Transparency in policing: Culture of insularity persists

The reconsideration of the Kerry Babies’ scandal brought many long-ago questions back into public view.

The reconsideration of the Kerry Babies’ scandal brought many long-ago questions back into public view. A great number are as perplexing today as they were all those years ago when the affair showed how puritanical, sanctimonious, hypocritical, male-dominated and, tragically, dishonest the administration of what was/is called justice could be when the dominant culture is challenged or ignored.

The details of the affair were/are so incomprehensible, so grating that even discussing them in one of those universities where students’ sensibilities are regarded as important as truth-telling would provoke one of those anti-academic, cowardly “trigger warnings” so petals might not be bruised. Had the gardaí who secured “confessions” from the Hayes family been half as easily cowed, maybe the whole affair might not have assumed such force and held a mirror to our cruelty.