IRA letter is proof of Mairia's strength of character

RTE presenter Gavin Jennings couldn't have been more surprised as Peter Madden, Belfast solicitor for the four people accused of heading up an IRA investigation into the rape of Mairia Cahill at the age of 16 by a senior republican, took the opportunity during an interview on Friday's Morning Ireland to start reading from a letter which the victim wrote to the paramilitary organisation's Army Council a few years later.

In it, Ms Cahill seems to confirm that she was "co-operating with an IRA investigation", as well as defending two of his clients as "honourable" in their conduct.

Immediately, all those who have been determined to pick apart Mairia's story leapt upon the letter as the final proof that her version didn't stack up.

It's not the first time either. The SF troll brigade started by questioning whether Mairia had been raped at all. The nastiness was so crude that even SF started to feel ashamed of it, so they switched tack, asking instead why she hadn't gone through with the court cases if she was telling the truth.

Again, the exact opposite was the case. Mairia had been willing to put herself through the ordeal of three separate court cases. Justice was denied to her. She didn't deny it to her herself.

Next, they tried a different tactic, trying to portray her as a dangerous dissident who was opposed to peace, let alone the police - despite not being able to find a single thing that Mairia has said or done that ever wavered from her absolute conviction that child sexual abuse can only properly be dealt with by the police.

Now, suddenly, they crow about this letter as if it's proof of their belief - well, more of a fervent hope - that she's not telling the truth, and Mairia was forced, once again, to explain herself to those who deliberately opt to misunderstand and misrepresent her.

Far from hiding this letter, as Mairia pointed out, it was she who handed it to the prosecution, and she who'd written about it publicly and talked about it in interviews.

And why wouldn't she, when the letter is a contemporaneous source backing up her assertion that she was subjected to an IRA investigation which ended in what can only be described as a cover-up?

Once seen in full and in context, Mairia's letter paints a very different picture than the one her enemies wish to present, and it entirely supports her own account of what happened, which was that she was subjected to an IRA investigation, that she was traumatised by it, and that she was convinced the IRA was more intent on protecting itself rather than protecting children.

It does even more than that. She was only 19 at the time, her life in ruins, and here she is putting it up to the IRA Army Council to do the right thing rather than covering the tracks for her abuser. There are grown man, even now, who no doubt imagine themselves very tough, who still wouldn't have the cojones to challenge the IRA Army Council the way that Mairia did. That letter is another testament to her character and determination.

Somewhere along the way, the penny must have started to drop in SF Central that, far from bolstering their ongoing attack on Mairia's credibility, the letter actually enhances her story and destroys theirs.

The story which has been coming from the Orwellian Ministry of Truth that is SF since this story broke keeps changing with the wind, as more details are added and omitted, but it has a basic outline. Yes, they believe Mairia was raped. Yes, the IRA conducted investigations into sexual abuse and sometimes shot or exiled abusers to other parts of these islands; and, yes, they're sorry for it in some vague, mealy-mouthed way.

But no, they couldn't say for certain that the IRA investigated Mairia's rape, and so they won't apologise to her personally, even though it was her testimony which finally made them start begrudgingly admitting the truth. Moreover, the people that she accused of being IRA investigators were acquitted of IRA membership in court, so SF wasn't going to accept that they conducted any investigation for the IRA.

Now this letter is out in the public domain, and it's impossible to see how SF can continue to pretend to know nothing of any such IRA investigation when it's all there in black and white. Literally.

You don't accuse the Army Council of conducting an IRA investigation into your abuse unless there was an IRA investigation. Or are SF now going to insist that Mairia was lying about it back in 2000 too, but that the Army Council were far too nice to correct her on such minor points of detail?

Making false accusations to the Army Council about IRA members is suicidal. Mairia would be a dead woman today if what she claimed in that letter wasn't absolutely true. That's what is so odd about people using this letter to refute the allegation that the people whom Mairia has named were doing the IRA's business at all.

They may have been cleared, but you can't have it both ways. You can't say they weren't part of an IRA investigation team and then start relying on evidence which suggests in fact they were.

The letter is even more damaging to Gerry Adams's credibility. He still insists that he, through intermediaries, urged Mairia Cahill to go to the police. Is it really credible that senior republicans would have been advising Mairia to go to the police when she was making serious complaints about the movement's own conduct in this matter?

Adams finally admitted a few weeks ago - albeit accidentally, as it seemed - that he did know there was an IRA dimension to Mairia's abuse, as she always claimed he did. Is he really expecting anyone to believe that the republican movement, which the letter clearly shows was up to its eyes in this mess and that it was an open secret in Adams's own fiefdom of West Belfast, would submit itself to scrutiny by the police in the North on this, or any other, matter?

Mairia's story remains consistent and clear. Gerry Adams's is shifting and obscure. Her letter simply adds to the pressure on him to come clean about what he knew and did.

Chances are that SF may feel emboldened by the latest Sunday Independent poll, which makes them the largest single party in the State, into brazening out the storm. That's what they do. Self-pity and venom is a potent mix.

If the core has been hardened, though, it still remains to be seen how transfer toxic SF has now become. Unless we're the only place sick enough that a party can actually grow in popularity in the middle of a child abuse scandal, in which case we're in more trouble than we thought.

Sunday Independent