Our horror is growing daily at allegations emerging after the decision to reopen an inquest into the death of a Dalkey baby 32 years ago. But where was our horror in the 1970s, asks Kathy Sheridan
Most of the local authority houses around the dig site are owned privately now, and many residents of the old Dalkey neighbourhood where "Niamh" grew up have moved on. But among those remaining, the few prepared to speak are quite clear on two things: they never noticed anything particularly odd; and something should have been done.
"My brother's kids played with them and the most you'd say is that they were a bit neglected looking," says a woman. "Nobody saw anything much wrong there."
"I knew them all," says another. "The kids were the nicest you could meet. The parents - well, I won't say any more. Don't ask me why but I could never bear to look at him [ Niamh's father]. And she [ the mother] only seemed to come out at night."
"No one knew a thing until the girl herself came out 10 years ago," says another. "Did we not notice she was pregnant at 11? Ah, she was more 12-13. People get mixed up about these things. No, no, I've said enough now."
"Everyone knew they were an, eh, unconventional family," says a man carefully. "Then again, you have to remember, this was the 1970s. Everyone turned a blind eye in those days. But I think the nuns have a lot to answer for . . ."
The nuns, the doctor(s), the gardaí, the health board . . . and ordinary people who saw but chose to look away.
Down the town, a shopkeeper relatively new to the area is mystified: "I'd say it's very, very strange that no one noticed and that nothing was done."
Despite the tendency in those remarks to consign Niamh's story to a distant, other Ireland, the story of Niamh is by no means over. Thirty-two years after the finding by two 11-year-old boys of her newborn baby girl - a tiny body carrying 14 stab wounds and stuffed in a bag in a Dún Laoghaire laneway - the horror has continued to mount, not only for Niamh, but for her siblings.
Since the mid-1990s, when after years of therapy, counselling and finally hypnosis - organised by the Eastern Health Board and conducted by a senior clinical psychologist at Baggot Street hospital in July 1995 - she began to piece together the horrific events of her childhood, Niamh's quest for justice for her dead children has been relentless.
Her recollections included rampant sexual abuse by several family members; the birth of a baby girl to her when she was 11, whom she alleged was stabbed to death with a knitting needle before her eyes; the birth of a stillborn boy three years later (for which, she claimed, she received ante-natal care from a GP and a hospital) and crucially, his alleged burial in the family's back garden, which is now the object of a painstaking, fingertip Garda search. The current owners of the house are not connected with the case and have moved out while the dig is being conducted.
AFTER 32 YEARS of struggle and suffering and a 10-year crusade for justice, those minuscule remains, if they exist, may well be Niamh's last stand, the only evidential link between her and the perpetrators of her suffering.
Niamh felt badly let down by the 1973 Garda investigation, according to Uinsionn MacDubhghaill - one of the 11-year-olds who discovered the murdered baby's body, and who would later become the Irish Times journalist who would write extensively about the case. She believed it had been carried out in a slipshod fashion, that vital pieces of forensic evidence went missing and were never recovered - a factor which is understood to be significant in the DPP's decision not to prosecute the case in 1995. No blood samples were taken from the murdered baby, and the body was then buried in a communal infants' plot in Glasnevin, which effectively ruled out any possibility of exhumation.
When Niamh's story was brought to the public a week before Christmas 1995 in a powerful full-page series of articles by MacDubhghaill, it failed to electrify the nation. Perhaps it was too close to Christmas, perhaps the nation was punch drunk with horror stories, by then routinely erupting from the nuclear families of Ireland.
It told of a small house with two upstairs rooms and one large room downstairs, home to a mother and father, four brothers, four sisters, and a sister's daughter. The catalogue of alleged abuse ranged from the buggery of Niamh as a seven-year-old by her father, to being raped and abused by two brothers, to effectively being pimped to a male visitor who arrived with beer, cigarettes and money.
Niamh claimed that she had witnessed the sexual abuse of other family members, including a brother, whom she once saw "gagged and moaning" in a bed close to where she slept. She also made reference to another birth in that house, a child allegedly born to another sister, with the suggestion that it had been flushed down the toilet.
