Michael KellyMr Adams should learn a lesson from the Catholic Church about danger of protecting the institution
It hasn't been a good week for Gerry Adams. Mr Adams and his former colleagues in the IRA stand accused of covering up sexual abuse. It's not the first time Mr Adams has been criticised on this pressing issue given the fact that he has admitted he was aware that his brother was abusing his daughter and Gerry Adams refused to tell the civil authorities about the crime.
Mr Adams' party colleagues have strongly backed him and refused to criticise his role on the cover-up of abuse. It's in stark contrast to the attitude they took to Cardinal Sean Brady when he stood accused of failing victims of abuse. At the time, Sinn Féin's Martin McGuinness called on the cardinal to quit. Mr McGuinness has refused to apply the same rigour to Mr Adams, further adding to speculation about a widespread cover-up of sexual abuse by high-ranking members of Sinn Féin and the IRA. Let's be clear: lest I be accused of 'whataboutery', any role Sinn Féin played in covering up abuse does not excuse or minimise Church failings, but it does expose a staggering level of hypocrisy and double standard.
Under pressure, Gerry Adams now admits that his IRA comrades "failed" victims of sexual abuse by not dealing with their allegations properly.
He admitted that IRA members were “singularly ill-equipped” to deal with such matters. It begs the obvious question: why on earth did Sinn Féin and the IRA take it upon themselves to try to 'handle' and 'manage' allegation of sexual abuse? Mr Adams argues that the IRA effectively acted as a police force within the nationalist community because many people distrusted the notorious Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC). It's absolutely true that the RUC was hated by large sections of the community. But, in an act of stunning revisionism, Mr Adams fails to point out in his apologia that Catholics were murdered by the IRA for co-operation with the RUC. It was the IRA who murdered civilians who assisted the RUC.
The controversy around Mr Adams and Sinn Fein failings to deal appropriately with abuse has surfaced again after Maíria Cahill alleged that the republican movement held a "kangaroo court" to deal with her allegations of sexual abuse by an IRA member.
Mr Adams insists that the role of the IRA in failing to act appropriately to deal with abuse reflects "an attitude within Ireland which did not then understand or know as we now do, how deeply embedded abuse is in our society". Bishops and other Catholic Church leaders have been ridiculed for making similar statements. Is Mr Adams claiming that he and Sinn Féin are on a 'learning curve' about sexual abuse? If he is, it's hardly credible: Ms Cahill's allegations refer to 1997, not the 1950s.
Sinn Fein's Mary Lou McDonald has been particularly vocal on the issue of abuse mishandling in the Archdiocese of Dublin. At the time of the appalling revelations of abuse in the 2009 Murphy Report Mrs McDonald surely spoke for many when she insisted that anyone "found to be complicit in the cover up of child abuse must be arrested and made to face the full rigours of the law".
Fast forward to 2014 and Mrs McDonald is a little bit more backward about coming forward.
While acknowledging that she is aware of the policy of setting up kangaroo courts to interrogate people who made allegations of abuse against members of the IRA and Sinn Fein, Mrs McDonald denies that this extra-judicial approach and refusal to tell the civil authorities amounts to a cover-up.
Maíria Cahill has shown great courage in speaking of her horrific experience at the hands of her abuser and the Republicans who sought to cover it up. She claims there are more such victims, hopefully they will come forward, if not to the media, to the civil authorities and share their experiences.
Sinn Féin should also come clean: Mr Adams and his colleagues should learn the lessons from the Catholic Church where clerics who felt they were protecting the institution actually brought it to its knees. There can be no "ifs" or "buts" when it comes to child protection.
