DALKEY RAPE ALLEGATIONS MADE AGAINST TWO GARDAI
Added to www.alliancesupport.org on February 20, 2007
Ladies, Gentlemen and Scholars,
The following articles were published on the Voices Emerge website www.voicesemerge.org in July 2005 following the failure by the Gardai to find any evidence of a baby's body buried at the "Dalkey House of Horrors". At that time Cynthia Owen (then referred to as "Niamh") started to make rape allegations against a "top Garda Detective" (as per the Evening Herald) and a retired Garda. Please note that the main allegations are that "Niamh" was sexually abused by Gardai (i.e. she is not just talking about a "cover up").
In our child abuse witch-hunt I have frequently come across references to "Top People" being involved in a child abuse "ring". I assume this is typical paranoiac behaviour.
Rory Connor
18 February 2007
DALKEY RAPE ALLEGATIONS MADE AGAINST TWO GARDAI
Irish Times, 11 July 2005 by Marie O'Halloran
Detectives are examining new rape allegations, against a Garda and a retired Garda, made by the woman at the centre of the Dalkey, co. Dublin abuse case.
The two men are to be interviewed, following claims that the woman who is now 43, was raped in the 1970s by them. The allegations are understood to have been made in the past two weeks, and are being treated by the Gardai with "scepticism", according to one Garda source, in part because of the delay in making the claims.
According to a Garda spokesperson, "a lot of information has been put forward" and a number of people have been named by the woman, known as Niamh and all information would be examined.
Gardai have been investigating the deaths of two children in Dalkey some 30 years ago, to whom Niamh allegedly gave birth.
Last week the excavation of the garden of the woman's former family home failed to find any remains of a child to whom Niamh says she gave birth when she was 14. The remains of another child, to whom she allegedly gave birth aged just 11, were found dumped in a lane in Upper Georges Street, Dun Laoghaire, in 1973. The Dun Laoghaire coroner has agreed to reopen the inquest into the death of that infant, a girl, who had been stabbed up to 14 times with a knitting needle.
Solicitors for Niamh have said she had been attempting to obtain justice for many years and that the State owed her an explanation for the way it had dealt with her allegations of rape as a young girl by her father and brothers. Allegations were also made that a male visitor to the family home had paid to have sex with her. She also alleged witnessing the abuse of other family members and two of her sisters have also made statements alleging abuse.
COMMENT: I can well understand why the Gardai are sceptical of rape allegations dating back decades when Niamh has only made them recently. However what about the hundreds of rape accusations made against Christian Brothers and other religious decades after the alleged events? Nearly all of these allegations were made after Berties Ahern's apology (and offer of "compensation") in May 1999. Surely they should have been treated with equal scepticism?
Rory Connor
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GARDAI FACE DALKEY CHILD SEX ALLEGATIONS
The Sunday Times;July 10, 2005
[This is practically a carbon copy of the kind of allegations made against Catholic Religious]
Two former Gardai are to be questioned over allegations that they paid for sex with the woman at the centre of the Dalkey "house of horrors" investigation.
The 43-year-old known as Niamh, who now lives in Britain, claimed last week that her father brought the men to their home to have sex with her when she was a child. Gardai said last week that the allegations would be investigated and the two former officers would be brought in for questioning.
Niamh's story of repeated sexual abuse suffered as a child emerged two weeks ago when gardai launched a forensic dig in the garden of her former home.
The woman claimed to be the mother of a child whose body was found in a laneway in 1973. She said the baby was the result of incestual abuse and was stabbed to death by her mother with a knitting needle.
However, the remains of a second child, which Niamh says was stillborn to her in similar circumstances two years later and buried in the garden, have not been discovered despite an extensive dig that ended last week.
Niamh's sister Mandy, not her real name, has backed up the story. She said children were prostituted in the house but was unable to corroborate specific allegations against individuals. The women's parents vehemently deny the claims.
A garda source said: "There have been things said in the last week about a couple of people who were gardai at the time. While they may not be true, questions have to be answered.
"They will be questioned about it, both of them, they'll have to be. Anything that's new that has come up will be dealt with. Ever since Donegal there's no hiding place for anybody no matter what they do," said the source.
