Maeve Sheehan: Failures All across the Board LED to Broadcaster's Gravest Mistake

By Maeve Sheehan
Irish Independent
May 6, 2012

http://www.independent.ie/opinion/analysis/maeve-sheehan-failures-all-across-the-board-led-to-broadcasters-gravest-mistake-3101340.html

In October 2010, the Prime Time Investigates team kicked around ideas for programmes the following spring. Aoife Kavanagh went to Brian Pairceir, the programme editor, with an idea: a show looking at Irish missionaries in Africa, in the context of an alleged clerical abuse.

She was an experienced reporter and on an upward trajectory in RTE. Originally from Enniscorthy, Co Wexford, she cut her teeth on the Examiner and moved from there to RTE in 1996. She worked on the flagship morning news show, Morning Ireland, as well as covering foreign news for television, including American elections, African elections, and fronted a whole series on Ireland's overseas development programme.

Her biography on RTE's website describes her "passion for Africa" and her "slightly warped fondness" for the difficulties of travelling and working in hot spots.

Given her background, it wasn't surprising that Pairceir should take her idea seriously. She hadn't worked on Prime Time Investigates before but her record spoke for itself.

Pairceir went to Ken O'Shea, a former newspaper journalist who was then head of current affairs. He in turn discussed it with Ed Mulhall, the head of news, who gave the idea the green light.

A Mission to Prey went down in history, not as the programme makers would have liked but as the "gravest mistake" in the broadcaster's history. Five months and two belated paternity tests later, RTE was forced to admit it got it wrong in claiming that Fr Kevin Reynolds, Mill Hill Missionary priest, had raped a girl and fathered a child. After at first playing tough, the broadcaster issued a grovelling apology and reached a substantial out-of-court settlement.

In her subsequent inquiry for the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland, published on Friday, Anna Carragher, the BBC executive charged with investigating, looked for notes of these discussions between the current affairs team's top brass. She found none. As a result, she found it "impossible" to "accurately ascertain" who approved what and when.

In any case, in January 2011, Kavanagh went to Kenya to research her story. That was when she encountered her source -- who is described in Carragher's report as an "individual" of unspecified gender.

The individual told her that Fr Reynolds had allegedly had "non-consensual" sex with a young girl called Veneranda, while a priest in Eregi in the Eighties. This person told her that Veneranda subsequently gave birth to a daughter, whom she named Sheila. If true, the story was a scoop. Fr Reynolds was now a parish priest in Ahascaragh in Co Galway.

Back in Dublin in early February, Kavanagh put together a list of questions and emailed them to her "source".

She wanted to know how her source learnt of the story. The individual responded that "a number of other people were aware of the allegation; that this individual had personally carried out the investigation into the allegation some years before; and had met and interviewed Veneranda and Sheila, with the motivation of addressing an injustice."

On February 2, Kavanagh replied: "Thank you for the extra info re: Reynolds. I know you told me all this in the office the other day but it's always good to check and recheck. We may have to take a leap of faith on this and simply approach him."

Other than these emails -- which she wrote on her return -- there were no other notes from her research trip in January, save a single sheet bearing names and dates. Kavanagh was not "rigorous enough" in exploring her source's credibility, motivations and trustworthiness, according to Carragher.

Interviewed later by Carragher, Kavanagh said: "I've got some very good friends who are actually all, some of them priests, some of them work with missionary orders and others are NGOs, so I was actually able to ask quite a few people about . . . and people who would know quite well, because it's a small community and particularly if they're Irish, it's an even smaller community. So the general perception . . . was that [he was] a decent, good man."

Kavanagh not only trusted her source, but according to Carragher's report, seemed to share some of her source's assumptions about Fr Reynolds.

On March 3, Kavanagh, sent an email to her source: "It drives me crazy to think of him preaching, literally, in Galway while all of this mess is tucked away in Kenya."

