‘Harrowing’ treatment of Joanne Hayes at Kerry babies tribunal condemned

The man who approached me in Dublin’s O’Connell Street on a wet winter evening 30 years ago meant business.

“You and your colleagues in the media are a disgrace,” he said. He asked why there had been so much coverage of the Kerry babies case, arguing that it was morally polluting a Catholic country.

I had taken part with other journalists and Joanne Hayes, the central figure in the case, in an item on RTÉ's Late Late Show, which was then hosted by Gay Byrne.

Byrne’s balance and professionalism were not enough to stop some viewers ringing up to complain.

For some, Hayes and the show’s host were the focus of their anger. “That so-and-so Byrne,” said the man in O’Connell Street as he stormed off in the rain, waving his umbrella.

Ireland was a very different place in 1985, when the 82-day Kerry babies tribunal attracted huge media interest, at home and internationally, and prompted a debate on a number of issues, including the role and status of women in Irish society.

There was no divorce, homosexual acts were illegal and the Catholic Church remained a powerful institution. Des O'Malley was expelled from Fianna Fáil for "conduct unbecoming" because he refused to vote against legislation introduced by the then Fine Gael-Labour government liberalising the sale of contraceptives.

Scandals such as clerical abuse, the ill-treatment of children in orphanages and the exploitation of women in the Magdalene laundries simmered, volcano-like, beneath the surface of Irish society.

The phenomenon of moving statues took off, as huge crowds gathered at grottos in various parts of the country to pray to the Blessed Virgin. Many were convinced that they saw the statues move and that Our Lady was communicating with them.

The mobile phone, internet and social media were still a long way off.

It was against this background that the tribunal, under High Court judge Kevin Lynch, began its hearings in Tralee courthouse in January 1985.

It lasted for 82 days. Joanne Hayes spent 14 hours in the witness box over five days, much of the time weeping.

In the 1980s, Hayes, a single woman in her 20s, worked as a receptionist at the Tralee sports centre and lived with her mother, sister, two brothers and an aunt on the family farm near the north Kerry village of Abbeydorney. She became pregnant for the third time in a relationship with a married man.

Her first pregnancy ended in a miscarriage in June 1982; in August, she became pregnant again and gave birth to a daughter who lived with her and the family. She told the tribunal how the relationship with the man began. “We were always very friendly and I just happened to fall in love with him,” she said.

She said she became aware of her third pregnancy in September 1983, but did not tell him until a Christmas party in a Tralee hotel, when she discovered his wife was also pregnant.

Public concern about her treatment in the witness box intensified when she was cross-examined by barrister Martin Kennedy, who represented Garda superintendents.

‘Superfecundation’ theory

Gardaí had put forward the “superfecundation” theory, that she had been impregnated by the man with whom she was having a relationship and by another man at about the same time, and had given birth to twins with different fathers.

Kennedy remarked to her that “you were not in love and still you allowed intimacy to take place on your first date”.

He suggested she had no intention of “allowing the child to be alive in this world after it left your body”.

“It’s untrue,” she replied.

He challenged her on her Garda statement and her reference to hitting the baby on the head with the bath brush.

“I made it up. I don’t know why. I made it up,” she said.

As he persisted with the “superfecundation” theory, she cried: “There was only one baby . . . there was only one baby.”

Her replies became barely audible, a few muttered words almost drowned by the constant and bitter crying.

She looked helplessly at the judge. “Please sir, can I go? Please sir . . .” He agreed to an adjournment.

She leapt off the stand and ran out of the room, down the corridor to the toilet, where she vomited. A local doctor was called and he gave evidence that she was not well enough to continue with her evidence.

When she returned to the stand later in the day, Kennedy insisted that the man with whom she was having a relationship had never said he would leave his wife for her.

“He did say it,” she replied, in a hushed but defiant voice.

“When did he say it?” he asked.

“He said he would go away with me eventually,” she said.

“What do you mean by eventually?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” she replied. “Maybe never, I suppose.”

Hayes’s neighbours protested outside the tribunal at her treatment. Angry protesters from around the country also gathered in Tralee to give her support. There was booing and jeering.

“We’re the women of Ireland, it’s for freedom we are fighting,” said one woman. Hayes and her sister, Kathleen, were hugged and kissed and handed flowers.

Marguerite Egan, of the Tralee Women’s Group, criticised the line of questioning. “As women, we feel we are all up there on display,” she said.

At a meeting of the Oireachtas Committee on Women’s Affairs, Fianna Fáil TD Mary O’Rourke was among those expressing concern at the tone and tenor of the cross-examination. “In some instances, it is harrowing and quite horrific,” she said.

Hayes has remained living in Abbeydorney, declining requests for interviews since the publication of her book, My Story, and her appearance on The Late Late Show.

As for the man I met in O’Connell Street, he wrote to me some months later apologising for his remarks. He had been talking to his son and daughter, he said, and they had convinced him that media coverage was inevitable and necessary.

He had been in denial about the state of the country, he said.