hatrickpatrick

This kind of thing should warrant criminal charges IMO, not merely on the basis of false accusations but also the fact that they were made in the interests of covering up a scandal. It should be a criminal offence to intentionally engage in a cover-up of any kind in the interests of deflecting legitimate allegations of wrongdoing.

Of course it'll never happen given that the people most likely to engage in such cover ups would have to vote for laws against it It'd be nice if it did, though.

suicide_circus

they absolutely had to get an outsider in to run the show, upper echelons seem to have been rotten

McMurphy

Captain Obvious wrote: »

Report also found the campaign was between Callinan and Taylor. No evidence O'Sullivan had any involvement.

Good job them phones were made non retrievable.

Captain Obvious

Johnny Dogs wrote: »

Good job them phones were made non retrievable.

I wasn't really expecting certain posters to accept the findings unless they agreed with their pre-existing conclusions.

Hitman3000

Captain Obvious wrote:

I wasn't really expecting certain posters to accept the findings unless they agreed with their pre-existing conclusions.

So the missing phones and sim cards cause you zero concern?

Hurrache

The phones are mentioned in the report.

James Brown

Captain Obvious wrote: »

I wasn't really expecting certain posters to accept the findings unless they agreed with their pre-existing conclusions.

Can McCabe expect a 'thank you' card from yourself in the coming days?

Chips Lovell

Charleton's conclusions on the phones issue:

There is a plain reality to this. Superintendent David Taylor spun a deceit that his boss, Commissioner Martin Callinan, with whom he was on the best of terms for all his time in the press office of Garda Headquarters, and Nn O’Sullivan, who he decided for his own bitter reasons he didn’t like and was not up to the job, were on the one hand composing, and on the other approving, derogatory messages about Maurice McCabe. Hence, in his false reasoning, phones were important. Hence, in his false reasoning phones went missing, Hence, in his false reasoning, phones behaved mysteriously. Why? Because these phones had evidence implicating the highest levels of the national police force in a vicious campaign against a defenceless sergeant who wanted to see no more than an improvement in police standards.

And the reality? This tale was spun about missing phones, telecommunications interference by Garda Headquarters, texts to politicians and journalists and a trail of evidence that never existed in order, specifically and deliberately, to destroy the investigation by Chief Superintendent Clerkin into the behaviour of Superintendent David Taylor. At risk through a perfectly legitimate and honest investigation by a police officer of high intelligence and of truly distinguished record, Superintendent Taylor chose to present a public lie to the people of Ireland. It was enthusiastically taken up. Furthermore, it cast a pall of pretended deceit over the entire police force.

Then no one knew better. Now, they do.

Captain Obvious

Hitman3000 wrote: »

So the missing phones and sim cards cause you zero concern?

Pretty much. Their location should be known but I put that down to incompetence.

Matt Barrett wrote: »

Can McCabe expect a 'thank you' card from yourself in the coming days?

I'll sign yours if you want.

McMurphy

Captain Obvious wrote: »

I wasn't really expecting certain posters to accept the findings unless they agreed with their pre-existing conclusions.

Indeed.

Its quite reminiscent of the Paul Murphy false imprisonment case.

James Brown

Baron de Charlus wrote: »

Charleton's conclusions on the phones issue:

It says that the idea the phones contained incriminating evidence was put about by Taylor and his creation. It doesn't settle it in regard to the phones going missing at all. We'll never know what was on all those phones either way.

Is there more detail on the Tulsa err?

hatrickpatrick

Captain Obvious wrote: »

Pretty much. Their location should be known but I put that down to incompetence.

This is a basic reform I'd like to see, which would go some way towards avoiding a situation like this down the road - when evidence is collected, be it for a criminal prosecution, a tribunal, an Oireachtas committee, etc, a named officer should be regarded as responsible for looking after it. If the evidence goes missing or is tampered with, that named officer is responsible and has to provide an explanation as to how this happened under his or her watch, and suffer professional consequences in the event of being unable to provide a satisfactory explanation.

You could pretty much guarantee that no more evidence would go missing and that the protocols for collecting, storing and monitoring evidence in cases like these would improve exponentially if a specific individual knew their career was on the line should the evidence not be preserved and available to whatever investigation it formed part of.

Remember that case GSOC referred to a couple of months ago, in which the directly relevant pages of the log book in relation to how Ian Bailey became suspect #1 in the Du Plantier case were deliberately torn out of the log book? Everyone said "oh, well it's impossible to figure out specifically who did it, so nothing can be done". That isn't the only way we could go about this, though - if the law stated that I, Superintendent Hatrickpatrick of the Boards division (hehe), as the named officer responsible for this stuff, would have to appear before an Oireachtas committee and face the prospect of demotion, suspension, or expulsion from my position in the force should the log book be tampered with, disappear, or otherwise not be preserved, I'm pretty sure that (a) stuff like this would happen far less frequently, and (b) the named officer would be fairly ruthless in trying to find out who did it if anything did mysteriously happen to evidence held under his or her watch.

Captain Obvious

hatrickpatrick wrote: »

This is a basic reform I'd like to see, which would go some way towards avoiding a situation like this down the road - when evidence is collected, be it for a criminal prosecution, a tribunal, an Oireachtas committee, etc, a named officer should be regarded as responsible for looking after it. If the evidence goes missing or is tampered with, that named officer is responsible and has to provide an explanation as to how this happened under his or her watch, and suffer professional consequences in the event of being unable to provide a satisfactory explanation.

