DROGHEDA (IRELAND)
Irish Independent [Dublin, Ireland]
August 28, 2023
By Maeve Sheehan
The Rape Crisis organisation in Louth has been criticised by clerical sex abuse survivors campaigning to strip a former leader of the Christian Brothers of a Freedom of Drogheda award.
Local councillors awarded the honour to Brother Edmund Garvey, a Drogheda native, in 1997.
Survivors of sexual abuse by Christian Brothers want local councillors to rescind the honour because of a widely criticised legal strategy adopted under Brother Garvey’s stewardship that has frustrated victim’s attempts to claim redress in the courts.
The Louth-based Rape Crisis North East said last weekend that the decision to rescind the Freedom of Drogheda from Br Garvey was a matter for local councillors.
In contrast, the national umbrella organisation, Rape Crisis Network Ireland, has rowed in behind the survivors’ campaign, saying the issue was about holding the Christian Brothers to account for an “obstructionist” legal strategy.
The chairperson of Rape Crisis North East is a Drogheda councillor and former mayor who has previously told victims that there was no support amongst councillors for rescinding Brother Garvey’s Freedom of Drogheda.
Michelle Hall, a Labour Party councillor, told Damian O’Farrell, spokesperson for a group of Christian Brothers abuse survivors, last December that the honour “will not be rescinded”.
However, in a change of heart, Ms Hall said yesterday she and another Labour Party councillor will support the motion to rescind the honour when it is voted on next month.
In a statement issued through the Labour Party, Cllr Hall and her Labour colleague, Emma Cutlip, said: “This is an unprecedented situation. This decision has not been taken lightly and it was taken for multiple reasons.”
They said that the “ongoing commentary” on the issue is “having a harmful effect on all victims and survivors of sexual violence” and “out of respect” said it was not helpful that they comment further until after the vote on September 4.
They also reiterated that “all Louth councillors” opposed the Christian Brothers “offensive and damaging” legal strategy and had urged the government to change the law to prohibit it.
Mr O’Farrell, who was the first person to secure a conviction of a Christian Brother for sexual abuse in Ireland, welcomed the councillors’ decision to support the motion.
He said he was “very disappointed with the reception we originally received from Cllr Hall when we first approached her as Mayor in October last year.”
He said it was notable that the local Rape Crisis North East which she chaired had failed to issue any public statements in support of the survivors’ campaign.
“It would have been a huge comfort to survivors if Cllr Hall as chair of Rape Crisis Northeast could have shown support for our campaign sooner,” he said.
Rape Crisis Network Ireland – which is the national umbrella body for the country’s rape crisis centres – has meanwhile weighed in fully behind the survivors’ campaign.
Dr Cliona Saidlear, executive director of Rape Crisis Network Ireland, said the survivors’ campaign is not “an attack on an individual” but is about the Christian Brothers order being “held to account in the public realm” for an “obstructionist” legal strategy.
“It is clear that the survivors’ who have advocating for the rescinding of the freedom of the City of Drogheda for Br Garvey are making this demand within a context where the order has behaved and continues to behave in a legalistically obstructionist manner,” she said in a statement.
“It also needs to be said that while the ask to rescind is retrospective and has not been done previously, this is not only a conversation about the past, it is very much about the behaviour of the order right this minute. At the heart of that is the urgent need to allow survivors to access their rights,” she said.
The Christian Brothers could have chosen not to legally obstruct survivors. That they have not done so “means that this is very much a matter that is of interest to the wider community and the public,” she said.
A spokesperson for Rape Crisis North East said the decision on rescinding the Freedom of Drogheda “is a matter for Borough District of Drogheda Councillors”.
The Christian Brothers are relying on a legal technicality which forces abuse survivors seeking redress to sue every religious brother, rather than the Christian Brother order. The work involved has delayed and frustrated legal actions. The Law Reform Commission is recommending a change in the law to stop the use of the “legal technicality”.