A cruel new take on Kerry babies
Trouble is - while the Kerry Babies controversy stomped all over Joanne Hayes, it wasn't really about her. It was about the police. It was about finding out how the police went about their business, and how they achieved certain results.
In 1984, a newborn baby was found stabbed on the beach at Cahirciveen. As it happened, members of the Garda Murder Squad were available to bolster the efforts of the local gardai.
Methodically, they circulated questionnaires and assembled statements and soon they concluded that Joanne Hayes was worth questioning.
She'd been pregnant, she was no longer pregnant, but there was no sign of a baby.
It was reasonable to suppose that the dead baby might be hers. She and her family - two brothers, a sister, mother and aunt - were invited into the Garda station. They weren't under arrest, but fearful civilians often don't know - much less assert - their rights.
Joanne told the police she had a baby in a field on the farm, the baby died immediately and she hid it on the land. This seemed improbable, but it was the truth.
Not unreasonably, the gardai found it hard to believe that two women in the same area had babies born around the same time, that both babies were dead and both had been hidden.
The gardai continued to question the Hayes family. By and by, the family signed detailed statements admitting that Joanne gave birth and then killed the baby, and the family helped dispose of it in the sea. The family were charged with offences related to this "murder".
Then, a second baby turned up, hidden on the Hayes's farmland, just where Joanne said she hid it.
Ah, said the police - twins. She killed them both.
Really? And hid one dead baby on the farm - and threw the other into the sea? One baby stabbed repeatedly, the other with no obvious cause of death - it may not have drawn breath before it died.
Then, the forensic report arrived. The blood types showed that the baby hidden on the farm was that of Joanne and a man she had an affair with. The baby found stabbed on the beach was not Joanne's.
The police stood their ground. They claimed that Joanne must have had intercourse with two men in quick succession, and conceived twins - each fathered by a different man. After all, if the stabbed baby wasn't hers - why would members of the family make such detailed statements about a murder that didn't happen?
When this newspaper broke the story of the case, written by Joe Joyce and Don Buckley, a tribunal was set up to find out how the confessions were obtained.
The tribunal report was controversial. It speculated and it supposed. In the opinion of some, the report never convincingly explained how people who were entirely innocent of any involvement whatever in stabbing a baby should make very detailed confessions that fitted into the facts of the baby found on the beach.
With indecent haste, the politicians announced that that was that, it was all over - move along, now, folks, nothing to see here.
Meanwhile, the case - along with the tragedy of Ann Lovett - helped open a lot of eyes to the reality behind the self-regarding Ireland of the day. Just like the rest of the world, we make mistakes in personal matters, we act on impulse, this sometimes leads to heartbreak.
The personal lives of those involved in the Kerry Baby affair were as normal, as messy and as laudable as the personal lives of the rest of us.
Joanne's neighbours quietly stood by her and picketed the tribunal while she was brutally questioned.
The controversy was about how we lived then, how we handle these things, how the police operate. Fit subjects for filmmakers. Those reportedly involved in the proposed films (Mannix Flynn, Aisling Walsh, Gerry Stembridge) are serious people, unlikely to waste their time on a sensationalised account.
The Joanne Hayes of 1984 was involved in a public controversy. There's a clear-cut case for the right to reassess the Kerry Babies affair.
The danger is that the making of either film might licence the media to pry into the current lives of Joanne Hayes and her family. That's the responsibility of the media, not the filmmakers.
The Joanne Hayes of 2006 is a private citizen. Her life and that of her daughter are none of our business. They were players in a major public issue - but are such no longer. Such is the clear-cut 22-year division between the public and private Joanne Hayes - and it's hard to think of a clearer case - that she might well be entitled to legal protection of the privacy of her current life.
Any unsought incursion might well invite the courts to make a privacy ruling that the media wouldn't like.
- Gene Kerrigan
