Wall of Silence

Caroline O’Doherty

The November 13, 1998 letter from Rosalind McBrearty, wife of Frank McBrearty Snr, to then Garda Commissioner Pat Byrne, was just one of hundreds the family wrote or had written on their behalf in a bid to highlight the vicious campaign of harassment against them.

Mrs McBrearty felt compelled to write to Commissioner Byrne after she saw him on the Late Late Show talking to then host, Gay Byrne, about how no Garda was above the law. It was not long after she had spotted Garda John O’Dowd patrolling the streets unchallenged after he had allowed an informant into his house to make a malicious phone call to a member of the extended McBrearty family.