Jim Wells - the pride of Northern Irish politics | Vital Football

Jim Wells - the pride of Northern Irish politics

Galvin's Shinpads

Vital Football Legend
Another nugget from the DUP. This after Ian Paisley Jr. had declared that homosexuality was "immoral, offensive and obnoxious".
Wells has had to resign the office as Health Minister of Northern Ireland, after he vehemently stated at a public debate, “the facts show that certainly you don’t bring a child up in a homosexual relationship, that a child is far more likely to be abused and neglected”.

How he made it as far as a ministerial position is beyond me. A DUP wipeout at the General Election is long overdue.

You can watch his prehistoric outburst and plenty of other opinionated bile from him, here: [youtube=L4Xn4X1I6cw]
 
I thought he didn't have to do anything, but choose to as his wife was 'fighting for her life?'....

I wouldn't argue with his 'facts' if their is evidence to support it, but if their isn't then he is of course a typical politician., in fact just like Gerry Adams and his despicable cover up of his brothers acts.
 
Spursex - 27/4/2015 13:48

I thought he didn't have to do anything, but choose to as his wife was 'fighting for her life?'....

I wouldn't argue with his 'facts' if their is evidence to support it, but if their isn't then he is of course a typical politician.

Typical that a certain type of politician uses their family as a shield to deflect their misguided and downright irresponsible mouths.
His wife will be his go-to excuse.

It's not the first time he has been quite ridiculous with his gob.
Don't worry, he has no "facts". Unless he took a survey of his own family tree.
Of course, by the sounds of it, they are still living in the trees.
 
Still, his party know all about how to deal with his affiliations...

In two cases of sexual abuse we know that Gerry Adams' behaviour was simply wrong
Martina Devlin Twitter


Published
25/10/2014 | 02:30

Gerry Adams

Sinn Fein seeks to present the Mairia Cahill case as an isolated and misunderstood incident. But one of the dirty little secrets of the Troubles now emerging is the way sex crimes were handled within the IRA - and a pattern is taking shape.


Gerry Adams has now twice shown himself to have questions to answer regarding his dealings with sexual abuse allegations. He has a track record of prioritising the organisation above victims - he did it in the case of his own niece, raped by her father.

The Sinn Fein leader delayed Aine Adams' search for justice because it was in his interests to hush it up. Finally, she went to the police in 2006 because it was clear her uncle was going to do nothing about his paedophile brother. "I realised it was all about PR and protecting his own image," she said.

In backing their president to the hilt, Sinn Fein politicians are exposed if further victims emerge. But they are already undermined: how can they talk about protecting the vulnerable from welfare cuts when the vulnerable weren't protected in sexual violence cases?

Sinn Fein's female representatives are particularly damaged: one after another, they have failed Ms Cahill.

And what of Gerry Adams, from whom they take their lead?

Secrets and procrastination were his approach in Aine Adams' case, and equivocation in Mairia Cahill's. His actions are far from acceptable and his version of events is far from credible.

Let's put it in context. It was in the IRA's interests to shut down victims pointing the finger at anyone in the republican family.

Sex crime allegations were used as leverage by the security forces in the North, with attempts made to turn either the accuser or the sex attacker into an informer. Aine Adams first went to the police in the 1980s, but backed off because they tried to use her to gather intelligence on her uncle. That's partly why the emphasis was on protecting the organisation rather than the victim. But chances were taken with children's safety.

Gerry Adams waited nine years, by his own account, before passing on evidence that his brother had admitted sexual violence against Aine.

He told a Belfast court that his brother confessed the abuse to him in 2000, but didn't go to the police until 2009. Finally, he did so a month before he was due to be interviewed for UTV's 'Insight', in which Aine went public. That was intended to forestall criticism that he had withheld evidence about child sexual abuse.

Last year, Liam Adams was convicted of raping and abusing his daughter over a six-year period, beginning in 1977 when she was only four.

Gerry Adams tried to block reporting of the case by asking Aine to seek a court injunction.

This was presented as shielding her rather than an attempt to block scrutiny of his behaviour. He said he was told Liam had only abused "the once" and did not believe he was a danger. What competence did he have to form such a judgment on his brother's risk of re-offending?

Arguably, he evaded the level of scrutiny his actions deserved because he sheltered behind Aine's natural distress: calling for privacy for the family.

