IRA will never stop me telling of how I was raped at 16’

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https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/...ill-speaks-out



‘They may smear me as a traitor. But the IRA will never stop me telling of how I was raped at 16’
This article is more than 8 years old
Mairia Cahill, grandniece of a republican hero, has been vilified online since going public about her sex attack. In her first newspaper interview, she tells why she won’t give in to the threats

Mairia Cahill says she has been smeared as a liar, a disgruntled groupie and even an enemy of the peace process in Northern Ireland. Why? For breaking the IRA’s code of “omertà”, as a Belfast rape victim who finally spoke out about her ordeal.

Nervous, exhausted and complaining of constant chest pains, she refuses to confirm if she feels that, after going public, she is now under covert surveillance by the very people she once regarded as friends in the republican movement. But since last month the 33-year-old says she has been subjected to a barrage of online abuse, which has included “a disgusting blog effectively saying I enticed my rapist with my virginity”.

In her first interview for a national newspaper, the west Belfast woman says the online trolls are not only motivated by the misogyny directed at sexual assault victims who speak out in public. The grandniece of one of the Provisional IRA’s founders, Joe Cahill, Mairia Cahill knows that her internet abusers regard her as a traitor.

“The abuse has ranged from everything from direct insults and threats, to obsessive tweeting by Sinn Féin supporters. All of this is orchestrated and designed to frighten me to be silent and go away. It won’t work, if anything it makes me more determined to highlight the issue of cover-up of abuse within the republican community,” she says.

Cahill made the explosive allegations on BBC Northern Ireland’s Spotlight programme. She said she had been raped by a senior west Belfast IRA figure in 1997, when she was 16. However, rather than allow her to report the alleged rape to the police, leading IRA and Sinn Féin figures tried to hold their own internal inquiry into her claims. She said that the republican leadership was more interested in protecting its reputation than in obtaining justice for her.

She also claimed on the programme that in 1999 the organisation forced her into a face-to-face meeting with her alleged abuser. The IRA, she said, told her it wanted to establish which of them was telling the truth.

“People are saying they have never seen a victim of sexual abuse treated like this in a very public manner by a political party, its armed wing and its supporters. Eyes have been opened and people are wondering if this is how they treat an abuse victim in public in 2014, just as how badly they treated them in private.

“The first week was hectic and eating was difficult. I sleep when I need to, though I have found some aspects mentally draining and physically exhausting. Having to consistently relive your experiences when you answer questions can be traumatic, but I have good support around me and am happy that I have an opportunity to tell my experiences, because as we have seen over the past number of weeks it has brought other victims of abuse forward, and indeed information about other perpetrators.”


She is living like a fugitive. Moving between different friends’ houses in an existence similar to that of the IRA “on the runs” she would have known in the past, growing up in the Ballymurphy area of west Belfast.

“I am effectively homeless as a result of this, although I’m currently staying somewhere on a temporary basis. I have received disgusting abuse online, and am aware of senior republicans who have been spreading all manner of false allegations about me. Discussions have taken place between my solicitor and the police regarding my current security, and when I secure a permanent home we will look at that further,” she says.

Those casting doubts over her version of events point out that both the man she accused of raping her and three alleged IRA members she claimed conducted the “kangaroo court” were acquitted of all charges. Cahill has countered that she lost faith in the way the prosecution in Belfast handled the cases and fears there was political interference to ensure that key players in the peace process would not be prosecuted.

Instead she may seek justice via the same route as Helen McKendry, daughter of Jean McConville, one of the IRA’s most famous victims. The IRA kidnapped, killed and buried McConville in secret in 1972. Her daughter is planning a civil action against Gerry Adams, the Sinn Féin president alleged by former republican comrades to have ordered the “disappearance” of her mother, accused of being an informer for the British army. Adams has vehemently denied any involvement in the McConville murder and has insisted that he also did all in his power to help Mairia Cahill. But Cahill, like McKendry, reveals she, too, may go down the civil case route.

“In terms of where it goes from here, there is an independent review, and two inquiries now in the north into how the court cases were conducted. In the south, debates are taking place as to what mechanism is more appropriate to deal with the wider issue. Civil action is indeed a strong possibility, and is just one of the options available to me. My solicitor, Joe Rice in Belfast, has trodden this path before with victims of the Catholic church, so we are in consultation about what action we next take,” Cahill said.

The reference to the Catholic church is telling, given that many in Ireland are comparing the Sinn Féin leadership’s handling of her case as akin to the hamfisted way in which the hierarchy tried to minimise the extent of child abuse among its clerics when paedophile priest scandals emerged in the mid-1990s.

Sinn Féin maintains that it believes Cahill was raped and the party said it supports all victims of sexual abuse. It has also claimed her case is being cynically exploited by political opponents who fear Sinn Féin’s rise in the opinion polls, particularly in the Irish Republic.

When the allegation of a political motive is raised, the rape victim bristles with anger: “I am one woman up against a powerful party political machine, one which absorbed the IRA into its ranks, and I lifted the lid on the ugly side of the way in which the republican movement dealt with sexual abuse allegations against its own members. It is clear from Sinn Féin’s reaction that they are angry, and I think anyone in my situation would be nervous about that. Some of these people have dangerous pasts, and indeed some of them have not learned how to act in normal democratic society.

“This is not about politics, it is though about a political party covering up for child sexual abuse.”