The Kerry Babies Case

@Madd Finn , you are correct I’ve edited my post now.

Here is some more ignorant BS;

If you can find a report anywhere that says the tribunal was not a witch-hunt maybe post a link.

I grew up in the eighties as well, it definitely wasn’t the dark misty state of fear that people make it out to be, sure you had to toe the line, there was a lot of change happening, I can’t speak for everyone but we had a great childhood, as far as I can see there’s a lot more hate and confusion in today’s world than there ever was. I don’t want to over romanticise it, times were tough but a lot of people had happy times as well.

Same for the 60s and 70s. And when discussing this recently with a group of people my age they all said the same. By and large we had great memories or our childhood. Warts and all.

Nothing.

But she was presenting damning (and mostly, if not entirely, true) evidence against the Gardai so their counsel were trying to discredit her. Then, the mores were considered to be that conducting an affair with a married person made someone untrustworthy, unreliable and probably prone to being murderous. That backfired on the Gardai and the justice establishment, at least in the court of public opinion.

Today, you might use personal allegations of a different kind. Might they be racist? Transphobic? Xenophobic? Those are the things that push people's buttons nowadays.

I am not trying to maintain that the Hayes family deserved any of this or had in any way brought it upon themselves. It was the Gardai's perfunctory and presumptuous handling of the original murder case that led them to take shortcuts they thought they could get away with that is the real scandal here. Most of the Gardai involved in the case are dead. but Mr O'Carroll is still with us. And he IS deserving of the opprobrium he is getting from all sides.

I see up to as recently as the Gardai apology in 2018 that he was saying he still believed that Joanne Hayes had twins and was the mother of baby John. I also saw a media clip over the past couple of days where he said he had sympathy for the babies involved but not for Joanne Hayes and previously he said when he was interrogating her back in 1984 he treated her like he would his own daughter (God help his daughter!).

He really comes across as the worst type of self promoting spouting retired Gardai. As I recall he was also featured in the documentary on the Sallins train robber frame up too and was equally unapologetic about his role in that fiasco. I also saw he managed to fall out with his own cousins over a book he wrote a while back.

And he reakons he deserves an apology for how his reputation has been damaged.....

Here's an article from the Phoenix - I think there should be an enquiry into the garda handling and Gerry O'Carroll should be the first to be interrogated in relation to the gestapo style tactics and threats he very obviously used on the Hayes family. Then once its out in the open that he used illegal and underhand tactics, he should be charged with perverting justice and stripped of his garda record and garda pension.

WITH EACH staging post along the 40-year-old Kerry Babies saga, the prevailing view is that several gardaí were involved in a travesty in which six members of Joanne Hayes’s family in Abbeydorney confessed to crimes in 1984 they could not possibly have committed. One such garda is retired Det Inspector Gerry O’Carroll, one of two gardaí that interviewed Joanne and who now presents as also a victim. The retired detective has always denied any allegations of garda wrong-doing during the original probe.

In the aftermath of further DNA proof that baby John in Cahirciveen was not the child of Hayes, O’Carroll demanded “a full public inquiry” into the affair, saying with an injured air: “I want that to be put to bed forever more before I pass on to the next world. I will not have that hanging over my name and my reputation.”

Does Gerry really want a thorough inquiry into the scandal? Does he want gardaí to be interrogated by lawyers about how Joanne, her three siblings, mother and aunt delivered perfectly synchronised, detailed confessions to the beating to death of a baby and her three siblings travelling to Slea Head and throwing the body into the sea?

Subsequent events show this to be an impossible scenario, along with the fantastic superfecundation theory of Joanne bearing twins with two fathers.

Such scrutiny of the manner in which these confessions came about would likely produce a loud public demand for accountability, something so far lacking in this horror story, and O’Carroll would then certainly experience a feeling of victimhood.

