A HUSHED Seanad was yesterday reminded of the Kilkenny incest case, which resulted in the death of a young woman. Highlighting the need to learn from past experiences, Dr Mary Henry (Ind) said physical and sexual abuse took place within families.
The Kilkenny case, brought before the House with all its gory details, had had a predecessor from the 1960s, she said. It had been reported in the press at the time. A girl was sexually abused by her fathers and at the age of 14 she had had a child who was sent for adoption by the young woman's mother, who claimed that she had been involved with some man.
The girl then began to get very resistant to her father's advances, which usually took place on a Sunday morning and were well known by the smother of the family and the three adult siblings. On one Sunday morning the teenager had refused to go out to the byre where her father usually abused her.
"The father demanded that she go out. She appeared to have been sent out by the rest of the family and she was murdered. That case was "reported in the papers 30 years before what we are talking about now. There is no point in saying that we did not know these things were going on because we knew perfectly well and did nothing about it," added Dr Henry.