The Kerry Babies Case

In 1978 when I was 13, I clearly recall my 11 year old brother sitting up to the Sunday dinner table to announce that his friends 19 year old sister was having a baby.
An argument quickly ensued between us because I absolutely knew that she simply couldn’t be pregnant because you can’t physically become pregnant unless you are married.
And my poor mortified mother trying to shut us up.
And on your wedding night you wake up in the morning and you have grown breasts. Overnight. Fact.

splinter65 wrote: »

And on your wedding night you wake up in the morning and you have grown breasts. Overnight. Fact.

The poet Ovid mentioned that bit of folklore - even way back in Ancient Rome...
the theory that when a girl has sex for the first time her breasts are slightly larger the next morning.

-- never thought of testing it!

Laois_Man wrote: »

Really, all this hullabaloo over an apolagy - I get the distinct feeling that Joanne Hayes would rather have done without any apolagy than it be all over the news again.

I also see in the news this morning, Gerry O'Carroll, one of the original investigating detectives, in an interview with The Kerryman newspaper this week, is still not accepting the DNA results, wants the bodies of both babies exhumed and further DNA profiling carried out by a foreign police force and only then will he accept that Joanne Hayes is not the mother of birth babies. Absolute tool-bag!

She agreed to accept the apology if she could be left in peace.

It appears that Gerry Carroll is the only one who is persisting with the ridiculous twins theory. Wouldn't you think he would just shut up at this
stage and stop making a fool out of himself? :mad:

splinter65 wrote: »

Even today when approached by The Kerryman, even in the face of the DNA results he insists that he is right, that J Hayes was the mother of twins by 2 different married men and that she is the mother of stabbed baby John.
He wants Scotland Yard to investigate.

He is a deluded fool.

SEPT 23 1989 wrote: »

In any other country that fcuking headcase would be now stripped of his pension and jailed over his behaviour

Absolutely!

Day Lewin wrote: »

The main purpose of the investigation was to find out who committed the brutal murder of the baby found on a beach.
Keep yer eyes on the prize.
This would have been true in any country of the world.
Glib soundbite blamings of "Irishness" "the church" the state" etc are only distracting clichés.

The guards naturally looked for someone who had recently given birth with no child to show for it, and they found one: naturally they had to look into that: it would have been grossly negligent NOT to.

They should then have dropped that angle when it clearly wasn't her.

We don't actually know what direction the investigation took subsequently - if they looked in every county hospital in Ireland, every GP, every gossipy neighbour etc etc;

Unfortunately it looks as if having found a nearly-fit, they insisted on stopping there and cramming it on, trying to make it fit.
Did they ever really look elsewhere after that?

We can speculate about the first baby - the murdered one - I would guess incest, and a guilty parent: but it's only a guess.

The incest theory is quite credible, imo.

I was 7 in 1984, also living in rural Ireland and growing up in what would have been described nowadays as a fundamentalist Catholic upbringing. One of my outstanding memories of that time was my older sisters admirably rebellious streak, she was just going on 14 and she used to parade around the house singing this at the top of her lungs, much to my parents annoyance -





Of course the shìt really hit the fan two years later when this came out -





As Madonna said herself of the song -


Madonna debuted a rather unglamorous, tomboy look for her 1986 "Papa Don't Preach" video. It fit nicely with the song's serious subject matter: a pregnant young woman confronting her father. Many in the pro-life movement saw the song as a new anthem because Madonna repeatedly states her intention to keep her baby.

"There were so many opinions," she told Rolling Stone in 2009. "That's why I thought it was so great. Is she for 'schma-smortion,' as they say in Knocked Up? Is she against abortion?" Madonna never quite gave an answer, though she did explain why the song appealed to her. "It just fit right in with my own personal zeitgeist of standing up to male authorities," she said, "whether it's the pope or the Catholic Church or my father and his conservative, patriarchal ways."


Source: Rolling Stone, 2009


Point being I guess that Ireland at the time even in the 80's wasn't this "ignorant backwater where everyone was under the control of the RCC" as it's often made out to be here on Boards. Society was much more nuanced than that, and of course there were plenty back then who thought they were the height of sophistication and grace and piety with the facade they put on for the neighbours, but the reality behind closed doors was far different.

I still see so much of it in Irish society today - "Oh we're not like them", and all I think in my head is "Mate you're exactly like the people you're passing judgement upon, right down to your attitude towards other people who aren't you". Some people still like to think it was the RCC were responsible for the judgemental finger-pointing attitudes back then, but the RCC were only representative of Irish society then. What's their excuse today?

Aineoil wrote: »

Joanne had an affair with Jerry Locke, a married man. She got pregnant and gave birth to the baby on the family farm. The family buried the baby on the farm in secret. Not the wisest thing to do. The state pathologist at the time was Dr John Harbison. He couldn't determine the cause of the death of Joanna's baby

Remember this was 1984 when it happened.... very different Ireland than today.
Having an affair with a married man was unthinkable and to have baby out of
wedlock was a scandal that was food for the gossips for months never mind the affair.

brooke 2 wrote: »

She said the baby was stillborn. Harbison did not arrive at any definite conclusion, IIRC.

Despite Harbisons conclusions (or lack of..) Justice Kevin Lynch declared at the Tribunal that Joanna Hayes had strangled her child to stop it from crying and as far as I'm aware he was never pulled up on that either.
IMO the Judges were worse than the RCC at the time. They were the ones that were sending kids off to the industrial schools, often at the behest of the Gardai, yet they seem to have gotten pretty much a free ride over the years.

Electric Sheep wrote: »

33 years later the witch hunt persists.

I am giving my personal opinion which I am entitled to do please do not label my comments thank you

brooke 2 wrote: »

Also, he was a few days old, which very likely means that more people than the mother knew about the birth. I read a theory elsewhere that the baby may have been born of incest and the family member responsible for the pregnancy may have stabbed the child. The viciousness of the killing is shocking - somebody clearly was in an uncontrollable frenzy while he/she was stabbing that baby.

Or rape?

I had to google this but the legal concept of 'illegitimacy' was not abolished in Ireland until 1986:

http://www.rte.ie/archives/2016/0511/787763-illegitimacy-bill/

Lackey wrote: »

I disagree
The changes in Ireland have been enormous and for that I think WE have a lot to be proud of.
WE seen what happened in our past and changed things dramatically.

Took us long enough and don't forget we have our very own Catholic Taliban in the form of groups like Iona who would happily bring us back there.

monty_python wrote: »

Is she still living in abbydorney??
I happen the local community don't hold any grudge against her (especially the older folks)

She's <snip> so not much sign of a grudge from either the local community or the Catholic Church.

Mod note:No personal information information needs to be posted here.

Thanks in advance,

Buford T. Justice