The Kerry Babies Case

You seem to very bothered about the amount the Hayes were paid!

If I was fitted up for a murder I hadn't committed, I'd be happy to take every penny I could.

This is the level of discussion on Boards. You probably don't even realise how absurdly circular your argument is.

In all the counter-arguments I have faced here (along with shoals of red herrings and numerous dismissive, abusive remarks) not a single poster has mentioned the most significant legal issue arising out of the Tribunal - what rules of evidence and what burden of proof should apply to a Tribunal, especially if its findings damage the good name of any citizen?

Legal commentators have called it "a low-water mark" of Irish Tribunals because evidence was admitted which would probably have been excluded in a criminal trial (most notably the "confessions" which were central to the controversy) and the burden of proof was ambiguous.

The Judge said he made findings of fact only if he was satisfied as a matter of "substantial probability." (i.e. more than the "balance of probabilities" applied in civil cases) but that he was satisfied "beyond a reasonable doubt" on almost every finding of fact. However, it has been argued by legal experts that, even with the same evidence, no jury would have been satisfied beyond a reasonable doubt on key issues.

The only credible criticism of the Tribunal's conduct concerned the highly intrusive and public questioning of Joanne Hayes by Counsel for the Gardai. But, as the Judge explained in this Report, the Oireachtas had mandated a public inquiry under the Tribunal of Inquiries Act which allowed in camera evidence only in very limited exceptional circumstances. And if he had barred the questioning entirely, the Gardaí would argue they had been denied a fair opportunity to defend themselves.

These issues have plagued our Tribunals of Inquiry ever since and numerous amendments to the legislation have not solved the problems. The couple of million to the Hayes family are a trifle compared to the funds which flooded into lawyers' pockets as various parties to subsequent Tribunals resorted to the Courts to vindicate their right to a good name. In essence, do the Irish people demand the truth, however unpalatable, or is the State bound to protect and vindicate the good name of citizens unless they are convicted in criminal proceedings?

The abysmal level of debate here is probably reflective of a general problem of civic debate - empty vessels making the most noise - which is currently manifesting itself on our streets and at our ports. Most posters here may be horrified by this comparison but many of the most active posters are ill-informed, highly opinionated and liable to turn abusive or dismissive when they can't win an argument.

The same pattern of obtuse responses quickly turning into abusive and demeaning posts was evident regarding my proposal for Presidential nominations. Ultimately, I pointed out that my proposal was nothing more or less than what had been done for the previous three decades, a fact that evidently had not occurred to any other poster during the previous 100+ posts. Our media don't do much better - witness the Baby John solicitor - and are the main resource of most of the misguided zealots here. Should I despair?

no one has ever made a credible claim of physical abuse by the Gardai

May be true.

Shouting and screaming in someone's ear, thumping the table repeatedly and violently, throwing chairs around the room, and repeatedly threatening that their parents would be jailed unless there was a confession may not qualify as 'physical abuse'.

How would you describe that kind of terrifying treatment? Maybe you will just say it was 'rigorous questioning'…

That is the nub of the Constitutional issue - can a Tribunal put someone "on trial" without all the safeguards and restrictions of a criminal trial. If not, how do we get at the truth of complex cases of great public interest?

For many years most people believed that the Kerry Babies Tribunal was rough justice for the Hayes family but had correctly answered the key question which had so disturbed the Irish people - how could the Hayes family confess to a murder to which they had no connection? Then the public mood changed and people preferred to believe the Hayes family were victims of police brutality and a taboo against unmarried mothers (though neither is true and Joanne Hayes was living proof that the taboo had lost its power).

I doubt we will ever get justice for Baby John or any sense of closure in this national wound. His parents will say nothing and the media won't even ask questions of their solicitor. However frustrating and humiliating a complete failure to prosecute would be for the DPP, I can't see any way around the DPP's policy not to bring a charge unless there is a prima facie case.

The last thing we will get is a "Kerry Babies Tribunal Part II" although that is probably the only way some measure of the truth could emerge now. A Tribunal has power to compel witnesses and, even if the parents claimed their right to silence, they would be obliged to answer non-incriminating questions e.g. What is your name? Where did you reside in 1984?