So, are we really to believe that a man who hindered his own niece's search for justice was supportive of Mairia Cahill? He failed his niece, and acted with a similar callousness towards Mairia Cahill. If there are more victims, it will take an exceptionally courageous one to come forward now.

Let's revisit his behaviour in the Aine Adams case. He admits he had no doubt from 2000 onwards that his brother had sexually assaulted her, but saw no conflict between that and Liam working with teenagers in a variety of youth clubs.

Liam Adams worked with children on an estate in Dundalk from at least 1997 to 1998; for the Clonard Youth Project in West Belfast in 1998-2003; he did youth work in Dundalk at Cox's Demesne Community Centre; and worked at Beechmount Community Centre from 2004-2006. Adams had to be aware of his brother's access to teenagers.

However, he did not alert social services to the allegations. He said he told Liam's second wife Bronagh, mother to at least two more daughters, and conceded that she did not believe him.

Therefore, what assurance did he have that those nieces would be protected? He also said he told the authorities in Clonard and named a Father McGoran as recipient of this warning.

The priest is now dead and cannot verify it.

At Liam Adams' first trial in Belfast, Gerry Adams said he told his brother he shouldn't be working with young people. Barrister Eilis McDermot pointed out that simply having a word with Liam was inadequate - he had the power to ensure someone suspected of being a child abuser was denied access.

"I didn't bring it to Liam's attention in a, you know, dictate sort of way. I tried to reason with him," Gerry Adams said in the witness box.

Ms McDermott asked if he had brought it to the police's notice. His reply washed his hands of any responsibility. "I didn't, because at this point Aine was an adult," he said. "This, insofar as we know, was a legacy issue. I am not Aine's parent. I am an uncle and she has many uncles. And I was trying my best to resolve these matters in a way which helped Aine, but also, if I may say so, in a way which allowed Liam to get rid of these demons."

Liam's demons?

Gerry Adams had a clear duty to stop his brother taking those jobs.

Sinn Fein could have found him other positions. His inability to accept that shows he did not understand the nature of abuse. Yet he claimed to be able to know when someone was at risk of re-offending. "I didn't believe at that point (1998) that my brother was a danger," he said. Without any training, he regarded himself as fit to decide that his brother was safe around children. That was a huge chance for Gerry Adams to take.

His dishonesty emerged in another way during that court case. Gerry Adams had already said he had nothing to do with Liam Adams for 15 years, from 1987 to 2002. But a sequence of photographs presented in evidence told a different story. Among them were photographs of him with Liam at his brother's second wedding in 1996; attending the christening of Liam's second daughter in 1997; canvassing with Liam in 1997; and at a 2003 presentation in Clonard Youth Club.

In his 1996 autobiography 'Before The Dawn' Gerry Adams made 11 references to his brother without any suggestion of estrangement or wrongdoing. "I want also to thank Colette, our Paddy, my father, brothers and sisters, especially Liam" said the dedication.

Adams has nine siblings. But Liam was the one he mentioned.

Far from being ostracised by Sinn Fein, Liam Adams remained active within the party. At one stage, he sought the nomination as Sinn Fein's candidate in Louth in a Dail election, but withdrew his name after it became clear another republican contender had more support. It is inconceivable that his name went forward without his brother's knowledge.

So, from first to last in relation to her rape and abuse, Gerry Adams's behaviour towards his niece Aine was just plain wrong - and the same can be said for his dealings in the Cahill case.

He allowed organisational loyalty to trump both child protection and victims' rights. Mairia Cahill was interviewed for six months until March 2000 by the IRA over her rape allegations, a time frame which suggests a process designed to encourage her to retract.

Sinn Fein's inability to deal with the ethical questions raised by these cases compromises the party's credibility. Its response has been to deflect - to muddy the waters by claiming media bias. But I have a question for the party: why does this message send you into such a tailspin that you prefer to shoot the messenger rather than confront the issues?

Irish Independent
 
Galvin's Shinpads - 27/4/2015 13:52

Spursex - 27/4/2015 13:48

I thought he didn't have to do anything, but choose to as his wife was 'fighting for her life?'....

I wouldn't argue with his 'facts' if their is evidence to support it, but if their isn't then he is of course a typical politician.

Typical that a certain type of politician uses their family as a shield to deflect their misguided and downright irresponsible mouths.
His wife will be his go-to excuse.

It's not the first time he has been quite ridiculous with his gob.
Don't worry, he has no "facts". Unless he took a survey of his own family tree.
Of course, by the sounds of it, they are still living in the trees.

