'Mairia won't be hushed by Gerry Adams or the IRA'

ALL along, it's been Mairia Cahill's word against the IRA. When she was raped, the IRA told Mairia Cahill it was her word against her alleged abuser's. As she prepared to confront her alleged IRA interrogators in court, she was told it was her word against theirs. Now it's her word against the Sinn Fein president, Gerry Adams's.

Mary Lou McDonald and rest of the 'republican family' who continue to doubt Mairia Cahill would do well speak to her father.

Philip Cahill has watched from the sidelines with a great deal of emotion as his daughter does battle with Sinn Fein.

He is more than just an observer. He is also a crucial witness, if not to the brutal act of rape and child abuse of his daughter within the IRA in the last years of the Troubles, then to the ensuing heavy-handed IRA investigation into her alleged rapist.

Mairia was 16 when she was raped and abused over a year by Martin Morris, who married into the extended Cahill family. She never told her parents. The IRA warned her not to. The IRA then set up its own 'kangaroo court' in which she was forced to face her alleged rapist to test the veracity of her claims (they didn't believe her).

Philip Cahill says he can name her interrogators as Seamus Finucane, Breige Wright and Maura McCrory because they gathered in his sitting room to deliver the outcome of their grotesque inquisition.

And later, when it turned out Morris was also accused of abusing two other victims, Philip claims it was Padraig Wilson who called to his house, on behalf of the "IRA leadership" offering his apologies for the IRA's bungled investigation.

He can also attest to her dealings with Gerry Adams, the Sinn Fein president who denies all knowledge of the IRA interrogation and the details of her rape.

"I know that Mairia met with Gerry Adams on a number of occasions and that her abuse was discussed because I was there. I wasn't at the meetings but I was with her on this journey.

"The IRA came to my house and they told me that they had interrogated her. I was there and her mum was there . . . Other members of the family spoke to Gerry Adams about the abuse. He had intimate knowledge of the abuse that happened to Mairia. He failed to report it. He failed Mairia," he said.

He also knows that another family member spoke to Gerry Adams about the alleged abuse, when Morris was seen in Donegal. "That's when he said, 'what do you want me to do? Bar him from every pub in Ireland?'"

"Talk is cheap, Gerry. He is talking about how these issues are dealt with now. That's nonsense.

"We are talking about him, his accountability for what happened then, for meeting Mairia, and talking about this and doing nothing about it, trying to string her along and keep her quiet."

Philip Cahill is calm, measured and articulate, like his daughter. But talking about Mairia clearly takes its toll. Like any parent of an abused child, you get the sense that feelings of futile guilt and regret are never far from his mind.

"I have found it a very emotional time. It has brought up a lot of things for me as a father and as a parent. It's been traumatic to relive some of the stuff," he said. "I have found it very stressful watching what Mairia has to put up with. She's a young woman on her own that's being subjected to horrendous pressure and abuse."

Cahill lives in Belfast, where Mairia's decision to go public has had seismic reverberations within his extended family.

He was steeped in republicanism growing up, but as an adult he moved to another area of Belfast to raise his children away from that intense political environment.

He hates the term but the Cahills are 'republican royalty' and that has coloured and complicated everything about her case.

"I would say that this has damaged family relationships probably beyond repair, the IRA involvement in this case. It has created all sorts of difficulties. People have loyalties and there are people in a position to say more and to come out publicly. And that's why I did. Because Mairia was on her own. Other people know the truth of it," he said.

"The republican movement knew about this long before we did. We were kept in secret while she was a minor. They did not interrogate her until she was 18. Even when she was being interrogated she was told explicitly that she couldn't discuss it, even with her parents."

Gerry Adams has claimed that he urged Mairia to go the police, even asking her uncle, the IRA godfather Joe Cahill, to have a word with her. As someone who grew up sitting on his Uncle Joe's knee, Philip Cahill finds this ludicrous.

"He was the founder member of the IRA. He was the chief of staff of the IRA. For Gerry Adams to suggest that Joe Cahill would encourage anybody go to the RUC to report anything is laughable," he said.

The only time the subject came up with Joe Cahill was over tea at his mother's house. "The only thing he said to me was that the family need to stick together. There was never any mention of going to the RUC," he said.

It seems the more Mairia Cahill squares up to Gerry Adams, the more she is "trolled" and "smeared".

Last week, Mairia revealed that she is homeless and in debt for pursuing the case against Sinn Fein and the IRA. She has accused the party of doing its utmost to discredit her with false innuendo and rumour.

Even Finucane, whom she accused of interrogating her, posted a link to a nasty republican blogger who described Mairia's alleged rapist as a man any 16-year-old would fancy.

As for Wilson, Finucane, Wright and McCrory, Cahill believes they aren't too happy with Gerry Adams, who landed them in it by describing them as "decent people" and calling on the Taoiseach, Enda Kenny, to give them an audience to hear their version of events. Kenny called Adams's bluff and agreed. Last Thursday, the four declined.

Philip Cahill was not surprised. "I'm sure they are very unhappy. I'm sure they feel that Gerry Adams has dropped them in it," he said.

"The last thing they want is to be accountable to the Taoiseach or anybody else . . . They have denied and covered up, the last thing they want to be is face-to-face with the Taoiseach having to answer difficult questions."

In a radio interview last Friday, Peter Madden, solicitor for the four, explained that the Taoiseach seemed to have already made his mind up about his four clients even though they were acquitted and denied being in the IRA.

However, in the next breath, he suggested that there had been an IRA investigation into Mairia's claims after all. The prosecution file contained a letter she wrote to the IRA army council, saying that they had not carried out a proper investigation. Mr Madden's point was that Mairia Cahill had co-operated with the IRA investigation.

But according to her father, Mairia's letter is further proof that the IRA had indeed conducted the internal 'investigation' that others continued to deny.

Mairia was let down by "everyone", he says. "The IRA for involving themselves, the people she disclosed it to in the first place for not coming forward, for keeping us in the dark, the police for mishandling the cases when it finally got there, and Gerry Adams for covering it up," he said.

"The only people who have been there for Mairia are her very close, immediate family."

He has a "huge amount of pride" in his daughter. Northern Ireland prosecutors have commissioned an independent review of the case taken against her abuser and the four alleged IRA interrogators.

Mairia has not got the acknowledgement she wants from Gerry Adams. However, she has forced the republican movement to acknowledge how it dealt with sex abusers and how it dealt with women and children.

"It's going to come that there were similar stories on both sides [in Northern Ireland]," said Philip.

"The genie's out of the bottle. I think they are panicking. I think you can detect that in Mairia they have met a formidable opponent, because she has truth on her side.

"She won't be hushed. They know that they deal with it really badly. They know that she's telling the truth. They are trying to defend the indefensible."

Sunday Independent