Gardaí to review handling of Defence Forces abuse allegations

Diane Byrne, second from right, and fellow members of the Women of Honour group. File picture: Gareth Chaney

Gardaí are to review how they handled abuse allegations by serving and past Defence Forces personnel, according to the Women of Honour group.

The group, made up of serving and ex-serving women who raised allegations of sexism, bullying, and sexual attacks in the Defence Forces, said the commitment for a review was made at a “positive” meeting with Garda Commissioner Drew Harris.

The prospect of Garda failures forming part of the upcoming statutory investigation into abuse in the forces was also raised at the meeting.

The group says Mr Harris has committed to letting it know, in “days or weeks”, more about the ongoing Garda investigation into past allegations.

On the issue of how gardaí handled matters historically, former army captain Diane Byrne said: “We didn't actually get a commitment from him in relation to whether this will fall into the statutory inquiry.

“But I think it was a lot of food for thought and they did agree that they would have to look back and see what happened.

“What we have said is that we feel that people won't necessarily come forward until they can have faith in the process under way by gardaí.

We may not have got all the answers we wanted but we had the opportunity to ask everything that we needed to know.

“The commissioner and his colleagues were very receptive to those questions," said Ms Byrne.

“It was very encouraging in the sense of what they want to achieve with this investigation and this issue and they've committed to giving us answers to all of our questions.”

Meeting with gardaí

The meeting, in Garda HQ in Dublin’s Phoenix Park, was held to discuss the recently announced nationwide Garda probe into predators in the Defence Forces.

Its existence emerged a few days after the March publication of the Independent Review Group (IRGF) report into abuse in the Defence Forces.

But as gardaí announced details of their operation, which they said was already investigating 26 allegations of abuse, the Women of Honour group, comprising abuse survivors, admitted they didn’t know anything about it.

Ms Byrne was one of the members of the group who went public, saying they had not been informed in advance of the Garda Commissioner’s plans to launch a unit to investigate abuses in the Defence Forces.

She said: "The major impact for us is how does all of this — the Garda investigation — impact with the statutory inquiry that we know needs to happen in terms of the historical issues.

"We also want to know if the historical issues that have gone to the gardaí will fall under the umbrella of statutory inquiry because we do need to understand what happened there, and why what they're putting in place now with their investigation is only happening now.

"We really got the impression that the gardaí are very much committed to ensuring there are no further victims of abuse in the Defence Forces and that the victims get what they need out of this process."