IRELAND'S SHAME

IT was the case that shocked the nation but almost four decades on the Kerry Babies tragedy threatens to open a window into Ireland’s dark misogynistic past.

- PAT FLANAGAN

The finding of a five-day-old boy on a lonely beach in April 1984 would set in train a chain of events that would bring shame on the State and the Garda.

It would also see a totally innocent woman accused of murdering her own child and lead to a tribunal that is now recognised as a witch hunt.

When a postmortem revealed that the infant was stabbed 28 times an investigation began which would lead to 25-year-old Joanne Hayes being wrongly accused of murdering the child who would be known as “Baby John”.

Justice Minister Simon Harris yesterday described the Kerry Babies case as “a defining moment in social history” as it exposed the hypocrisy and misogyny which was prevalent in Ireland at the time.

Mr Harris said it was “despicable and unacceptable” the way Joanne Hayes and her family were treated.

But in the Ireland of 1984 apparatus of the State not only tried to pin a murder on an innocent woman it also tried to destroy her and blacken her name to prevent the truth emerging about the botched Garda investigation.

To this day the term Kerry Babies has become synonymous with injustice and the State’s barely-concealed contempt for women, especially for those who give birth outside marriage.

CONSERVATIVE

The trial of Joanne Hayes took place in a deeply conservative Ireland just a year after the bitterly divisive Abortion Referendum and well over a decade before divorce was legalised.

This was an Ireland where the Catholic Church still exerted great power and contraception was only available with a doctor’s prescription. If the Church had its way it would not have been accessible at all.