Jennifer Horgan: Collective amnesia at litany of sex abuse leaves victims’ stories buried

Despite talk of disinterment, maybe we should ought to leave Eamonn Casey’s remains in the cathedral in Galway as a reminder of how many people helped put him there

Bishop Eamonn Casey in 1979: There have been calls to remove his remains from the cathedral.

There’s talk of moving Bishop Eamonn Casey’s remains from the crypt of the Cathedral in Galway, following the airing of RTÉ’s documentary on the multiple accusations of child abuse against him.

Possibly, we should keep him where he is — as a reminder of just how many people helped put him there. 

We should keep him there as a reminder of Patricia Donovan’s story. We should try to remember her name for longer than a week. 

We should take to the streets for people like her, and pressure our system to change.

I had forgotten about the child sex abuse accusations against him before I sat down to watch Bishop Casey's Buried Secrets. I must have buried his secrets too. When I mentioned the documentary to friends, they had also forgotten.

They remembered Annie Murphy though — the American woman who revealed her affair with Casey in 1992 when we would have been 12. They remembered the Gay Byrne interview; we all do.

This selective amnesia is common. Nobody wants to read or hear about child sexual abuse, particularly intra-family child sexual abuse. Nobody wants to believe it either. 

Writing about the 2005 allegations against Casey in the Irish Independent, David Quinn, referring to the alleged victim, Patricia Donovan, the bishop’s niece, wrote: “The woman in question had made similar allegations against other individuals in the past, and all had proved groundless. Certainly, gardaí had to investigate her claims, but they should not have been made public. It placed Eamonnn Casey under an unjustifiable cloud of suspicion.” 

He finishes his article with the lines: “We should never again know anything about an abuse allegation until charges are pressed. A forlorn hope, alas.”

Patricia Donovan only made allegations against her brother Fr Michael Donovan, and her uncle, Bishop Eamonn Casey. In both cases, she was one of a number of people making such allegations.

She was five when she says her uncle Eamonn Casey first raped her. She thought he was God. Even when she reported him in 2005, few listened. Her story, sadly, is not just about the secrets of the Church.

Patsy McGarry, an Irish Times journalist with years of experience analysing stories, speaks for many in the RTÉ documentary. He also proves that very little has changed since 2005.

Knowing the five separate complaints against the bishop, four of child sex abuse and one a child safeguarding concern, McGarry says, without embarrassment, that even now, he has “yet to be convinced about the child abuse allegations”. 

He even stresses the point, the effort he has made to believe the allegations. 

“And I have looked at them as objectively as possible,” he continues, trailing off. “I’m not for one minute casting doubt on the people who made these allegations. I don’t know. All I’m saying is in 2014 he was in no position to defend himself.” 

He is not casting doubt, but he has yet to be convinced. It is hard to find sense in the comment, but he is at least being truthful.

We’d rather not hear about child sex abuse. We are simply not willing to believe it, and so the victims of child sex abuse go quiet.

Vera O’Leary, manager at Kerry Rape and Sexual Abuse Centre, believes every survivor and victim of gender-based violence and sexual abuse should be treated the same.

“After working in this role for 32 years I have a concern that the public is confused, like they think these crimes against children are not as serious because they get such light sentences," she said.

No consistency in sentencing

O’Leary worries about what she refers to as a possible “hierarchy of victimhood”. There is no consistency in sentencing. 

A woman in Cork had her suspended sentence appealed this week. She now faces a three-year sentence for serious neglect and prolonged sexual abuse of her child. 

Meanwhile, a father in Dublin received a 12-year sentence for the seven years he spent sexually abusing his young son. Another father, having sexually abused his three children, has received a life sentence.

Beyond sentencing, will any of them receive therapy?

Whether people want to hear it or not, sex offenders need therapy if we are going to prevent them from offending again.

Louise Crowley, Professor in Family Law at UCC, argues: “It is time to recognise the immediate need to invest in, and develop, comprehensive laws and structures for domestic violence perpetrator programmes.” 

With sex offenders, as a sample, we know that just one in eight sex offenders released from prison between 2017 and 2020 took part in the State's main treatment programme.

The Irish Prison Service's psychology unit believes that those who undergo this treatment are more than 3.5 times less likely to reoffend compared to those who do not.  

In 2022, the Irish Prison Service's leading psychologist Dr Emma Regan stated that only one in four prisoners access the treatment.

The lack of sustained public attention does not help the failure to tackle the darkness of child sex abuse.

To illustrate the problem, we might look at our reaction to two cases in Ireland in recent months.

Natasha O’Brien was viciously attacked by Cathal Crotty; he was given a suspended sentence. We took to the streets; in every major city, people raged against the injustice of it, and rightly so.

Not long after, Gerald Henry was found guilty of habitually sexually abusing his younger sisters — Miriam and Irene — when they were children, and he was a teenager. Henry was convicted but received a suspended sentence. He was between 12 and 16 when he abused his sisters, and maintains his innocence.

There was very little public reaction to Miriam Henry's story of abuse at the hands of her brother. Picture: Patrick Browne

There was very little reaction to this story, certainly nothing like the attention that was given to the Crotty case.

Both involved suspended sentences for convictions; both involved women who were willing to speak up and fight — but only one involved intra-familial child sex abuse.

We can’t handle it, so the story gets buried, and our streets stay quiet.

Miriam Henry was invited onto Newstalk but the focus was on the issue of character references, not the suspended sentence. Sixteen is old enough to know better, but Gerald Henry will get no therapy or treatment. 

Surely those sisters waived their right to anonymity for a reason, and by looking the other way we allow the worst to happen — nothing.

What happens to men like Gerald Henry, who never enter prison? 

Yes, it is complicated by the fact that he was a teenager when he committed his crimes, but the complication is not so great that he can walk out of court without any proactive follow-up unless he fails to abide by the conditions set down by the judge.

What about Raymond Shorten, the taxi driver who abused a small girl in her grandmother's house after her mother’s funeral and went on to rape two women? 

Despite a Garda probe into the child sex abuse, which she reported in 2020, he kept his taxi licence until 2022 when he attacked two passengers who were drunk, and who woke to find him on top of them.

As stated in the Casey documentary, only 4% of child sex abuse claims made to the gardaí are prosecuted, and even fewer result in a conviction. 

Few could blame victims for staying quiet when we are still so poor at listening, at remembering, and so unwilling to fight for consistent sentencing and appropriate treatment for sex offenders.