This week is sandwiched between two weekends celebrating women in many guises – International Women’s Day and Mother’s Day – and our airwaves and newspapers are full of people praising inspiring women. The political, social and cultural achievements of an array of well-known women are saluted, their names honoured.
But many of the women to whom we owe a great debt are anonymous. Often they secured vital changes at great personal cost. In a week when thoughts turn to women who inspire us, I am thinking of the lonely alphabet of women and girls who have made their way through the courts to protect their rights and the rights of others. Their names will never be publicly known, the changes they have secured unattributed.
Of the frightened 14-year-old, known only as X, who became pregnant and suicidal after being raped, and who was prohibited from leaving the country by a High Court injunction. The landmark 1992 Supreme Court ruling in her case established that a woman or girl had a right to an abortion under the Constitution if there was a real and substantial risk to her life from suicide.
Of C, a woman who held Ireland to account before the European Court of Human Rights for the failings in the system for establishing whether or not she was entitled to a lawful abortion. She had undergone chemotherapy for a rare form of cancer for years and was warned that a foetus could be harmed during her treatment, and when she became unexpectedly pregnant could not get the answers or certainty she needed.
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Of my clients from Northern Ireland, a mother and daughter known as A and B. When A became pregnant at the age of 15, in very distressing circumstances, she was unable to access an abortion in Northern Ireland. At the time abortion was effectively illegal in almost all circumstances, even where the pregnancy resulted from sexual crime or in cases of fatal foetal abnormality. A and B struggled to raise the money to travel to England for the procedure, and this meant a delay – and a more physically invasive and traumatic process for A. For seven years, A and B battled through the UK courts until they eventually succeeded before the European Court of Human Rights. Their case was a critical part of the law being changed, with abortion being decriminalised in Northern Ireland in October 2019 and a new legal framework put in place in 2020. Yet no one knows who they are, what they went through or the landmark legal change they secured.
I have spent much of this week working for a brave, inspiring English woman whose name will never be publicly known. Anonymised for her own safety and known by the cipher MZ, she – supported by her two children – is currently battling the UK government before the European Court of Human Rights for the right to remove parental responsibility from her abusive ex-husband, the father of her children. He was abusive in every way – physically, emotionally, psychologically and sexually – and he poses a very grave risk to MZ’s life. For years she and her children tried to escape him, but he would always track them down: stalking them, putting signs up on their road, sending threatening “gifts” and messages. Whenever they moved, he would locate their new home, break in, and move things around to intimidate MZ. It was exhausting, traumatic, terrifying.
The police advised MZ that the only way to escape him would be to join the UK Protected Persons Service, move to an undisclosed location and assume new identities. And so they uprooted their entire lives and now live with new names in an unfamiliar place. MZ and her children want to break the legal link with him completely, but they are automatically barred from applying to the English courts to have his parental responsibility removed simply because, at the time the children were born, the couple were married. Under English law, she could take this step if they had been unmarried parents – but because they were married, his link to the family is permanent and irrevocable, regardless of how extreme the circumstances are.
MZ’s case is being urgently considered in Strasbourg alongside an anonymous Northern Irish case, also involving an abusive man. He was convicted of the rape and indecent assault of his stepdaughters and there are allegations that he abused his biological children. One of his teenage children, known as SV, is seeking the right to apply to have his father’s parental responsibility removed. However, in Northern Ireland, as in England, the law prevents this: SV is permanently barred from applying to sever the tie with his abusive father.
MZ and SV are challenging what they say is a discriminatory distinction between how parental responsibility can be stripped from an abusive father if the parents were unmarried at the time of the child’s birth, but not if they were married. Their case could also be significant for Ireland, as Irish law draws a similar distinction. Across 46 Council of Europe member states, only two countries do so: the United Kingdom and Ireland. And even within the United Kingdom, Scotland does not draw such a line – MZ and SV could have made their applications to the Scottish courts, but not in England and Wales, or Northern Ireland.
Here in Ireland, change is under way. The proposed Valerie’s Law – named after the horrific 2019 murder of Valerie French by her husband – would allow for the removal of child guardianship rights from parents convicted of the manslaughter or murder of the other parent. Valerie’s Law is (in my view, rightly) supported by the Government. But even Valerie’s Law would not cover a situation like MZ’s – where the other parent has attempted to kill her, but has not succeeded. Or SV’s – where his father has been convicted of sexual abuse, rather than murder or manslaughter. The outcome of MZ and SV’s case may yet shape Irish law on these issues.
X, C, A, B, MZ. Brave women who have faced horrendous situations, used the law to fight for their rights and to secure changes to the law to protect others. This week, we must remember the unknown, unnamed women who have endured long, difficult legal battles which have shaped this island and changed it for the better. And we must support those unknown, unnamed women who continue to fight for justice, accountability and change.
Caoilfhionn Gallagher KC is a human rights lawyer
