Rape used as a weapon of war by Free State troops in Civil War

BalcombeSt4 · 05-10-2023 3:34pm #1

I watched a documentary a few weeks ago about the Civil War in Munster & Mayo and a good part of it dealt with rape, sexual abuse and harassment crimes against women who sympathized with the IRA cause or just even happened to live in a Republican stronghold. I had never read or read about this before I looked for a topic on Boards but could not find one.

I had heard of IRA Vols. sheering women's hair & tarring & feathering young women who dated first British & then Free State troops. I even read about UDA & IPLO gang rapes during the Troubles & INLA tarring and feathering women and girls they found out had been dating British troops, like after 1982 Ballykelly bombing when they killed 11 soldiers and 5 women, they described the 5 women as "consorts".

There was also very little I could find about it online even, some of the more damning things were...

For instance in Mayo, towards the end of the civil war .

[QUOTE] Margaret Doherty from Foxford, Co Mayo, was one of the women in Ireland’s revolution subjected to a horrific gang rape by “three masked National Army members”. Margaret’s application made on her behalf states she died in 1928 in “the mental hospital” in Castlebar as a consequence of her ordeal. [/QUOTE]

British and Republican forces were also engaged in similar activity, mainly using as rape and sexual abuse as a weapon of war, albeit, on a smaller and less frequent scale.

There are stories such as Mary M from Westmeath who was raped by a band of Republicans and became pregnant as a result. Her hand written pleas to the Archbishop of Dublin begging for help have been uncovered.

Or the six page letter from Norah Healy from Cork City who was pregnant when she was raped by the Crown Forces. On reporting it to the RIC, she spotted one of her attackers in the police station and was told “Never mind, don’t say anything now” by the Sergeant in Charge.

Or there is the story of the Kenmare incident where two girls were assaulted by members of the Free State Army only to have it covered up at the highest echelons of the newly formed government. [/QUOTE] - https://www.decadeofcentenaries.com/sexual-violence-in-revolutionary-ireland/

A conference held in Kerry earlier in February 2023, said, Sexual assault was deployed as a "deliberate tactic".

[QUOTE]"The violence against women in Kerry from the National [Free State] Army and especially with the arrival of the Dublin guards was brutal, persistent, and continuous," she said.

General Paddy O’Daly, officer in command in Kerry, was particularly irritated by Cumann na mBan.

Several examples were discussed during the conference, including one in Killarney in September 1922, which saw the homes of six republican women raided and notes left saying 'Dispatch carriers beware!’. The six were dragged from their beds, stripped naked and their bodies painted green, according to the report in the Irish Independent. Later, one of the six, Elizabeth Foley-Dunne wrote how the Free State soldiers had carried out the attack on her as reprisal for carrying dispatches.

O’Daly’s anger and loathing of women boiled over in Kenmare in June 1923 when two sisters, Flossie and Jessie McCarthy, daughters of a respected local doctor, were taken from their beds and flogged. Their hair was covered in thick motor grease to ensure it would fall out. One account said they had been raped by the three senior officers. [/QUOTE] And I would not put anything past that psychopath O'Daly. - https://www.irishexaminer.com/news/munster/arid-41080430.html

After WWII we found out quickly the Axis powers used war rapes & some allied troops and Resistance volunteers albeit on a much lower scale. Same with the US troops and ARVN in the Vietnam War within about 5 years of the wars end we found out that rape of Vietnamese women and girls, some as young as 14 was almost a daily occurrence for US troops, in one instance after gang raping a teenager they stuck a grenade inside her vagina and pulled the pin. Same with Iraq and Afghanistan. Or the Rwandan genocide as well.

But rape as a weapon of war in the 1920 -23 period of the Irish revolution has only really come to full public and press attention in the last decade. And is something that needs to be discussed more, imagine how many women and girls never came forward due to the Catholic stigmas.

BalcombeSt4 · 05-10-2023 3:38pm

[/QUOTE]about the Quote marks , maybe I did them the wrong way around[QUOTE]

donaghs · 16-10-2023 4:19pm

It seems to have re-emerged as a topic. (your title seems a tad one-sided). I guess people didn't want to talk about it from the shame perspective. It would be strange if the Irish War of Independence or Civil War were the only major conflicts with no sexual violence.

This woman Linda Connolly seemed to have done some work on it:

History Ireland

Sexual violence in the Irish Civil War: a forgotten war crime? (maynoothuniversity.ie)

You seem to have mentioned all the main researched cases except that of Eileen Biggs in Tipperary, by anti-Treaty IRA. The leader of the gang and an alleged perpetrator was Martin Hogan who has a monument on Grace Park Road.

I wouldn't fall in the relativist trap of "they all the same", e.g. Soviet, German British etc in WW2. Having safeguards in place, de jure and de facto makes a huge difference in reducing the levels of sexual crimes in war. e.g. Having the geneva convention between the western allies and the germans didnt stop atrocities, but went a huge way to reducing them. Having a top-down approach which did not encourage atrocities, and a formal means of punishing offenders.

Even when Yugolav partisans complained to Stalin about the numbers of rapes commited by their allies Soviet soldiers in Yugoslavia, Stalin he thought the hardships they had endured justified a Soviet soldier who has " fun with a woman or takes some trifle".

Interesting old article 1999 from the Guardian: Yugoslav forces use ancient ways to break civilian spirits | World news | The Guardian