Do we want the truth or are we afraid to disturb the new national mythos?

It is three and half years since 10 people were killed in an explosion in Creeslough. No one has been charged, we don't even know officially if it was a gas explosion.

Why the entire Hayes family admitted to involvement with baby John when they had nothing to do with him is a real mystery, hard to understand.

As for baby John, read an article that said his mother lived at the family home at the time he was born. It didn’t say where he was born, presume that’s unknown, or could it have been in a m&b home? Maybe the parents believed he was being adopted - not unusual then for non-marital babies to be taken or relinquished at a few days old. If that was the case, the parents wouldn’t think a dead infant found on a nearby beach was their child. Even the problems faced by the Hayes family might not have raised concerns if they thought their child was safely away with an adoptive family. So they kept their secret until the dna confirmed they were the parents.

Nothing in that scenario explains why the baby was killed so horrifically and disposed at sea in a fertiliser bag. It’s very disturbing.

Can a tribunal put someone on trial without the safeguards?

That is where I feel the answer, for a regular Joe soap should be no, or at the very least should be 100% voluntary. When it comes to representatives of the state though, politicians, gardai, and perhaps people who receive state funding, when talking about the dispersion of that funding (e.g. charitable bodies etc.). In those cases then I think they should be compelled, however even still should have some protection from self-incrimination (i.e. ability to stay silent or immunity).

Since J Hayes did not have those protections, in compensatory discussions, she therefore deserves a higher payout, not lower, as she effectively went though an extra-Judicial kangaroo court (admit I’m being a bit facetious here).

Similarly, the individual gardai were not found culpable either, and therefore their compensation was for everyone to get off Scot free/hands clean.

Now that is not to say the gardai did anything wrong, there are many people who believe they did, and they issuing of a general apology would indicate that also, but at the end of the day they wouldn’t have gotten the clean slate without the tribunal either.

I think your concerns should be pointed at the system itself, rather than the individuals involved.

"This is the level of discussion on Boards. You probably don't even realise how absurdly circular your argument is."

I didn't make an argument, I made a statement of how I would feel.

You have read a thousand things into a simple statement.

What a ragbag of personal insinuations, gaslighting, deflections, fabrications and downright absurdities!

Personal insinuations

it is like you have an agenda here!

I have no axe to grind, no personal connection to this case and you have no grounds to insinuate otherwise. Ask the man in mirror about hidden agendas.

Gaslighting

You also reference the aunt's claims despite her being described as "confused" by the hospital doctors. Her evidence (and her brother John's) were described as unreliable.

Among the most deplorable aspects of the media's coverage was their attack on Bridie Fuller, Joanne's aunt and a retired nurse, who helped her give birth. In the past it was common for women's voices to be silenced or dismissed and, most horribly, families often shunted older women into our mental institutions on spurious grounds with the connivance of hospital doctors. But fortunately for Bridie Fuller, her family's campaign to declare her unfit to give evidence backfired at the Tribunal, as recorded in its Report

At least four Doctors were considered for the task of certifying Miss Bridie
Fuller as unfit to give evidence. These were Dr. Hayes, Dr. Daly, Dr. Chute
and Dr. O'Regan. None of these Doctors gave any such Certificate, or 99
evidence. 99 Dr. Chute was called to see Bridie Fuller at the farmhouse at the request, in person, of Joanne Hayes and Kathleen Hayes. Much to the disappointment 198 of the Hayes family, Dr. Chute certified that Bridie Fuller was fit to give evidence instead of the contrary

That didn't stop the media gaslighting her although they never interviewed her and they have now written Bridie Fuller out of the picture completely because she was an awkward woman. You have no compunction in echoing that campaign.

Deflections

You blame the Hayes family for signing confessions but fail to outline how they wrote about details of baby John which they could not have known e.g. the fertiliser bag.

I don't blame them for signing the false confessions, I blame them for lying to the Gardai and then lying about the Gardai. The Report explains the mention of the fertiliser bag in Ned Hayes' statement

In the course of making this written Statement at about 8.30 p.m., the fertilizer bags which had been found in the vicinity of the Cahirciveen Baby, were produced to Ned Hayes who purported to identify the brown bag and the 0-7-30 bag but did not purport to identify in any way, the clear plastic bag.