Yes, the similarities between 'his family' and the Adam's family sound all too frequent...

I do wonder where he got his 'facts' from though...has any research ever been done into these areas?
 
Well it seems according to some research in this are, he might be onto something:

http://www.catholicleague.org/homosexuality-and-sexual-abuse/

HOMOSEXUALITY AND SEXUAL ABUSE

Catalyst September Issue 2010, From The President's Desk

The conventional wisdom maintains there is a pedophilia crisis in the Catholic Church. Popular as this position is, it is empirically wrong: the data show it has been a homosexual crisis all along. The evidence is not ambiguous, though there is a reluctance to let the data drive the conclusion. But that is a function of politics, not scholarship.

Alfred Kinsey was the first to identify a correlation between homosexuality and the sexual abuse of minors. In 1948, he found that 37 percent of all male homosexuals admitted to having sex with children under 17 years old. More recently, in organs such as the Archives of Sexual Behavior, the Journal of Sex Research, the Journal of Sex and Marital Therapy, and Pediatrics, it has been established that homosexuals are disproportionately represented among child molesters.

Correlation is not causation; it is an association. So to say that there is a correlation between homosexual orientation and the sexual abuse of minors is not to say that being a homosexual makes one a molester. On the other hand, it makes no sense to pretend that there is no relationship between homosexuality and the sexual abuse of minors.

Think of it this way. We know there is a correlation between being Irish and being an alcoholic, but that doesn’t mean all Irishmen are, or will become, alcoholics. But it does mean they have a special problem in this area.

After the Boston Globe broke the story on priestly sexual abuse in 2002, the American bishops established an independent panel to study this issue. When the National Review Board released its findings in 2004, noted Washington attorney Robert S. Bennett, who headed the study, said, “There are no doubt many outstanding priests of a homosexual orientation who live chaste, celibate lives, but any evaluation of the causes and context of the current crisis must be cognizant of the fact that more than 80 percent of the abuse at issue was of a homosexual nature.”

Furthermore, the panel explicitly said that “we must call attention to the homosexual behavior that characterized the vast majority of the cases of abuse observed in recent decades.”

One of those who served on the National Review Board, Dr. Paul McHugh, is former psychiatrist-in-chief at Johns Hopkins. He is on record saying, “This behavior was homosexual predation on American Catholic youth, yet it’s not being discussed.” More recently, the New York Times ran a story on Leslie Lothstein, another psychologist who has treated abusive priests. He concluded that “only a small minority were true pedophiles.”

Roderick MacLeish Jr. was the Boston lawyer who pressed the case against the Archdiocese of Boston; he examined all the files on this subject. As reported by Michael Paulson in the Boston Globe, MacLeish concluded that “90 percent of the nearly 400 sexual abuse victims he has represented are boys, and three quarters of them are post-pubescent.” Once again, the issue is homosexuality, not pedophilia.

Dr. Richard Fitzgibbons is a psychiatrist who has spent years treating sexually abusive priests. “Many psychologists and psychiatrists have shown that there is no link between celibacy and pedophilia,” he said earlier this year. Instead, they have found a “relationship between homosexuality and pedophilia.” Fitzgibbons goes further, saying, “Every priest whom I treated who was involved with children sexually had previously been involved in adult homosexual relationships.” Notice he didn’t saysome priests.

Need more proof? When the John Jay College of Criminal Justice released its findings, the Boston Globe, which won a Pulitzer Prize for its investigation, commented that “more than three-quarters of the victims were post pubescent, meaning the abuse did not meet the clinical definition of pedophilia.” So if the definitive study, which covered the years 1950-2002, concludes that pedophilia was never the issue, why does elite opinion insist that there is a “pedophilia crisis” in the Catholic Church?

If most of the damage was done by gay priests, it raises the question whether there would have been a scandal at all had homosexuals been barred from the priesthood. While the conclusion—no gays, no scandal—is simplistic, it nonetheless reveals more than it conceals. It is too simplistic because it does not take into account the fact that in the 1970s (at the height of the scandal), America was in the throes of a sexual revolution, one which touched every institution in society, including the Catholic Church; no matter what the composition of the priesthood, some problems were on the horizon given the cultural turbulence of this period.

Having said as much, it should be obvious that if eight in ten of the molesters had never been allowed to become priests, the scandal as we know it would have been avoided.

