DALKEY BABIES: ALLEGATIONS AGAINST GARDAI

From my reading of newspaper reports, it seems that Gardai are being accused

(1) of mishandling their investigation into the deaths of these children assuming there was more than one)
(2) of being involved in the sexual abuse of Cynthia Owen.

It also seems to me that these allegations against Gardai only commenced AFTER they failed (in July 2005) to find any evidence of a baby's body having been buried in the garden at Dalkey.

Is that a fair reading of the situation?

Rory Connor
16 February 2007

(1) House of Horror: We Have Received Death Threats
Sunday Mirror, 10 July 2005 by Deirdre O'Donovan, Caroline Jago
THE dad at the centre of the home dubbed Dalkey's House of Horror will sue his daughter "Niamh" over the allegations of abuse made against him.

And the pensioner has demanded police protection after he and his elderly wife were warned they would be burned out of their Dublin home if they didn't get out themselves.

Speaking exclusively to the Irish Sunday Mirror, the man revealed how he has instructed a legal team to take proceedings after 12 years of what he claims was a living hell.

Speaking from his Sallynoggin home, he said: "I'm dealing with a solicitor and a barrister at the moment.

"This one thing has been going on for the last 12 years.

"What can we do? We've been suffering for the past 12 years.
"It's something we have to do."

And he revealed the family is living in fear of their lives after a string of death threats against him and his wife which have been passed onto gardai.

This week detectives called off a search of the former family home in Dalkey, South Dublin.

Investigators spent two weeks searching for the remains of a baby boy allegedly borne by "Niamh" as a result of sex abuse.

But the man said he knew gardai would not find anything in the garden of his former home.

He said: "Of course I'm not surprised the gardai found nothing. Do you think I was expecting something to be found?

"We knew there was nothing there."

And he is demanding police protection because of death threats he claims he has received.

The 75-year-old man, whose daughter "Niamh" - not her real name - claims he subjected her to sexual abuse as a child, says he has been warned that unless he moves out of his Sallynoggin home, he will be burned out.

He said: "We have received threats.
"But I don't know if we're going to be driven from our home.
"That's up to our neighbours."

And last night a Garda spokesman confirmed they had been asked to act as a result of threats received by the elderly couple.

He said: "In 1995 when we first started investigating this case one member of the family committed suicide at the house and the parents then looked for relocation to another area.

"They were moved from Dalkeyto Sallynoggin and up until recent weeks nobody there appears to know anything about them.

"But now that this has all come up they say they are being harassed.
"We have received an official complaint about death threats being issued to them.

"They have been told they are going to be burned out of the house if they don't leave."

[FURTHER CLAIMS BY "NIAMH" INCLUDE GARDAI]
A case conference is due to be held this week in the wake of further claims by "Niamh" that she was prostituted for drink and cigarettes in her teens at the house once her father had lost interest in her.

Officers who have been investigating her case for 10 years say they have no statements from the woman about these claims and the first they heard of them were when the Irish Sunday Mirror revealed them exclusively last week.

A senior source says that "Niamh" has never mentioned these allegations since the investigation first began in 1995.

He said: "We have literally hundreds of pages of statements from her taken over a number of years but she has never before mentioned that anyone outside the family was involved in this abuse.

"But to date we are not investigating any claims regarding a Garda officer or others.

"We will be meeting this week to discuss this and other things that have arisen in recent weeks."

Gardai have sent five files on the case to the Director of Prosecutions since "Niamh" first claimed that she was the mother of a baby girl found stabbed to death and dumped in a laneway in Dun Laoghaire in 1973, later named Noeleen.

Each time they have been told that no prosecutions will be brought but they say they have pursued the case regardless.

An inquest is due to re-open on the little girl's death in September, but it is being held at the request of "Niamh".

Officers say she wants to get into the witness box and officially get her story on public record.

And she hopes other members of her family will be called to give evidence.
A senior source added: "Obviously she is very upset that no court case has been held regarding her claims.

"We too are upset that no court case has been held regarding her claims. But what can we do?

"The DPP is an unquestionable authority and if we don't get permission from him we cannot pursue any matter.

"I don't know any other case in the history of the Garda when officers sent one file on five separate occasions.

"In an inquest at least she can get into the witness box and tell her story and get it onto the public record."

It has also emerged that gardai will not seek to exhume little Noeleen's body.

"Niamh" claims her mother stabbed the newborn baby to death with a darning needle after she gave birth to the tot when she as just 11- years-old. But her mother has denied the allegation.

The body is buried with 26 other infants and top forensic scientists have told investigators that it would be impossible to identify the remains.