You could pretty much guarantee that no more evidence would go missing and that the protocols for collecting, storing and monitoring evidence in cases like these would improve exponentially if a specific individual knew their career was on the line should the evidence not be preserved and available to whatever investigation it formed part of.

Remember that case GSOC referred to a couple of months ago, in which the directly relevant pages of the log book in relation to how Ian Bailey became suspect #1 in the Du Plantier case were deliberately torn out of the log book? Everyone said "oh, well it's impossible to figure out specifically who did it, so nothing can be done". That isn't the only way we could go about this, though - if the law stated that I, Superintendent Hatrickpatrick of the Boards division (hehe), as the named officer responsible for this stuff, would have to appear before an Oireachtas committee and face the prospect of demotion, suspension, or expulsion from my position in the force should the log book be tampered with, disappear, or otherwise not be preserved, I'm pretty sure that (a) stuff like this would happen far less frequently, and (b) the named officer would be fairly ruthless in trying to find out who did it if anything did mysteriously happen to evidence held under his or her watch.

It's called an exhibits officer and it is the procedure in most cases already. It's not a requirement but most investigators will assign one. There has been reform in the handling of exhibits with secure property stores and digital tracking of exhibits having been introduced.0

hatrickpatrick

Captain Obvious wrote: »

It's called an exhibits officer and it is the procedure in most cases already. It's not a requirement but most investigators will assign one. There has been reform in the handling of exhibits with secure property stores and digital tracking of exhibits having been introduced.0

Fantastic. If that was enacted in legislation as well as the mere internal guidelines, you could make it relatively iron clad, that even an order from the commissioner wouldn't be enough to "justify" someone disposing of evidence if it meant that GSOC or the Justice Committee could get involved.

Unfortunately, the culture needs to be changed by force (heh) in this manner, legislatively. Ask them to reform themselves and they'll come up with a thousand reasons not to do it.

Captain Obvious

hatrickpatrick wrote: »

Fantastic. If that was enacted in legislation as well as the mere internal guidelines, you could make it relatively iron clad, that even an order from the commissioner wouldn't be enough to "justify" someone disposing of evidence if it meant that GSOC or the Justice Committee could get involved.

Unfortunately, the culture needs to be changed by force (heh) in this manner, legislatively. Ask them to reform themselves and they'll come up with a thousand reasons not to do it.

Except they did do it. I think putting the procedure it in legislation would prevent it being improved or upgraded regularly but there is already legislation that allows for people to be disciplined for not following procedure.

hotmail.com

Callaghnan a real piece of work and hasn't bothered to comment on the report yet.

Zubeneschamali

hotmail.com wrote: »

Callaghnan a real piece of work and hasn't bothered to comment on the report yet.

Callinan is retired, he will not say anything if he has any sense.

hotmail.com

Zubeneschamali wrote:

Callinan is retired, he will not say anything if he has any sense.

A public apology would be welcomed I'd say.

Hitman3000

hotmail.com wrote:

A public apology would be welcomed I'd say.

That would be an admission of wrong doing, not going to happy especially if legal action is being considered by any affected party.

holyhead

Callinan is a bastard. To falsely accuse someone of sexual abuse to blacken their name is the lowest of the low. It is scandalous if he is getting his state pension.

Captain Obvious

https://www.thejournal.ie/keith-harrison-challenge-4335643-Nov2018/

GARDA KEITH HARRISON has launched a High Court challenge seeking to quash findings made against him in reports from the disclosures Tribunal.

Seems it's not over yet.

Rhineshark

This all started before I was paying much attention to it and I'm a bit flummoxed by the bits and pieces across years that I've picked up. Anyone know somewhere I could read a reasonably neutral primer? I could start with the report but not sure if that's going to send me on the wrong track as it seems to have had many twists and turns.

theguzman

It is really only the tip of the Iceberg in terms of Garda corruption, Ireland is essentially the Mexico of Europe in the illegal Narcotics trade and there is serious Garda collusion between Drug Traffickers and the Police here. Yacht's sail up from Colombia and Mexico laden with drugs and they are brought ashore here. Gardai are paid off to ensure this keeps happening, every so often a shipment is sent for them to discover and some patsy or rival gang is busted to appear like they are doing a great job.

Captain Obvious

theguzman wrote: »

It is really only the tip of the Iceberg in terms of Garda corruption, Ireland is essentially the Mexico of Europe in the illegal Narcotics trade and there is serious Garda collusion between Drug Traffickers and the Police here. Yacht's sail up from Colombia and Mexico laden with drugs and they are brought ashore here. Gardai are paid off to ensure this keeps happening, every so often a shipment is sent for them to discover and some patsy or rival gang is busted to appear like they are doing a great job.

Is there any proof of this or have you just been watching the new Narcos?

theguzman

Captain Obvious wrote: »

Is there any proof of this or have you just been watching the new Narcos?

It would be very foolish to just think we are immune from such Garda corruption.

NIMAN

Surely you'd need collusion between the Gardai, the navy, Customs and whatever else state authorities have an interest in patrolling our waters and coast.

tayto lover

theguzman wrote: »

It would be very foolish to just think we are immune from such Garda corruption.

You would need evidence to prove that before I'd believe anything like that.
It's a bit like Callinan saying things about Mc Cabe that weren't true.