Is this a plea to bar homosexuals from the priesthood? No. There are many good homosexual priests, and most have served the Church well. What the Vatican has done is to screen carefully for sexually active homosexuals, without imposing an absolute ban. That makes sense, and it is one reason why this problem is abating.
 
Spursex - 27/4/2015 13:55

Still, his party know all about how to deal with his affiliations...

In two cases of sexual abuse we know that Gerry Adams' behaviour was simply wrong
Martina Devlin Twitter


Published
25/10/2014 | 02:30

Gerry Adams

Sinn Fein seeks to present the Mairia Cahill case as an isolated and misunderstood incident. But one of the dirty little secrets of the Troubles now emerging is the way sex crimes were handled within the IRA - and a pattern is taking shape.


Gerry Adams has now twice shown himself to have questions to answer regarding his dealings with sexual abuse allegations. He has a track record of prioritising the organisation above victims - he did it in the case of his own niece, raped by her father.

The Sinn Fein leader delayed Aine Adams' search for justice because it was in his interests to hush it up. Finally, she went to the police in 2006 because it was clear her uncle was going to do nothing about his paedophile brother. "I realised it was all about PR and protecting his own image," she said.

In backing their president to the hilt, Sinn Fein politicians are exposed if further victims emerge. But they are already undermined: how can they talk about protecting the vulnerable from welfare cuts when the vulnerable weren't protected in sexual violence cases?

Sinn Fein's female representatives are particularly damaged: one after another, they have failed Ms Cahill.

And what of Gerry Adams, from whom they take their lead?

Secrets and procrastination were his approach in Aine Adams' case, and equivocation in Mairia Cahill's. His actions are far from acceptable and his version of events is far from credible.

Let's put it in context. It was in the IRA's interests to shut down victims pointing the finger at anyone in the republican family.

Sex crime allegations were used as leverage by the security forces in the North, with attempts made to turn either the accuser or the sex attacker into an informer. Aine Adams first went to the police in the 1980s, but backed off because they tried to use her to gather intelligence on her uncle. That's partly why the emphasis was on protecting the organisation rather than the victim. But chances were taken with children's safety.

Gerry Adams waited nine years, by his own account, before passing on evidence that his brother had admitted sexual violence against Aine.

He told a Belfast court that his brother confessed the abuse to him in 2000, but didn't go to the police until 2009. Finally, he did so a month before he was due to be interviewed for UTV's 'Insight', in which Aine went public. That was intended to forestall criticism that he had withheld evidence about child sexual abuse.

Last year, Liam Adams was convicted of raping and abusing his daughter over a six-year period, beginning in 1977 when she was only four.

Gerry Adams tried to block reporting of the case by asking Aine to seek a court injunction.

This was presented as shielding her rather than an attempt to block scrutiny of his behaviour. He said he was told Liam had only abused "the once" and did not believe he was a danger. What competence did he have to form such a judgment on his brother's risk of re-offending?

Arguably, he evaded the level of scrutiny his actions deserved because he sheltered behind Aine's natural distress: calling for privacy for the family.

So, are we really to believe that a man who hindered his own niece's search for justice was supportive of Mairia Cahill? He failed his niece, and acted with a similar callousness towards Mairia Cahill. If there are more victims, it will take an exceptionally courageous one to come forward now.

Let's revisit his behaviour in the Aine Adams case. He admits he had no doubt from 2000 onwards that his brother had sexually assaulted her, but saw no conflict between that and Liam working with teenagers in a variety of youth clubs.

Liam Adams worked with children on an estate in Dundalk from at least 1997 to 1998; for the Clonard Youth Project in West Belfast in 1998-2003; he did youth work in Dundalk at Cox's Demesne Community Centre; and worked at Beechmount Community Centre from 2004-2006. Adams had to be aware of his brother's access to teenagers.

However, he did not alert social services to the allegations. He said he told Liam's second wife Bronagh, mother to at least two more daughters, and conceded that she did not believe him.

Therefore, what assurance did he have that those nieces would be protected? He also said he told the authorities in Clonard and named a Father McGoran as recipient of this warning.

The priest is now dead and cannot verify it.

At Liam Adams' first trial in Belfast, Gerry Adams said he told his brother he shouldn't be working with young people. Barrister Eilis McDermot pointed out that simply having a word with Liam was inadequate - he had the power to ensure someone suspected of being a child abuser was denied access.

