Rough Beast by Máiría Cahill: angry, traumatised, no-nonsense view of IRA’s inside workings

Many lines in Rough Beast: My Story and the Reality of Sinn Féin jump off the page but one in particular sums up Máiría Cahill’s remarkable and shocking story. She writes that in her struggle to have her sexual abuse claims acknowledged that she was “on a hamster wheel being spun by the IRA”.

Cahill was 16 when she was sexually abused by a senior Belfast IRA man. It changed her life and she was later subjected to rounds of interrogations by senior IRA figures in safe houses. Her memoir details how she was treated by Sinn Féin and how she feels badly let down by Northern Ireland’s legal system. It also chronicles her transition from a republican activist to a member of the Seanad, local councillor and journalist and commentator.

This is a harrowing story of pain, anger and trauma.

Cahill writes with clarity and describes events and conversations in a direct, no-nonsense way. She has much to say and her book runs to a lengthy 447 pages and is divided into two parts.

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[ Máiría Cahill says politics trumped morals in her case ]

The first section deals with her early life in west Belfast, surrounded by the politics of republicanism. Her great-uncle Joe Cahill was one of the founders of the Provisional IRA and even though she hates the description she would later be viewed by the media as “republican royalty”.

She chronicles how as a teenager she began working for a radio station alongside leading republicans and then worked for Sinn Féin. Gerry Adams was a family friend and she lists meetings and encounters with senior figures in the party and the IRA. Cahill reveals that she was invited to join the IRA on four separate occasions but each time she said no. She was also asked to move guns around Belfast but declined.

Cahill reveals that she was invited to join the IRA on four separate occasions but each time she said no. She was also asked to move guns around Belfast but declined

Everything changed when she was sexually abused. She confided in a series of individuals she trusted but her account was continually challenged and on one unbelievable occasion she was brought face to face with her attacker, who verbally abused her.

The first section of her memoir is the most powerful part of the book, and here Cahill, who has a writer’s eye for detail, sets out her story clearly. We get an inside view into the workings of the IRA and Sinn Féin. We hear of encounters and meetings that leave Cahill angry, frustrated and often feeling alone. The toll is not just mental.

She writes of how the abuse changed her physically and explains how she lost weight, cut herself and overdosed on pills. It is a catalogue of pain and the suffering did not end there. Cahill was vilified on social media, branded a liar and even had her name daubed on the walls of west Belfast.

The second half of this narrative starts after she finally decided to report the abuse to the PSNI. Cahill had hoped that would lead to a prosecution but in 2014 the case collapsed and she felt “badly let down by the legal system”.

Later, an investigation by the police ombudsman concluded that she had been failed by the police as a victim of serious crime. Cahill details those failings and also chronicles her very public battle with Sinn Féin.

Cahill recalls personally challenging Mary Lou McDonald that there had been a ‘cover-up’ and writes how she found the Sinn Féin politician’s position ‘cowardly and woeful’

In part two of this book she reports how both Gerry Adams and Mary Lou McDonald apologised but she writes that she found such responses inadequate. She recalls personally challenging Mary Lou McDonald that there had been a “cover-up” and writes how she found the Sinn Féin politician’s position “cowardly and woeful”.

This is a chilling story that encompasses Cahill’s political and personal journey. She explains how she left Sinn Féin in 2001 and joined a much smaller group, the Republican Network for Unity (RNU) but later resigned. She states that she was consistently “opposed to illegal armed actions”.

In her final chapter she also turns her attention to the wider question of the legacy of the Troubles. She mentions the trauma and hurt cased by loyalist paramilitaries and the British state and she has stinging criticism of Sinn Féin.

Of her former comrades, she declares, “They are unwilling, or incapable, of providing comfort to the victims of republican violence, and vicious in their response to anyone from their own community who challenges them”.

Máiría Cahill is one of those challengers and her story contains some very uncomfortable truths.

Stephen Walker reported for BBC Northern Ireland from 1991 until 2023. His biography of John Hume: The Persuader, is published by Gill Books on October 12th