In 2018, gardaí said that modern DNA evidence proved Joanne was not the mother of baby John in Cahirciveen but O’Carroll still demanded further DNA evidence. In January 2021 the former detective told Goldhawk that he wanted DNA testing carried out by Scotland Yard or the FBI. Last month he said that he now accepts the DNA results (although no crack police force from outside was involved in the DNA testing).

However, when asked by the Irish Independent’s Patrick O’Connell if he was sorry for Joanne after being wrongly charged with murder, O’Carroll said: “I have only sympathy for… the babies.” Irish Times columnist Diarmaid Ferriter has also suggested that O’Carroll should apologise to Joanne. Goldhawk concurs with this proposal – and also supports O’Carroll’s demand for a public inquiry.

Hopefully more than a few, maybe something like this

https://youtu.be/i0GW0Vnr9Yc

Thank God that Joanne Hayes is still alive to see this (hopefully) conclude.

It may not be his final word. I fear the chickens are coming home to roost for “The Sheriff “.

The thing is he honestly believes he’s done a great job.

As someone who read the reports and knows a thing or two about forensic archaeology, I can say that is not proven. We dont know that they dumped in a septic tank. We only have a dozen human remains found from Tuam and the site was disturbed in the 1970s so it is not clear what happened. I will say though that Tuam was terribly run. It should have been shut down earlier. The fact that it was shut down in heyday of Mother and Baby homes back in 1960 is a clue to the poor conditions. Other Mother and baby homes were far better run. The responsibility lies with the management the sisters, the lay women who did the care eg. Bina Rabbitte and also Dr. Costello, the home's medical officer, who seems to have been immensely negligent.

Today is the supposed day he was born. Happy 39th Birthday Baby John.

It is true. I was only interested in countering your assertion that these places “did a lot of good”, a vague assertion that you choose to back up with a single anecdote, ignoring the mountains of evidence from the very same sources you’re using to make your argument which suggests otherwise -

https://www.irishtimes.com/news/social-affairs/ireland-s-proportion-of-unmarried-mothers-in-homes-was-probably-highest-in-world-1.4456279

Of course there was a lot more to it than just the social climate of the time in which pregnancy outside of wedlock caused considerable consternation not only among families due to concerns about their social status, but also among politicians who purported to be guided by religious morality in dealing with the issue of illegitimate children. “Pretend they don’t exist” appears to have been the order of the day, and in order to enforce that view in Irish society, what were once the poorhouses became institutions where what were considered social ills at the time could be hidden away from polite society where nobody cared what happened to them as long as they were out of sight and didn’t serve as a daily reminder of a cruel and sadistic society -

https://www.thejournal.ie/readme/mother-and-baby-home-st-patricks-2380868-Oct2015/

I didn’t imply that being a single mother was impossible, that’s yet another strawman of your own invention to distract from the fact that unmarried mothers were viewed as moral failures, and they and their children were viewed as burdens on society, in the same way as they are today in some quarters, without the influence of the Church to fall back on as an excuse for how those people regard unmarried mothers and their children.

As for your ridiculously specific claim that I’m unaware that in the 20th century most unmarried mothers kept their babies, while admitting that most babies born to unmarried mothers were adopted, except for 2-4 exceptional years in the late 1950’s and early 1960’s, yet again you’re using all sorts of conditions which suit your argument, which have nothing to do with the figures for unmarried mothers who had no other choice but to enter the homes due to the lack of support from their families who were more concerned about their daughters specifically not bringing shame on the family and being a burden on the family. Does the 20th century not consist of the period between 1900 and 2000, or am I missing a few decades? Because even then in order to force the father to maintain their illegitimate offspring, a mother had to prove in open court that he was indeed the father, something which many women just weren’t prepared to do as it would again… you guessed it - bring shame upon the family -

https://www.irishstatutebook.ie/eli/1930/act/17/enacted/en/print.html

As abhorrent and tragic as it is by today’s standards, it was pretty much the standard at the time during that period in Irish history when people were just as interested then in maintaining their social status as they are today. The mere passage of time hasn’t changed much, only that the services provided to the State by these institutions, are no longer required by the State is all.