If you wish I could post the entire Tribunal Report here as a public service. You won't find it anywhere else now but it hasn't been "vastly discredited" - in fact its key findings still stand officially (that the Hayes family had nothing to do with the murder of Baby John and that the Garda investigation was seriously defective in many ways, as detailed in the Report).

Of course the Hayes family were very unhappy with the Tribunal's findings regarding Joanne's baby boy and the reasons for their false confessions. The media, which had demanded the public inquiry in the first place, then mounted a campaign against the Report in support of the family. That petered out until the Judge was dead and buried. Then, in an extraordinary and unprecedented decision, the High Court issued a declaration in 2020 to the effect that those findings in the Report which concern the family were "erroneous and incorrect". The Court heard no evidence and no allegation of Garda abuse was made to the Court so we are left with no official explanation for how three members of that family confessed to a terrible crime to which they had no connection.

Fabrications

The medical evidence by Prof Harbison was that the baby's larynx was not damaged, therefore it was not strangled or choked. Harbison also stated that the bath brush would have cracked the baby's skull which had not happened.

Absolutely not true. Where did you get this lie? Dr. Harbison's evidence that their baby's body was so badly decomposed that he couldn't tell if it had been born alive. That suited the family and the media who pretend it meant the Tribunal shouldn't have found the baby was born alive. So which fiction are you going with?

Absurdities

So a Garda investigation that looks to have pinned the blame for baby John's murder on Hayes (sure wasn't she charged with it) and her family through statements. Members of the Murder Squad continued (until relatively recently) to blame Hayes for John's murder. The Tribunal looks to have made up conclusions without supporting evidence. So if two aspects of the legal system believed that the Joanne Hayes and her family could have been involved, why on earth would they have made formal complaints about abuse by the gardai? Would you?

Why should I even begin to untangle this confusion? After almost 2,000 posts on this thread, let this particular sentence stand as emblematic of the level of debate on Boards.

two aspects of the legal system believed that the Joanne Hayes and her family could have been involved

You start by accusing me of "having an agenda", you end up asking me this absurd question.

why on earth would they have made formal complaints about abuse by the gardai? Would you?

Surely even you have heard of the Sallins Train Robbery? And the Heavy Gang? Do you think the accused in all those cases stayed silent about their beatings by the Gardaí? Or do you think the Hayes family didn't know how to stand up for themselves?

No wonder Irish people have lost touch with their own history!

Of course not! And that absence was given no weight by the Judge who was very sharp in noting any omissions in Garda notes e.g. when Joanne Hayes gave them directions to where her baby's body was hidden.

The Judge was a very experienced barrister, often on the defence side, before becoming a High Court Judge. He excoriated the Gardai for many failings but he found that claims of shouting and banging of tables were not credible based on the totality of the evidence. One minor example - when Joanne claims she was being shouted at, her little daughter was playing happily with the Garda's shoelaces.

There's plenty more if you read the report (oh sorry, you can't!)

Do you want me to upload it to this site? It's 312.4 MB on my hard drive.

Eureka! You can download the Report from here.

https://opac.oireachtas.ie/knowvation/app/consolidatedSearch/#search/v=grid,c=1,q=title%3D%5B%22Kerry%20Babies%22%5D%2CqueryType%3D%5B64%5D,sm=s,sb=0%3Atitle%3AASC,l=library3_lib%2Clibrary7_lib,a=t

The Oireachtas Library has diligently attached the bizarre High Court Declaration to the start of the Report.

The bottom line, as I have said repeatedly, is that the High Court heard no evidence but issued the Declaration exonerating the Hayes family because, well…, they asked and the State didn't object (except for the DPP, so the family dropped that bit) and handed over €2.5Million.

No allegation of abuse is made against the investigating Gardai and no explanation is given as to how three members of the family falsely confessed to a heinous murder. So we were back to square one and told to move on.

But then three years later, disaster!, the DNA identified the parents of Baby John. Now the DPP is back in the hot seat.

Oh, what a tangled web we weave!

