‘For six years I had to walk past his grave every day’

NIAMH (not her real name) was just 11 years old when she saw her newborn baby being stabbed to death with a knitting needle.

She said she knows the identity of the killer and the person who had sexually abused her, which resulted in her pregnancy.

She had been in school that day, on April 4, 1973, where she said the nuns knew she was pregnant.

Niamh said she helped dispose of the baby in a back lane in Dún Laoghaire, south Dublin, that night.

Two nights later Garda Patrol carried reports on the discovery of a newborn baby in Dún Laoghaire.

The Gerry Ryan radio show yesterday replayed an interview they conducted with Niamh last year.

Niamh told the show that three years after her first baby was killed she became pregnant a second time - again as a result of sexual abuse.

She said this baby was still-born and that it was buried in her back garden.

“For six years I had to walk past his grave every day, and live with that trauma.”

When she was 20, she married and left Dublin for England.

It wasn’t until 1994, when she was in her early 30s, that she reported the sexual abuse to local police, who in turn informed the gardaí.

Gardaí investigated the allegations and arrested a number of people.

In 1995, she told gardaí that she was the mother of the murdered baby found in Dún Laoghaire and gave details as to the killer.

Again, gardaí carried out an extensive investigation.

The DPP directed that no prosecution be taken on either the murder or alleged sexual abuse.

“I was a victim in this case,” said Niamh, “but I am not allowed to know what information gardaí are giving the DPP and why the DPP can’t make charges. There’s certainly enough evidence for sexual abuse charges to be brought.”

When the story emerged towards the end of 1995, solicitor and then Fine Gael TD Alan Shatter offered his political and legal services to the woman.

He wrote to the then Justice Minister Nora Owen expressing his grave concerns at the DPP decision.

Mr Shatter said his legal firm considered at length taking a private prosecution, but they were advised it would not progress as it still would have needed the agreement of the DPP.

Niamh said she also told gardaí in 1995 of the existence of the burial of her baby boy in the back garden of her childhood home in Dalkey.

Gardaí say they were advised in 1995 that they would not retrieve any forensic information given the passage of 20 years, but that this advice changed in 2002.

Last night, it emerged that the Dublin County Coroner is to reopen in September an inquest into the death of the baby girl in Dún Laoghaire in April 1973.