The only politician to react was solicitor and TD, Alan Shatter, who wrote to the then minister for justice, Nora Owen, pointing out that Niamh's allegations were supported by two of her sisters, and there were therefore witnesses available to corroborate her allegations, as well as recent developments in the use of DNA fingerprinting.
Shatter took particular exception to one of the DPP's reasons for not proceeding - "the considerable length of time that had elapsed". If a similar approach had been taken by the English prosecution authorities to the recent horrific Rosemary West case, he wrote, a number of the murder charges prosecuted in that case would never have been initiated.
"It is an obvious fact," replied the minister, in what Shatter describes as "standard, civil servant, Department of Justice" language, "that in some cases the passage of time will mean that vital evidence has been destroyed, witnesses are not available or witnesses may be unreliable due to failures in memory etc".
Meanwhile, according to one source, a serious attempt to bring a private prosecution against named individuals came up against expert legal opinion that once it got through the District Court, any such prosecution would require the DPP's consent, which he was hardly likely to give.
This was borne out in another case in 1999, when three women who had been abused tried to take a similar route but found that the DPP withheld consent.
Shatter now describes as "incomprehensible" the failure to carry out a dig in the garden in 1995. "They should have done more. The dig is just going through the motions of filling in a blank that should have been filled a long time ago. They should be re-travelling the whole route of that investigation." He suggests that attempts should be made to exhume the Dún Laoghaire baby.
The Garda claimed this week that the expert advice in 1995 was that it would be futile to dig the back garden, but that in 2002, they were told that such a search might be worthwhile. There is no explanation for the fact that the search began only this week. Yesterday, a Garda spokeswoman said that no one was available for interview on this or any other point.
BUT A NUMBER of events have coincided in recent months which may have triggered renewed Garda activity.
At a special Mass for family and friends near her old home a few months ago, Niamh spoke publicly from the altar about three of her siblings, who have died in tragic circumstances in the past 17 years, two brothers and a sister, whom she described as victims of child sexual abuse.
One brother killed himself in the family home in 1995. Later that year, another sister (who alleged that she herself was abused when she was only eight years old) told The Irish Times that shortly before his suicide, her brother had told her that he was raped by an older brother and abused by his father. He was terrified that his "hard man" image in the area would be dented if it came out that he had been sexually abused at home.
The remains of a man found beside a railway line last February are believed to be those of a second brother - a "deeply troubled man", according to a source - who had gone missing 30 months before.
Later that same month, a sister was found dead in her flat, leaving behind a 32-page letter, containing detailed allegations of sexual abuse as a child.
In the meantime, the Dublin County Coroner, Dr Kieran Geraghty, announced his intention to reopen the adjourned 1973 inquest into the death of the baby girl found murdered in Dún Laoghaire 32 years ago.
"New information" came to his attention which he discussed with the Garda and other parties. He sent formal notification to the Garda on June 10th of his intention to reopen the inquest. That is now due to resume on September 7th.
This week, the man and woman at the centre of this case denied all knowledge of their daughter's allegations and on a couple of occasions the father denied knowing his own daughter.
In 1995, when she entered a room in a garda station to confront him for the first time, her father's reaction was: "What's that?"
"That's your daughter," said a garda.
"I don't f--king know her," he replied.
This week, when contacted about the allegations by The Irish Times, he remarked: "I'm reading it in the papers today, sure it's a great story for you people. But it's only her story, whoever she is."
In a TV3 interview, the mother said that her daughter had directed false accusations about abuse and infanticide against her and her husband. "She knew that I knitted, I knitted baby coats . . . and that's why she said that . . . She should not have been allowed to put a tombstone on that grave [ in Glasnevin] because it has not been proved that that baby is hers."
Later, when asked what she made of Niamh's allegations, she replied: "I don't know what to make of it because I know that I had 10 children for him [ her husband] and I thought I had enough for him . . . I want to tell Niamh that I'm leaving her up to God and to her granny in heaven that's looking down on her and her brothers and to tell them, to beg them, to forgive her, but I don't think they ever will."
It is believed that the social services remain closely involved with the extended family.