Disgraced detetcives denies abusing mother-of-two

Disgraced former Detective Sergeant John White today insisted he never physically abused a woman in garda custody.

The ex senior officer – fired from the force last year in the wake of findings by the Morris Tribunal – is accused of assaulting Donegal mother Roisin McConnell.

She was wrongly arrested during a botched murder probe ten years ago on suspicion of covering up for her husband.

Mr White admitted at the tribunal, probing garda corruption and wrongdoing, that he acted aggressively when interrogating Mrs McConnell on December 4, 1996.

The mother-of-two, from Raphoe, had to spend months in psychiatric care after her ordeal.

The ex-detective confessed to showing her gruesome post-mortem photographs of the alleged murder victim, skidding a chair across the interview room and being verbally abusive.

“Again it was an act of frustration … I thought Mrs McConnell not to be meek .. She was quite defiant and quite quick with an answer to us,” he said.

“She wasn’t sitting there all forlorn and beaten looking, for want of a better word.

“I was just frustrated and thought she was just passing the time. Certainly my actions were wrong but I felt there was pressure on me to come up with a result.”

However, he denied Mrs McConnell’s testimony that both he and retired detective John Dooley pushed and shouldered her between each other as though she were “a bit of dirt”.

Mr Dooley yesterday broke down crying in the stand as he admitted his role in the physical abuse and urged Mr White to come clean about his part.

“That didn’t happen. I didn’t shoulder her at all, at all,” Mr White insisted.

“I have never assaulted a woman in my life. There have been altercations with male prisoners when I have been in the room with them, not with a woman – it’s as simple as that".

He agreed he acted aggressively out of frustration and was determined in his attempts “to get her to break”. He said: “It was an attempt to bring Mrs McConnell to her senses – not to her senses – but show that this is a very serious matter, this is murder and to hell with it, tell us the truth.”

Mrs McConnell’s husband, Mark McConnell, was wrongly arrested as a prime suspect in the murder inquiry into the death of cattle dealer Richie Barron.

It was later found that Mr Barron died in a hit-and-run collision and the botched probe ultimately led to the Morris Tribunal and the unravelling of a web of corruption within the gardai.