"I didn't bring it to Liam's attention in a, you know, dictate sort of way. I tried to reason with him," Gerry Adams said in the witness box.

Ms McDermott asked if he had brought it to the police's notice. His reply washed his hands of any responsibility. "I didn't, because at this point Aine was an adult," he said. "This, insofar as we know, was a legacy issue. I am not Aine's parent. I am an uncle and she has many uncles. And I was trying my best to resolve these matters in a way which helped Aine, but also, if I may say so, in a way which allowed Liam to get rid of these demons."

Liam's demons?

Gerry Adams had a clear duty to stop his brother taking those jobs.

Sinn Fein could have found him other positions. His inability to accept that shows he did not understand the nature of abuse. Yet he claimed to be able to know when someone was at risk of re-offending. "I didn't believe at that point (1998) that my brother was a danger," he said. Without any training, he regarded himself as fit to decide that his brother was safe around children. That was a huge chance for Gerry Adams to take.

His dishonesty emerged in another way during that court case. Gerry Adams had already said he had nothing to do with Liam Adams for 15 years, from 1987 to 2002. But a sequence of photographs presented in evidence told a different story. Among them were photographs of him with Liam at his brother's second wedding in 1996; attending the christening of Liam's second daughter in 1997; canvassing with Liam in 1997; and at a 2003 presentation in Clonard Youth Club.

In his 1996 autobiography 'Before The Dawn' Gerry Adams made 11 references to his brother without any suggestion of estrangement or wrongdoing. "I want also to thank Colette, our Paddy, my father, brothers and sisters, especially Liam" said the dedication.

Adams has nine siblings. But Liam was the one he mentioned.

Far from being ostracised by Sinn Fein, Liam Adams remained active within the party. At one stage, he sought the nomination as Sinn Fein's candidate in Louth in a Dail election, but withdrew his name after it became clear another republican contender had more support. It is inconceivable that his name went forward without his brother's knowledge.

So, from first to last in relation to her rape and abuse, Gerry Adams's behaviour towards his niece Aine was just plain wrong - and the same can be said for his dealings in the Cahill case.

He allowed organisational loyalty to trump both child protection and victims' rights. Mairia Cahill was interviewed for six months until March 2000 by the IRA over her rape allegations, a time frame which suggests a process designed to encourage her to retract.

Sinn Fein's inability to deal with the ethical questions raised by these cases compromises the party's credibility. Its response has been to deflect - to muddy the waters by claiming media bias. But I have a question for the party: why does this message send you into such a tailspin that you prefer to shoot the messenger rather than confront the issues?

Irish Independent

Wouldn't trust Adams as far as I could throw him.

But where are the parallels??

What has Adams got to do with Jim Wells??

Why have you posted something on the liar Gerry Adams on this thread???
 
Spursex - 27/4/2015 14:03

Well it seems according to some research in this are, he might be onto something:

http://www.catholicleague.org/homosexuality-and-sexual-abuse/

HOMOSEXUALITY AND SEXUAL ABUSE

Catalyst September Issue 2010, From The President's Desk

The conventional wisdom maintains there is a pedophilia crisis in the Catholic Church. Popular as this position is, it is empirically wrong: the data show it has been a homosexual crisis all along. The evidence is not ambiguous, though there is a reluctance to let the data drive the conclusion. But that is a function of politics, not scholarship.

Alfred Kinsey was the first to identify a correlation between homosexuality and the sexual abuse of minors. In 1948, he found that 37 percent of all male homosexuals admitted to having sex with children under 17 years old. More recently, in organs such as the Archives of Sexual Behavior, the Journal of Sex Research, the Journal of Sex and Marital Therapy, and Pediatrics, it has been established that homosexuals are disproportionately represented among child molesters.

Correlation is not causation; it is an association. So to say that there is a correlation between homosexual orientation and the sexual abuse of minors is not to say that being a homosexual makes one a molester. On the other hand, it makes no sense to pretend that there is no relationship between homosexuality and the sexual abuse of minors.

Think of it this way. We know there is a correlation between being Irish and being an alcoholic, but that doesn’t mean all Irishmen are, or will become, alcoholics. But it does mean they have a special problem in this area.

