Nell McCafferty - A Woman to Blame. The Kerry Babies Case

Justice Kevin Lynch Tribunal judge Michael Moriarty James Duggan Counsel for judge Kevin OHiggins Counsel for Attorney General Anthony Kennedy Counsel for guards Martin Kennedy Dermot McCarthy Counsel for Hayes family Brian Curtin Patrick Mann Solicitor for Hayes family Doctors John Harbison State pathologist Declan Gilsenan Deputy state pathologist John Creedon Gynaecologist (treated Joanne after the birth in St Catherines hospital) Liam Hayes Hayes family doctor Aidan Daly Liam Hayess partner (referred Joanne to hospital after birth) John Fennelly Chief psychiatrist at Limerick psychiatric hospital (treated Joanne after arrest) Robert McEneaney Physician (examined Bridie Fuller) Francis Chute GP (did not examine Bridie Fuller) Robert Harrison Obstetrician (called as expert witness) Brian McCaffrey Psychiatrist (called as expert witness)

25 June 1982 Mary Lockes first child is born

19 May 1983 Joannes daughter Yvonne born

23 December 1983 Relationship between Joanne Hayes and Jeremiah Locke ends

6 April 1984 Joannes regraded job advertised

13 April Joannes son is born and dies

14 April Body of baby boy found at Cahirciveen

25 April Mary Lockes second child is born

1 May Hayes family taken in for questioning by police

Joanne charged and taken into custody

2 May Body of Joannes baby found on farm at Abbeydorney

11 May Joanne released from Limerick psychiatric hospital, where she had been transferred from Limerick prison

10 October Charges against Joanne dropped

Mid-October Internal police inquiry set up, which proves inconclusive

28 December Tribunal of inquiry, set up in response to public outcry, meets for first time

14 June 1985 Tribunal meets for last time

In the opening days of the Kerry babies tribunal a married man went to bed in a Tralee hotel with a woman who was not his wife. He was one of the forty-three male officials judge, fifteen lawyers, three police superintendents and twenty-four policemen engaged in a public probe of the private life of Joanne Hayes.

When this particular married man was privately confronted with his own behaviour, he at first denied it. Then he crumpled into tears and asked not to be exposed. He had so much to lose, he said. My wife... my job... my reputation... He was assured of discretion.

No such discretion was assured to Joanne Hayes, as a succession of professional men, including this married man, came forward to strip her character. The lawyers, doctors and police were guaranteed the full protection and licence of law to do so. The priests who had dealt with her were not called to testify and the Catholic Church stayed silent through the whole affair. However, the Church has ways of making itself heard: when it was all over, the priests of her parish refused to say Mass in her home.

This is the story of professional men, the lawyers, doctors, police and priests, who found woman to blame. It is also the story of one woman and the Kerry babies tribunal.

It was medieval. A group of men put a young unmarried woman on the stand and questioned her about the exact circumstances of the conception and birth and death of her newborn baby. She came from a tiny village in the west of Ireland. They had come down from the capital, Dublin. The Pope had just come and gone from Ireland. The men wondered aloud if the woman had in fact given birth to two newborn babies who had been found dead in Kerry, though blood tests showed that she could only have been mother to one. The men put forward and examined for six months a theory of superfecundation, which postulates that a woman can conceive of twins by two men if she has sexual intercourse with both in the space of twenty-four hours. There were times when we all thought she had twins, said the presiding judge, Justice Kevin Lynch.

The legal men and a succession of male doctors, psychiatrists and police officers forty-three in all spent six months probing the young womans mind and body. A doctor gave the dimensions of her vagina during a previous birth. Ordnance survey maps were used to pinpoint the exact locations of the places where she had sexual congress with her married lover. The question was asked, Did she love this man or what he and other men were prepared to do with her?

It was medieval, but it happened in 1985. The probing of the womans sexual history brought the men gathered round her to such a fever pitch that she collapsed. She was excused, temporarily, and could be heard retching and sobbing in the corridor. The judge ordered that she be sedated and then brought back to testify. She gave evidence in a daze, her head bobbing off the microphone. The judge asked that her friends keep a suicide watch on her that night.