Mandy has called for an inquiry into the handling of the case, which has produced no prosecution in more than three decades.
Another woman, known as Joan, who married Niamh and Mandy's oldest brother and accuses him of raping her and their daughter, has also questioned the handling of her case.
Her rape accusations, made with different evidence, were included in Niamh's case and not dealt with separately. The case was rejected by the director of public prosecutions despite what Joan believes was compelling medical evidence and corroborating witnesses. She now wants access to the garda files.
Mandy couldn't identify the two named gardai accused of having sex with her sister but said that her mother received money from men for sex with some of her elder siblings.
"I think it"s credible," she said last week. "I wouldn't say it didn't happen. In fact, I could easily believe it did. Niamh used to ask me if I remembered people coming to the house but I was younger than her and always sent upstairs.
"I do remember that, when the baby (that was buried in the back yard) was born, there was a strange man there.
"My dad was always in the middle of policemen, he always used to drink with them, he played cards with them. I'm not surprised by the idea.
Mandy cited two occasions when she believes officers acted in a way that hampered her quest for justice.
In 1995 when the entire family was questioned about Niamh’s allegations of abuse, she claims her mother admitted in front of a detective that Mandy had been raped by her older brother, but that the Garda later denied it.
Mandy cited another occasion, again in 1995, after her younger brother had committed suicide. At his inquest, she tried to reveal the years of abuse he had received.
"Myself and a companion went down to the court on the day but, while we were waiting to go in, there was a policeman standing with us the whole time and wouldn't leave us alone.
"We told him we wanted to stand up and tell the truth, that he'd been sexually abused all his life and that's why he killed himself."
Mandy says the garda told them not to testify because it would harm Niamh's case. "I was naive and suffering from Martin dying, so I listened to him," she said. "Now I know I was perfectly entitled to say it."
She says her father lied to the court about the suicide, blaming it on alcohol and drugs.
"I really wanted to stand up and say, hold on, you raped my brother all his life and that's why he's dead."
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DALKEY CASE DAD RECEIVES THREATS
Sunday Independent, July 10th 2005 by Nicola Tallant
THE father at the centre of the so-called 'Dalkey baby' case has complained to police that he has received death threats.
The man accused of systematically abusing his children and making his daughter pregnant aged just 11 says he is being harassed since the claims were made public.
He has contacted officers in Dun Laoghaire and told them that he has received anonymous phone calls to his home in Sallynoggin warning that he and his wife will be burned out of their council house unless they leave the area.
Officers are investigating his claims and say the man, who is in his late 70s, is terrified by the threats.
"In 1995 when we first started investigating this case one member of the family committed suicide at the house and the parents then looked for relocation.
"They were moved from Dalkey to Sallynoggin and up until recent weeks nobody there appeared to know anything about them. But now that this has all come up they say they are being harassed,"a source said.
It has also emerged that Gardai will not be asking for an exhumation order for the body of the 1973 child 'Niamh' (the name she has chosen to call herself) claims was killed by her mother.
The body is buried with 26 other infants and scientists have said it would be impossible to identify the remains.
A conference on the case is due to be held this week in the wake of further claims by Niamh that she was prostituted in her teens at the house once her father had lost interest in her. Officers who have been investigating her case for 10 years say the first they heard of these claims was in the media.
An inquest is due to reopen on the baby's death this coming September.
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WOMAN TO BE ASKED FOR STATEMENT ON GARDA ABUSE CLAIM AS SEARCH ENDS
by Cormac O'Keefe, Irish Examiner, 8 July 2005
GARDAI are to seek a statement from the woman at the centre of a garden dig for a dead baby boy on new allegations that a garda sexually abused her.
Senior officers yesterday morning ended a search for a baby at a house in south Dublin after they had found no signs of human remains.
A woman, calling herself Niamh, had told garda she gave birth to a child in 1976, when she was 15, and the stillborn baby was buried in the back garden of her childhood home in Dalkey. The woman originally made these claims to gardai in 1995, several months after she had told them that a murdered baby found in Dun Laoghaire in April 1973 was hers.
Niamh said she was just 11 when she gave birth to this child and her mother stabbed the baby to death and dumped the body in a lane in Dun Laoghaire.