After the Boston Globe broke the story on priestly sexual abuse in 2002, the American bishops established an independent panel to study this issue. When the National Review Board released its findings in 2004, noted Washington attorney Robert S. Bennett, who headed the study, said, “There are no doubt many outstanding priests of a homosexual orientation who live chaste, celibate lives, but any evaluation of the causes and context of the current crisis must be cognizant of the fact that more than 80 percent of the abuse at issue was of a homosexual nature.”

Furthermore, the panel explicitly said that “we must call attention to the homosexual behavior that characterized the vast majority of the cases of abuse observed in recent decades.”

One of those who served on the National Review Board, Dr. Paul McHugh, is former psychiatrist-in-chief at Johns Hopkins. He is on record saying, “This behavior was homosexual predation on American Catholic youth, yet it’s not being discussed.” More recently, the New York Times ran a story on Leslie Lothstein, another psychologist who has treated abusive priests. He concluded that “only a small minority were true pedophiles.”

Roderick MacLeish Jr. was the Boston lawyer who pressed the case against the Archdiocese of Boston; he examined all the files on this subject. As reported by Michael Paulson in the Boston Globe, MacLeish concluded that “90 percent of the nearly 400 sexual abuse victims he has represented are boys, and three quarters of them are post-pubescent.” Once again, the issue is homosexuality, not pedophilia.

Dr. Richard Fitzgibbons is a psychiatrist who has spent years treating sexually abusive priests. “Many psychologists and psychiatrists have shown that there is no link between celibacy and pedophilia,” he said earlier this year. Instead, they have found a “relationship between homosexuality and pedophilia.” Fitzgibbons goes further, saying, “Every priest whom I treated who was involved with children sexually had previously been involved in adult homosexual relationships.” Notice he didn’t saysome priests.

Need more proof? When the John Jay College of Criminal Justice released its findings, the Boston Globe, which won a Pulitzer Prize for its investigation, commented that “more than three-quarters of the victims were post pubescent, meaning the abuse did not meet the clinical definition of pedophilia.” So if the definitive study, which covered the years 1950-2002, concludes that pedophilia was never the issue, why does elite opinion insist that there is a “pedophilia crisis” in the Catholic Church?

If most of the damage was done by gay priests, it raises the question whether there would have been a scandal at all had homosexuals been barred from the priesthood. While the conclusion—no gays, no scandal—is simplistic, it nonetheless reveals more than it conceals. It is too simplistic because it does not take into account the fact that in the 1970s (at the height of the scandal), America was in the throes of a sexual revolution, one which touched every institution in society, including the Catholic Church; no matter what the composition of the priesthood, some problems were on the horizon given the cultural turbulence of this period.

Having said as much, it should be obvious that if eight in ten of the molesters had never been allowed to become priests, the scandal as we know it would have been avoided.

Is this a plea to bar homosexuals from the priesthood? No. There are many good homosexual priests, and most have served the Church well. What the Vatican has done is to screen carefully for sexually active homosexuals, without imposing an absolute ban. That makes sense, and it is one reason why this problem is abating.


WHAT??

Are you serious????

You are now comparing Gay Marriage to child abuse in the Catholic Church??!

Seriously??
 
The hilarity of politics is that David Cameron still doesn't rule out a deal between the Conservative party and the DUP, even though he is well aware of their lunacy, he is still shitting himself that the Tories will lose the votes of the Northern Irish hardcore Unionists. What a shitty world we live in!

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/dup-health-minister-apologises-comments-5575216
 
Galvin's Shinpads - 27/4/2015 14:05

Spursex - 27/4/2015 13:55

Still, his party know all about how to deal with his affiliations...

In two cases of sexual abuse we know that Gerry Adams' behaviour was simply wrong
Martina Devlin Twitter


Published
25/10/2014 | 02:30

Gerry Adams

Sinn Fein seeks to present the Mairia Cahill case as an isolated and misunderstood incident. But one of the dirty little secrets of the Troubles now emerging is the way sex crimes were handled within the IRA - and a pattern is taking shape.


Gerry Adams has now twice shown himself to have questions to answer regarding his dealings with sexual abuse allegations. He has a track record of prioritising the organisation above victims - he did it in the case of his own niece, raped by her father.

The Sinn Fein leader delayed Aine Adams' search for justice because it was in his interests to hush it up. Finally, she went to the police in 2006 because it was clear her uncle was going to do nothing about his paedophile brother. "I realised it was all about PR and protecting his own image," she said.