This, and other emails, caused Carragher "some unease". "The tone brooks no view other than that of Fr Reynolds' culpability."

The source clearly felt so involved in the programme that, according to Carragher's report, they suggested themselves as an interviewee for the programme, and suggested certain scripts.

The production team hired a freelance journalist in Kenya, Mike Njenga, to investigate the allegations. On February 11, the production team sent Njenga an email asking him to go to Eregi to substantiate another claim: that Fr Reynolds had paid Sheila's school fees through an intermediary.

He interviewed both the person making this claim -- apparently a teacher -- and Veneranda and Sheila. He didn't take any notes but on February 21, he emailed Kavanagh to confirm the "teacher's recollection that following an approach to Fr Reynolds by an intermediary, Sheila's fees had been paid by the local bishop, Philip Sulumeti. Kavanagh tried to talk to the teacher herself by phone. But communications were "difficult".

She later told Carragher: "We made several attempts to talk to each other. And we would have very brief, and I mean they were brief, conversations. And so what I ended up doing was calling her and saying you know, texting her saying, kind of, this is what I'm talking about and she said, OK, to call.

"So I call and I literally get, I got the sort of main facts, you know, how did you know, you know Veneranda? You know Sheila? You were the headmistress? Yes. You remember dealing with the bishop on this? Yes. He went to Fr Reynolds? Yes. It was a bit more than yes but it was very short, I'd say a minute. Then I tried again and it was the same kind of thing."

Carragher couldn't find any evidence that the production team tried to get documentary evidence of the claim that Fr Reynolds covered Sheila's school fees.

Kavanagh and Mark Lappin told Carragher that they had tried. Kavanagh told her: "Through the headmistress, we tried, you know, we asked were there any records of the payment ever being made and she said no."

By April, the Prime Time Investigates team took surreptitious film of Fr Reynolds in his Ahascragh parish -- an act criticised by Carragher -- to show to Veneranda later. Kavanagh and her producer took the footage to Nairobi, showed it to Veneranda, who allegedly identified Fr Reynolds. On that basis, they interviewed her, in the presence of a translator.

Carragher had "considerable concerns" that Veneranda's story wasn't probed more. For instance, Veneranda spoke about "payment" and she also spoke about "both of us giving into temptation" and said that the "payment for school fees had not happened".

But Kavanagh said she had indeed raised these issues before she filmed the interview but couldn't find her notes: "I had notes and do you think I can find them, no I can't. There's lots of stuff in it and I just can't find them. But all of that, all of those questions would have been asked. I mean, you know, you remember because it's such a horrible question to have to ask."

Back in Ireland, the crew set about confronting Fr Reynolds. On May 7 last year, Kavanagh and a camera crew arrived at Ahascragh parish church for the now infamous "doorstepping" of Fr Reynolds.

Fr Reynolds since told of his shock at the confrontation. He gave an interview to RTE after being confronted. However, afterwards he was shaken and was advised to hire a local firm of solicitors, Fair & Murtagh, who wrote to RTE.

The letter found its way to Kavanagh's desk. According to the BAI report, Kavanagh consulted with both her editor, Ken O'Shea, and Brian Pairceir, and took advice from RTE's legal department, before responding in an email on May 18. She wrote that the programme was going ahead and claimed to have a "a very credible third-party source substantiating the allegation that Fr Reynolds is the father of Sheila".

She "strongly urged" Fr Reynolds to "reconsider his denials". Carragher found it was highly undesirable that Kavanagh, rather than a lawyer, became the sole point of contact between Fr Reynolds' solicitors and RTE.

On the same day, the Mill Hill Missionaries contacted RTE to say Fr Reynolds would do a paternity test.

That offer, along with a second solicitor's letter the next day, failed to set alarm bells ringing. The second letter did not even merit a response from RTE. Mulhall and Pairceir had dismissed it as "continuing reiteration of denials", according to the report.

The big question was why.

