Senator Norris - Inevitable but very regrettable

SENATOR David Norris is not by any means the first politician to ask for clemency for a rapist but he is certainly the first to have to put ambitions to become President of Ireland aside because he did so.

A person’s ability to recognise the redemptive potential of clemency is an entirely admirable and human instinct but whether it should be applied to a man convicted of raping a 15 year-old boy is entirely subjective. Given this society’s brutal coming of age over the last two decades, as we tried to understand the great extent of the violent and evil paedophilia active in our midst, that subjectivity is probably less flexible than it might be. It is certainly less flexible than it might be in the case of someone who had hoped to be elected to the highest office in the land.

Senator Norris’ candidacy for the presidency, for all his very admirable qualities, energies and real courage, was over the moment his intervention on behalf of Ezra Yitzhak Nawi, with whom he had a relationship for almost 30 years, became known. That relationship continued for four years after Ezra Yitzhak Nawi was convicted of the statutory rape of a 15 year-old Palestinian.