Honestly, you are a Mod on Boards but you persist with personalised and baseless imputations and nonsensical claims.

you're content that Ned gave false details to the gardai about dumping a baby in a fertiliser bag off Slea head

Nothing I said implies that I am satisfied with anything in those false confessions.

You also don't appear to think it strange that all of the statements describe Joanne giving birth in the house. To one baby! This baby, we know, was buried on the farm. So at what point did everyone gather to witness the birth of John?

Nothing strange about it!

The Tribunal found that she gave birth in the family home and her family members were there that night, as they were every night, and, yes, she gave birth to one baby only (not twins as the Gardai claimed).

The strange part was that the baby's body was placed in a plastic bag and hidden alongside a stream about 200 metres from the family home. If that baby (not called Shane or any other name by anyone in 1985) had been buried in a marked grave, this whole scandal would have been averted because the Gardaí would have found it and realised they had been barking up the wrong tree.

The simple fact of the matter is that the Hayes family were failed by the investigating gardai who assumed that they had their killer. They coerced them into making statements through intimidation, fear, violence, etc.

The Hayes family were largely the authors of their own misfortune due to their persistent lies. Just as you are persistent with your baseless allegations against the Gardaí. When Gerry O'Carroll was alive, your lies here would have cost Boards dearly but lies are the tribute which our media now pays to the dead. Even the Hayes family didn't persist with their lies about "intimidation, fear, violence, etc." when the State kow-towed to them in the High Court.

Now, let's assume that Judge Lynch took the gardai and the statements at face value, it still does not exonerate him for enabling a situation for weeks that Hayes could have been John's mother, given the blood group differences.

Of course he didn't take the Gardaí statements at face value! He lambasted them from a height for incompetence!

"enabling a situation" - you're blathering now - was Mr. Justice Lynch supposed to pre-empt his entire inquiry by exonerating the Hayes family before hearing witnesses?

He was tasked by the Oireachtas in December 1984, he conducted a Tribunal which interviewed 109 witnesses who were asked over 61,000 questions in the course of many months and in October 1985, he submitted his 300 page report setting out in detail his findings on the three matters which the Oireachtas had defined in his terms of reference.

What thanks did he get? Abuse from the media and nonsense like this. His unblemished reputation was forever besmirched by ignorance and lies which, shamefully, his successors in the High Court have endorsed.

I'm curious - do you disagree with Dr. Vicky Conway's analysis of the case: (DOC) Irish Feminist Judgment Project: Kerry Babies case

I deplore any academic research which takes a biased and selective view of the evidence. But you will have noticed that this analysis, while obviously striving to exonerate the Hayes family and to reject the findings of the Tribunal, had to conclude as follows:

while I find that there exists a case for a new inquiry to be held and that there is a public interest in establishing the truth, I am unconvinced as to urgency and not sufficiently satisfied that a preferable outcome could be reached as to warrant putting the Hayes family, and in particular Joanne, through such an ordeal again. 

The key clause:

not sufficiently satisfied that a preferable outcome could be reached

Translation - a new Tribunal would probably reach the same conclusions as far as the Hayes family is concerned (implied - we will need a bogus process with no evidence to get that big cheque).

Not a single lawyer spoke up about the bizarre and unprecedented manoeuvres to re-write the Kerry Babies Report. All done in a day, cheques signed, nothing to see here. This is the only academic paper I found which references the High Court Declarations.

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/17488958221126674

Here is how it describes this bizarre process of erasing the Tribunal's findings:

Essentially, this has placed an anachronism in the lens through which current and future historians view the events of 1984/1985, with the (noncontemporaneous) declarations indelibly framing the (contemporaneous) tribunal proceedings.

That's quality lawyering right there, me boyos!

Now remember those legal academics who rushed to assure us that "durable relationships" would be much better than "woman" or "family" in our Constitution? That was another "feminist judgement"

Again, this thread is reverting back to the Hayes snd making negative comments about them.

The Tribunal Report has been set aside. The State had said the Hayes did noithing wrong. This means the Hayes family did not lie to Gardai.

Its An Garda Siochana that needs to explain the false statements. Its 100% on them.