Martin Ridge - Breaking the Silence: One Mans Quest to Find the Truth About One of the Most Horrific Series of Sex Abuse Cases in Ireland

Breaking the
Silence

Martin Ridge

with Gerard Cunningham

Gill & Macmillan

Contents

Preface

This is a story of extraordinary betrayal and extraordinary survival which emerged when three separate child abuse cases surfaced almost simultaneously in a tiny corner of north-west Ireland. The cases involved fifty children and went back four decades. One of the abusers would prove to be Irelands most prolific rapist. The Garda launched what would be described as successful investigations, and prosecutions followed, but this was no ordinary criminal activity. Like an iceberg, just a fraction of the reality was ever on view.

I stepped into the investigation by accident. I was asked to assist detectives from another district because their investigation involved more than one district. I became involved in two further investigations when survivors of sexual abuse approached me with their stories.

Sexual abuse had already been in the headlines in Ireland. The aftermath of the Fr Brendan Smith case had taken down the government of Albert Reynolds. But this was my first encounter with it, despite a thirty year career in An Garda Sochna. I had seen the consequences of terrorism during those years, but nothing I had seen prepared me for the fall-out from sexual abuse. There was no training for this, no guidelines from HQ .

The story began at Christmas 1997 when a west Donegal priest, Fr Eugene Greene, reported to the Garda that a local man had tried to blackmail him. Instead, Greene himself ended in the dock. His hubris set in motion a train of events that led to two successful prosecutions. The lead detective in the first case also brought a third case to a successful end. I was assigned to the case because that detective, John Dooley, had worked with me before.

Among the survivors of sexual abuse, word got out of what was happening. Victims came knocking on my door none would come to the Garda station and my house became the unofficial nerve centre of the investigation. Those who came to me were grown men, most in their mid-thirties and most flooded with shame and guilt. Over the next two years I became accustomed to meetings in car parks, along lonely country roads, harbour piers never in the Garda station. They didnt want to be seen, and so we met in quiet deserted places, ironically often in the same lonely spots where many of them had been secretly abused years earlier. The shame stalked them as they told me the dark secret, almost as if in confession.

Listening to their stories, I was held in shocked silence. Of the twenty-six men who came forward about Fr Eugene Greene, I dealt with sixteen, all from the tiny Gaeltacht parish of Gort an Choirce. I knew them, their wives and their parents. It was a curiously intimate investigation.

Not long into the Greene investigation, another young man knocked at my door and stood there half huddled in the shadows when I answered. I was also abused, he said. His abuser was Denis McGinley, a local schoolteacher. McGinley had abused children systematically in his classroom over many years.

There were now three investigations running simultaneously. The third, in which I was also involved as victims approached me, was focused in Dooleys district. The Greene and McGinley cases both involved the Catholic Church, since McGinley was a teacher in a Catholic school answerable to religious managers.

As we probed, we learned that the Church had been told about the abuse in both cases decades before. One family had made a report as far back as 1976. Nothing was done. As a devout Catholic myself with close relatives in the Church, this causes me difficulty to this day. One night, early on, when I still had difficulty accepting what I was learning, I found myself standing in front of a mirror in my home shouting at myself, reminding myself of my duty to believe these men and not to be diverted by any other loyalty. I remain shocked and distressed at the role of the Church.

The force offered no support to the handful of officers involved in these cases. In contrast to police forces in the UK including the PSNI in Northern Ireland, there was virtually no logistical support. In the end I bought my own computer and taught myself how to use it, attending evening classes in a local hall in order to prepare an investigation file for the Director of Public Prosecutions ( DPP ). Neither was there any kind of professional support. At the end of the investigation when I asked for counselling, I was told I didnt need it. Such support is routine in the UK . It was symptomatic of the Irish forces attitude at the time. Maybe things have changed.

Of necessity the accounts in this book do not go into the full details of the horrors those young men endured while they were still children, but it is necessary to recount some of their experiences here in greater detail in order to show what lies behind by now familiar words like sexually abused, molested or interfered with. Young boys mostly aged between 8 and 12 were repeatedly raped by their abusers. In some cases the abuse lasted for years. Victims described how they were forced to masturbate their rapists or endure the indignity of being masturbated by them; boys were forcibly stripped, held down and repeatedly anally raped so violently that they bled for days afterwards; or forced to accept or perform oral sex, in one case so violently that the victim almost lost consciousness. Boys had to suffer their abusers hands reaching inside their pants, touching their testicles and penis or anus and endure unwelcome hugs and kisses, often accompanied by the stench of stale alcohol. One young boy was effectively imprisoned for three days by his abuser.

More than anything else, this is a book about the victims, those who survived sexual abuse at the hands of Greene, McGinley and others, and their courage in coming forward and telling their stories. Without their courage, justice would never have been done. The same goes for their friends, families and spouses who stood by them and established support groups. To protect the identities of those victims, their families and their friends, aliases have been used throughout the book. Certain biographical and other details that might lead to their identification have also been altered. The names of other people in the book such as my fellow Garda officers, health board officials, priests and teachers are unchanged. The one exception is John Reilly, who was convicted in 1999 and who cannot be identified as his name was never made public in order to protect his victims.

There are many others whose advice and assistance were priceless in writing this book, not all of whom I can name here.

Thanks first of all to Fergal Tobin, Publishing Director, and all those at Gill & Macmillan for their encouragement and support in this project and for invaluable advice at crucial stages.

Darragh MacIntyre, a reporter with BBC Spotlight, lived for several years in Gort an Choirce and got to know as well as I did many of those who were sexually abused as children. His own investigations for Spotlight uncovered new information that highlighted the extent of the scandal within the Church. It was he who introduced me to Fergal Tobin.

John Dooley, who worked closely with me on these cases, was an inspiration with his professionalism and attention to detail. To him and to the other Garda who worked on these and other cases, my thanks and appreciation, along with their counterparts in the health services.

Gerard Cunningham provided insights into the workings of the Morris Tribunal, in which forum John Dooley came forward, as well as advice on how to structure this book.

I would also like to thank the many priests who provided valuable background and insight and who sometimes were just willing to listen.