In backing their president to the hilt, Sinn Fein politicians are exposed if further victims emerge. But they are already undermined: how can they talk about protecting the vulnerable from welfare cuts when the vulnerable weren't protected in sexual violence cases?

Sinn Fein's female representatives are particularly damaged: one after another, they have failed Ms Cahill.

And what of Gerry Adams, from whom they take their lead?

Secrets and procrastination were his approach in Aine Adams' case, and equivocation in Mairia Cahill's. His actions are far from acceptable and his version of events is far from credible.

Let's put it in context. It was in the IRA's interests to shut down victims pointing the finger at anyone in the republican family.

Sex crime allegations were used as leverage by the security forces in the North, with attempts made to turn either the accuser or the sex attacker into an informer. Aine Adams first went to the police in the 1980s, but backed off because they tried to use her to gather intelligence on her uncle. That's partly why the emphasis was on protecting the organisation rather than the victim. But chances were taken with children's safety.

Gerry Adams waited nine years, by his own account, before passing on evidence that his brother had admitted sexual violence against Aine.

He told a Belfast court that his brother confessed the abuse to him in 2000, but didn't go to the police until 2009. Finally, he did so a month before he was due to be interviewed for UTV's 'Insight', in which Aine went public. That was intended to forestall criticism that he had withheld evidence about child sexual abuse.

Last year, Liam Adams was convicted of raping and abusing his daughter over a six-year period, beginning in 1977 when she was only four.

Gerry Adams tried to block reporting of the case by asking Aine to seek a court injunction.

This was presented as shielding her rather than an attempt to block scrutiny of his behaviour. He said he was told Liam had only abused "the once" and did not believe he was a danger. What competence did he have to form such a judgment on his brother's risk of re-offending?

Arguably, he evaded the level of scrutiny his actions deserved because he sheltered behind Aine's natural distress: calling for privacy for the family.

So, are we really to believe that a man who hindered his own niece's search for justice was supportive of Mairia Cahill? He failed his niece, and acted with a similar callousness towards Mairia Cahill. If there are more victims, it will take an exceptionally courageous one to come forward now.

Let's revisit his behaviour in the Aine Adams case. He admits he had no doubt from 2000 onwards that his brother had sexually assaulted her, but saw no conflict between that and Liam working with teenagers in a variety of youth clubs.

Liam Adams worked with children on an estate in Dundalk from at least 1997 to 1998; for the Clonard Youth Project in West Belfast in 1998-2003; he did youth work in Dundalk at Cox's Demesne Community Centre; and worked at Beechmount Community Centre from 2004-2006. Adams had to be aware of his brother's access to teenagers.

However, he did not alert social services to the allegations. He said he told Liam's second wife Bronagh, mother to at least two more daughters, and conceded that she did not believe him.

Therefore, what assurance did he have that those nieces would be protected? He also said he told the authorities in Clonard and named a Father McGoran as recipient of this warning.

The priest is now dead and cannot verify it.

At Liam Adams' first trial in Belfast, Gerry Adams said he told his brother he shouldn't be working with young people. Barrister Eilis McDermot pointed out that simply having a word with Liam was inadequate - he had the power to ensure someone suspected of being a child abuser was denied access.

"I didn't bring it to Liam's attention in a, you know, dictate sort of way. I tried to reason with him," Gerry Adams said in the witness box.

Ms McDermott asked if he had brought it to the police's notice. His reply washed his hands of any responsibility. "I didn't, because at this point Aine was an adult," he said. "This, insofar as we know, was a legacy issue. I am not Aine's parent. I am an uncle and she has many uncles. And I was trying my best to resolve these matters in a way which helped Aine, but also, if I may say so, in a way which allowed Liam to get rid of these demons."

Liam's demons?

Gerry Adams had a clear duty to stop his brother taking those jobs.

Sinn Fein could have found him other positions. His inability to accept that shows he did not understand the nature of abuse. Yet he claimed to be able to know when someone was at risk of re-offending. "I didn't believe at that point (1998) that my brother was a danger," he said. Without any training, he regarded himself as fit to decide that his brother was safe around children. That was a huge chance for Gerry Adams to take.

His dishonesty emerged in another way during that court case. Gerry Adams had already said he had nothing to do with Liam Adams for 15 years, from 1987 to 2002. But a sequence of photographs presented in evidence told a different story. Among them were photographs of him with Liam at his brother's second wedding in 1996; attending the christening of Liam's second daughter in 1997; canvassing with Liam in 1997; and at a 2003 presentation in Clonard Youth Club.