(2) A horrifying past that society seems unable to confront
CYNTHIA OWEN: Her story is part of a nightmare of Ireland's social past

HEADSTONE: Cynthia says that baby Noleen is her murdered daughter

Sunday Independent, 11 June 2006

CYNTHIA Owen's lone quest for justice for the awful crimes of abuse she says were inflicted on her behind closed curtains in the tiny terrace house in Dalkey received another setback last week.

The narrow hope that the Minister for Justice might order the excavation of the communal grave for foundlings and stillborn children at Glasnevin Cemetery was one of the few things that Cynthia Owen had clung to in the hope of proving the horrors that she claims were visited on her childhood and on her siblings Michael and Theresa.

Since she walked into Dun Laoghaire Garda Station 11 years ago and said the unidentified, murdered baby found in a bin bag in one of the town's alleyways in 1973 was her daughter, she has sought to have her case proved, justice done and her voice heard.

Up until the reopening of the inquest by Dun Laoghaire coroner, Dr Kieran Geraghty, last year Cynthia endured years of frustration in the face of what seemed like official nervousness and inertia in response to the horrors that were inflicted on her, Theresa and Michael.

Her story is part of a nightmare of Ireland's social past that present-day official Ireland does not seem prepared to openly confront.

Within 24 hours of the coroner's request, and before she was officially informed, newspapers were quoting "sources" saying that it was likely the request would be refused. Though it was a likely outcome, it was a cold way of fobbing her off.

In his own statement on Friday, Minister McDowell was at pains to emphasise that he did not wish to minimise the tragedy but he could not stand over such a major exhumation project in a grave where the remains of at least 18 other infants were buried. It nothing else, maybe, the coroner's request might make hospitals aware of the need not to bury infants in communal graves in future.

Cynthia has repeatedly questioned why foundlings and stillborn children in Ireland are buried in such a way in communal graves. The revelations in recent years that stillborn babies were dissected might go some way to explain why these type of burials took place.

Cynthia accepted that re-opening the communal grave would cause distress to other parents - "the last thing I want to do" and said she would not seek a judicial review of the Minister's decision - a legal option open to her.

Instead, she noted the Minister's reference to "the tragedy of this baby's death" and said: "As is shown on her death certificate, Noleen died from stab wounds; she was murdered. If the Garda authorities had investigated the matter properly in 1973 and, for example, carried out blood tests, we would not be going through this now. Likewise, the cemetery in Glasnevin should have buried the baby in a separate plot, in the knowledge that further enquiries would be likely due to the 40 stab wounds. Instead, she was buried in a communal grave, which has now led to the Minister turning down the request of the coroner.

"There are much wider issues connected with all of this and a successful exhumation would have hugely assisted.

"I am now calling on the Minister to set out in what way he will assist me in obtaining answers to the many questions I and my legal team have been raising for quite some time. Ultimately, I am a woman and a mother, still grieving over the death of two of my children since the Seventies. Additionally, I have also lost three of my siblings in very difficult circumstances."

[GARDA WITNESSES to DEATH OF BABY?]
In the case of the child she says is her daughter, she wants to know what happened to the evidence in what was evidently a murder case; why no blood group or tissue samples were kept; what happened to the bag and sanitary towels alongside the dead baby; what happened to the missing records of the first inquest; why the bag in which the body was found wasn't checked for fingerprints; why there was no report of how, she says, two gardai stopped her and her mother on the night they carried the body of the baby from Dalkey into Dun Laoghaire; why gardai failed to carry out an adequate investigation.

[NUNS KNEW ABOUT PREGNANCY?]
Cynthia says that at least one of the nuns at her national school knew she was pregnant and sent her home.

Cynthia believes that the case was frustrated from the outset because no one wanted to confront what she claims was going on in the Murphy household. Peter Murphy, her father, was a well known "character" in the area, and he and his wife Josie continue to deny any wrongdoing took place. Older Murphy siblings also deny Cynthia and the younger family's version of events.

[GARDA FATHERED SECOND CHILD?]
The next act in the quest for truth and justice in this case is the outcome of the Garda re-investigation of Cynthia's statements and, particularly, her claim that she gave birth to a second child which she says was fathered by a member of the Garda and another man who, she said, paid her grandmother small sums of money to be allowed to rape her when she was 13.

The investigation has been going on for over 18 months and it is understood the file is about to go to the Director of Public Prosecutions. Cynthia told detectives that her second child was stillborn and was buried in the back garden of her parents' home in White's Villas behind Dalkey Town Hall. The garden was excavated last year but nothing was found.

Detectives are believed to have questioned the ex-garda named by Cynthia as the man who raped her at her grandmother's house in Dalkey each week. Senior gardai would not confirm yesterday that the man had been questioned.

At the outset of the case, sources insinuated that Cynthia was delusional and may have undergone psychological treatment involving "recovered memory". However, that is not the caseand she did not receive any such treatment.