Prior to this, in 1994, Niamh told gardai she had been sexually abused by her father and a brother. She later told gardai about the pregnancies, which she said were the result of sexual abuse. Garda sources have said the information from Niamh, a result of regression therapy, has been sketchy.
Garda investigations in 1994 and 1995 resulted in a number of files being sent to the Director of Public Prosecutions. The DPP ruled against prosecution on the grounds of lack of independent evidence and the passage of time.
The woman's parents have denied any involvement in murder or sexual abuse.
A brother of Niamh committed suicide in the mid 1990s and the body of another brother, who disappeared in 2002, was found earlier this year. Another family member committed suicide in recent months. In a note, she also said she was sexually abused.
In recent days, allegations emerged in the media, attributed to Niamh, claiming a Garda had been brought to the family home in the 1970s and that he abused her.
Garda sources yesterday said Niamh was saying things now that she never said before. A Garda said they would be talking to her in depth and getting a formal statement.
Garda sources believe while Niamh has had an horrific childhood, she might not be a credible witness as her recollections would be strongly contested in court.
Garda could ask people suspected of abusing Niamh to be interviewed voluntarily, but are unlikely to have sufficient new evidence to arrest them.
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TOP GARDA 'RENTED HOUSE OF HORROR GIRL FOR SEX'
Force Rocked by Claim that Top Detective paid Cash to Abuse Little Girl
- Evening Herald, 4 July 2005 by Cormac Looney
A top Garda detective was today implicated in the Dalkey House of Horrors scandal.
In an explosive revelation, the alleged victim known as Niamh today said she was sexually abused by the senior Garda. The disclosure is sure to throw the force into further crisis, given the senior position that the officer held in the force. The former detective is alleged to have paid to have sex with Niamh and was, she claimed friendly with her parents.
This shocking revelation is bound to put pressure on Garda Commissioner Noel Conroy to investigate the force's role in probing Niamh's claim. The gardai will also have to enquire into whether any member of the force hindered the investigation. "Niamh" now fears that the disappearance of half the original file into her daughter's murder, along with tissue and blood samples, is linked to the garda's abuse of her. She described how - following the horrific abuse she suffered at home at the hands of her father and others - she was later prostituted by her grandmother.
A man she names as a well known detective - now retired - called to her grandmother's house on a regular basis between 1974 and 1975 and paid "a pound or two" to have sex with her, Niamh has claimed. She was just 14 at the time of this rape, which took place on a regular basis near her family home in Dalkey, she says. And the stillborn baby boy whose remains garda are today seeking in the back garden of a Dalkey council house could be the offspring of the abuse from the Garda, Niamh fears. The child was born in 1975. During this period she was also abused by another garda who did not have sex with her. The first garda also had sex with her teenage sister for money, Niamh has claimed.
Gardai investigating the case are now facing the nightmare scenario that a former fellow officer may be behind much of the abuse under investigation.
Niamh believes that the investigation into the murder of her first child, the remains of which were found with stab wounds in a Dalkey alleyway in 1973 may have been hindered. She is now claiming that - in the light of the subsequent abuse - there may have been interference in the investigation into the death of baby Noleen.
The garda investigation into the child's death appears relatively routine, and did not result in any charges. Officers made enquiries in the neighbourhood, although no records were taken of any interview that may or may not have been held with her parents. It has also emerged that Niamh was not medically examined at the time of the alleged abuse.
She claims that a garda told her that half of the original file into the murder of her daughter 'disappeared' and that no blood or tissue samples were kept. She has never received an explanation as to why this is the case, she said.
The latest claims of garda abuse follow revelations that members of the force based in Dublin were drinking pals of Niamh's parents. Cops regularly drank with her father and mother and continued to do so until her father's arrest in 1995, it has been claimed.
Niamh says that she remembers little about the 1976 birth of her stillborn son, other than the fact that the remains were crudely buried in the back garden.
As the excavation in Dalkey stretches to eight days, Gardai have yet to uncover any remains.
COMMENT: The Gardai now seem to be facing the same kind of allegations that have been directed against religious i.e.relating to child abuse, child killings and cover-ups.
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