In his 1996 autobiography 'Before The Dawn' Gerry Adams made 11 references to his brother without any suggestion of estrangement or wrongdoing. "I want also to thank Colette, our Paddy, my father, brothers and sisters, especially Liam" said the dedication.

Adams has nine siblings. But Liam was the one he mentioned.

Far from being ostracised by Sinn Fein, Liam Adams remained active within the party. At one stage, he sought the nomination as Sinn Fein's candidate in Louth in a Dail election, but withdrew his name after it became clear another republican contender had more support. It is inconceivable that his name went forward without his brother's knowledge.

So, from first to last in relation to her rape and abuse, Gerry Adams's behaviour towards his niece Aine was just plain wrong - and the same can be said for his dealings in the Cahill case.

He allowed organisational loyalty to trump both child protection and victims' rights. Mairia Cahill was interviewed for six months until March 2000 by the IRA over her rape allegations, a time frame which suggests a process designed to encourage her to retract.

Sinn Fein's inability to deal with the ethical questions raised by these cases compromises the party's credibility. Its response has been to deflect - to muddy the waters by claiming media bias. But I have a question for the party: why does this message send you into such a tailspin that you prefer to shoot the messenger rather than confront the issues?

Irish Independent

Wouldn't trust Adams as far as I could throw him.

But where are the parallels??

What has Adams got to do with Jim Wells??

Why have you posted something on the liar Gerry Adams on this thread???

It's not hard to work out Gav; both Irish politicians, both using 'facts' as they see fit and both be less than eerrrr 'honest?'..
 
Galvin's Shinpads - 27/4/2015 14:10

The hilarity of politics is that David Cameron still doesn't rule out a deal between the Conservative party and the DUP, even though he is well aware of their lunacy, he is still shitting himself that the Tories will lose the votes of the Northern Irish hardcore Unionists. What a shitty world we live in!

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/dup-health-minister-apologises-comments-5575216

I know. It's almost as bad as Labour doing a deal with the nationalists.
 
Seemingly lots of evidence to back up his 'facts'....well, I never...!

http://www.frc.org/get.cfm?i=IS02E3
 
At least some of the British media can see sense, in terms of what the Conservatives are doing with the DUP...

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/apr/24/snp-dup-democratic-unionist-party-government-tories-anti-scottish-coalition-homophobic
 
Galvin's Shinpads - 27/4/2015 14:33

At least some of the British media can see sense, in terms of what the Conservatives are doing with the DUP...

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/apr/24/snp-dup-democratic-unionist-party-government-tories-anti-scottish-coalition-homophobic

LOL!!

The Guardian..... :21: :22: :10:
 
Gotta say Ex, anyone who backs these belief systems are living in a very dark, grim past.

There is no place for human rights in the DUP's agenda and their bigotry and fascism are rife.
 
Galvin's Shinpads - 27/4/2015 15:07

Gotta say Ex, anyone who backs these belief systems are living in a very dark, grim past.

There is no place for human rights in the DUP's agenda and their bigotry and fascism are rife.

Sorry Gav, as you might have guessed I see no difference between them and Sinn fein - Ive long since stopped trying to work out which of them is worse, what shocks me of course is how one who has always been an excuse of a murderous organisation and responsible for some of the worst bigoted attacks against anyone that was remotely open;y different (including homosexuals), can now be increasing their support. As you say, fascism and bigotry is rife, but it's in the whole Isle of Ireland, no one side seems to own that 'accolade' exclusively.
 
Seriously EX who did that research again? You understand the concept of an independent study right? LOL
 
spurdon - 27/4/2015 20:49

Seriously EX who did that research again? You understand the concept of an independent study right? LOL

It was a perfunctionary bit of research, and I really didn't bother to read too much into it, other than of course that it existed and to a large extent seems not to have been riddled with too many holes. I guess it all comes down to where you start from, but how you 'test' these concepts and get meaningful data from the is anyone's guess - by the same token I came across some 'research' sponsored by Stonewall, which I think you can guess what it said.

In any event, it's enough to see why some politicians claim that they have 'facts'...
 
Spursex - 27/4/2015 15:20
Sorry Gav, as you might have guessed I see no difference between them and Sinn fein

So what you are saying is, you don't mind the Conservative Party getting into bed with a gang of total bastards??!