What's more, her testimony is supported by the highly detailed 37-page suicide note left by her younger sister Theresa who died in February 2005.Theresa, it was learned, was the daughter of Margaret - one of the older Murphy children - though she grew up in infancy believing her mother was her sister. After suffering years of depression, she finally killed herself in identical fashion to her brother, Martin who hanged himself 10 years earlier.

Theresa's letter, which she addressed to Cynthia, detailed horrific abuse suffered by her and her brother Michael at the hands of her father, which he denies. Michael had disappeared in June 2002. He, too, was suffering severely from depression and was drinking two bottles of vodka a day by the time hedisappeared after being last seen in the vicinity of Killiney Dart station.

In February 2005, during reconstruction work at the station, workmen uncovered his remains in undergrowth on the seaward side of the station wall. It was shortly after the discovery of Michael's body that Theresa finally killed herself.

Cynthia's hope, in the absence of any criminal case, is that there will be an inquiry into how what she claims happened to her and her brothers and sisters was allowed to take place without either Garda or social worker intervention.

She is particularly concerned at the conduct of the original Garda investigation. There are discrepancies in the files and evidence was either not collected or lost.

There is a great deal of uncertainty about what will come of Cynthia's quest. Previously the DPP has rejected complaints on at least five occasions citing "the length of time and the difficulty in securing a conviction as a result" and "lack of evidence and any admission of guilt".

No local politician has sought to help Cynthia and only Alan Shatter has spoken out, saying he remains "gravely concerned about the lack of prosecutions in this case". From information published about Cynthia's case he felt convinced there was a prima facie case to be brought alleging murder, assault and sexual abuse.

Jim Cusack

(3) Lawyers seek inquiry into handling of Dalkey babies case

Irish Independent, 26 July 2006

Lawyers for the woman at the centre of the Dalkey babies case are due to meet officials at the Department of Justice today to discuss their concerns at the way the matter is being handled.

Cynthia Owen claims she gave birth to two children in the south Dublin town as a result of sexual abuse more than 30 years ago, when she was at a young age.

She says both infants were murdered.

One of the babies she claims was hers was found in a laneway in Dun Laoighaire in 1973.

She says the other was buried in the garden of her family home in Dalkey, but a dig by Gardai has failed to turn up any remains.

Ms Owen's lawyers say she is dissatisfied with the garda investigation into the deaths and wants an inquiry set up into the way the Gardai have handled the matter.

(4) 'My mother's death robbed me of justice for my baby'

Irish Independent, 8 November 2006 by
Ali Bracken

A WOMAN who believes her mother murdered her new-born infant told yesterday of her torment over the fact that her mum had died peacefully while her baby girl had suffered a "terrible death".

Cynthia Owen claims she was the mother of an infant found stabbed to death 33 years ago. She also alleges that gardai knew about the murder and did nothing.

The inquest into the baby's death 33 years ago was reopened in September 2005 after legal representations were made on behalf of Ms Owen, who came forward 11 years ago saying she was the mother of the baby girl, called Noleen.

Ms Owen has claimed the baby was one of two she gave birth to while still a child after she was sexually abused during the 1970s when she was living in Dalkey in south Dublin.

Ms Owen alleges that her mother stabbed the infant to death with a knitting needle immediately after the birth before dumping its body in a laneway in Dun Laoghaire.

She has claimed that the second infant - a stillborn baby boy - was buried in the back garden of her family home in Dalkey but a garda search a year and a half ago did not uncover any remains.

The inquest was yesterday adjourned at Dublin County Coroner's Court until February 13.

"This is now the fourth time Noleen's inquest has been adjourned and it is simply not good enough because the gardai have had over 33 years to solve this case," Ms Owen said in a statement outside the court.

[GARDA WITNESSES TO DEATH OF BABY?]
"And bearing in mind that on the night my daughter was murdered on April 4, 1973, my mother, who I witnessed murdering my daughter, came into contact with three members of the gardai on two separate occasions within one hour of my daughter being murdered.

"And on both occasions my mother was holding the bag that had Noleen's body in it. That bag was found the next day with Noleen's body less than 24 hours after she had been murdered and yet my mother was never charged with murder and died peacefully only a few weeks ago while my daughter died a terrible death."

She added that she believed that when the inquest was heard in full a verdict of death by unlawful killing would be returned.

"This, in effect, will mean that it took me over 33 long, painful years to prove something that gardai knew within an hour."

Coroner Dr Kieran Geraghty yesterday adjourned the inquest, saying he could not proceed because the garda file in relation to the death had only been furnished to him 11 days earlier and he needed time to study it.

Dr Geraghty said it had not been necessary for the gardai to send the file to the Attorney General and added that the inquest would be heard on February 13 next.