According to Carragher, the production team simply didn't believe Fr Reynolds' offer of a paternity test was genuine. According to Carragher, they "felt that had they accepted it, they would have no way of enforcing it . . . and someone whom they believed to be responsible for a very serious action would not have been exposed".

Then there was legal advice: the production team believed they had the defence of "fair and reasonable publication" in broadcasting the programme.

But most of all, they had quite simply convinced themselves that they were right; that Veneranda was credible, that they had checked and verified all the facts, that they had corroborative evidence from other individuals.

The production team was so convinced, according to Carragher's report, that some of them believed there was a "striking likeness" between Sheila Mudi and Fr Reynolds. As for Fr Reynolds, they read guilt in his demeanour and interpreted a glowing reference from his bishop as "most peculiar".

They were stuck in "groupthink", she said. To them, all evidence pointed in one direction.

On May 20, the production team met with Ken O'Shea and Ed Mulhall, and unanimously decided that the programme should go ahead.

The lawyers, who only became involved in May, had read the script and viewed the programme. Lawyers discussed the potential legal fallout of the programme. Anna Carragher wrote that "it can be expected the legal affairs team flagged up the risks". Some changes were made over the weekend, and were viewed by Mulhall and the legal department.

The programme would go out on Monday May 23 in the midst of Barack Obama mania. Mulhall was monitoring RTE's coverage from an outside broadcast unit all day.

Back at RTE's studios in Donnybrook, the Prime Time Investigates team prepared to air their scoop that evening.

At 2.30pm that afternoon, Kavanagh opened her email and found a third and final warning letter from Fr Reynolds' solicitors, according to the BAI report.

It had been sitting in her inbox since 10.37am that morning.

Sent by Fair & Murtagh, it re-iterated Fr Reynolds' denials, claimed to have witnesses who would testify as to the falsity of the allegations, and claimed that the allegations were made by an individual who bore ill-will and ill-feeling towards Fr Reynolds. It repeated the priest's offer to undergo a paternity test.

With hours to go before broadcast, Kavanagh had printed off several "hard copies" of the email. She gave copies to Lappin, Pairceir and O'Shea. Some of the production team thought it had been forwarded to RTE's legal department, but others were unsure. Either way, the legal department never got it.

O'Shea called a meeting in his office. Kavanagh, Lappin and Pairceir were there. Other people were "coming and going throughout it" and no notes were taken.

O'Shea had informed Mulhall, his boss and head of news, about the letter but Mulhall, busy with Obama, never got to see the letter.

Fr Reynolds' letter made no difference to the team. According to Carragher's report, the prevailing view was that Fr Reynolds was guilty and his offer of a paternity test was not genuine. The fateful decision of a handful of people in the heart of the national broadcaster's current affairs team has had seismic repercussions for RTE.

The €200,000 fine slapped on it by the BAI is the least of them. Carragher's report exposed significant failures of editorial and managerial controls at the national broadcaster, belated involvement of the legal department, and a general lack of editorial scrutiny in challenging what were very serious allegations.

In the fallout, Kavanagh resigned on Friday and O'Shea and Pairceir remain in a "human resources" process that will ultimately determine their fate.

Mulhall, who fell on his sword last month and took early retirement, told Carragher that he took full responsibility as head of news.

More damning for RTE is the enormous reputational hammering it has taken and the political pressure that the public service broadcaster will now come under.

In a postscript to the BAI report, Kavanagh, Lappin, O'Shea and Pairceir made submissions to the BAI after Carragher finished her report. The four expressed their deep regret but they also took issue with much in her report, including the procedural issues and the fact that RTE's lawyers and the Kenyan journalist weren't interviewed. But the BAI said it was regrettable that RTE didn't "waive its claim to privilege" on its relationship with in-house legal staff. Carragher had already reached her conclusions by the time the submissions were received.

She noted in her report, it was right that those who hold others to account are themselves held accountable.