seamus dubhghaill

Promoting Irish Culture and History from Little Rock, Arkansas, USA

Tag Archives: Sexual Assault


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Birth of Josepha Madigan, Fine Gael Politician

Josepha Madigan, former Fine Gael politician, is born in Dublin on May 21, 1970. She serves as Chair of the Committee on Budgetary Oversight from July 2016 to November 2017, Minister for Culture, Heritage, and the Gaeltacht from November 2017 to June 2020, and as Minister of State at the Department of Education from July 2020 to March 2024. She serves as a Teachta Dála (TD) for the Dublin Rathdown constituency from 2016 to 2024.

Madigan attends Mount Anville Secondary School and Trinity College Dublin (TCD). She is married to Finbarr Hayes, and they have two children. Her father, Patrick Madigan, was a Fianna Fáil County Councillor in Dublin, and her mother, Patricia Madigan, was a barrister who had a background in Fine Gael. She and her family live in Mount Merrion, Dublin. She is a survivor of sexual assault.

Madigan is a qualified solicitor, who practises in family law for twenty years, prior to her election to Dáil Éireann. She is also certified as a mediator by the Mediators’ Institute of Ireland (MII) and is a previous Council member of the MII. She is a former Specialist Liaison Officer for Family Mediation in the MII.

Madigan is the author of the first book in Ireland on mediation: Appropriate Dispute Resolution in Ireland, a handbook for family lawyers and their clients (Jordan Publishing, 2012). She has also self-published a novel called Negligent Behaviour.

Madigan serves as a councillor for the local electoral area of Stillorgan on Dún Laoghaire–Rathdown County Council, from May 2014 until her election as a TD in 2016.

Madigan issues a leaflet in 2014 claiming that providing accommodation for Travellers in her constituency would be “a waste of valuable resources.” When asked about this later, she claims, “Some people won’t want to live beside people in halting sites […] there might be more crime, that there might be anti-social behaviour.”

Madigan is elected to the 32nd Dáil at the 2016 Irish general election as a Fine Gael TD for the Dublin Rathdown constituency, defeating sitting Fine Gael TD Alan Shatter by nearly 1,000 votes. She is appointed Chair of the Committee on Budgetary Oversight in July 2017. She is a member of the Public Accounts Committee. She introduces a private member’s bill to reduce the waiting time for divorce in Ireland from four years to two, which is passed by the Dáil.

On November 30, 2017, Madigan is appointed to the cabinet as Minister for Culture, Heritage and the Gaeltacht, in a reshuffle following the resignation of the Tánaiste Frances Fitzgerald.

On March 29, 2018, Fine Gael leader Leo Varadkar appoints Madigan as the coordinator for the party’s Yes campaign in the referendum to repeal the Eighth Amendment.

In 2019, Madigan receives widespread coverage for her role in the personal injury legal claim of Fine Gael politician, Maria Bailey. It is alleged that her law practice, Madigan Solicitors, advised Bailey on her claim, however, Madigan refuses to make any comments on this citing client-solicitor confidentiality. In July 2019, an internal unpublished Fine Gael probe into the affair clears Madigan of any wrongdoing in regard to the claim. In late July 2019, the Irish Independent reports that “it is now known that she advised Ms. Bailey in the early stages of the claim.” It is also reported that her firm would earn €11,500 in fees if the Maria Bailey case were successful.

Madigan is re-elected at the 2020 Irish general election, taking the third seat behind Green Party Deputy Leader Catherine Martin and party colleague Neale Richmond. On July 1, 2020, she is appointed by the new government as Minister of State at the Department of Education with special responsibility for special education and inclusion. On January 14, 2021, she comes under fire for describing children without additional needs as “normal” while speaking in the Dáil. “We all know that even for normal children remote teaching is difficult but for children who have additional needs it is particularly difficult,” she says. Later that day on Twitter, she says she “sincerely apologises for the language she used. It is absolutely not what I meant to say.”

On January 20, 2021, speaking on RTÉ‘s Today with Claire Byrne, Madigan compares children with additional needs not attending school to the mother and baby homes. “We’ve spent the last week talking about mother and baby homes, where our most vulnerable were left to their own devices in less than satisfactory conditions and we’re now allowing further anxiety and upset to be placed on the shoulders of parents whose children desperately need to go back to school.” The Final Report of the Commission of Investigation into Mother and Baby Homes and Related Matters is published the week prior to her comments. She later apologises in a statement: “I am, as are all involved in supporting these children [children with additional needs], passionate about vindicating their rights and in reaching for an analogy I chose poorly. I apologise fully.”

Shortly after the first report of the Creeslough explosion on October 7, 2022, Madigan tweets that she hopes “they find the culprits” and, after being criticised as irresponsible and insensitive, she quickly deletes the tweet.

On March 22, 2024, Madigan announces that she will resign as Minister of State and will not contest the next general election.


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Birth of Brendan Smyth, Priest & Convicted Sex Offender

Brendan Smyth, O.Praem, a Catholic priest and convicted sex offender, is born on June 8, 1927, in Belfast, Northern Ireland. He becomes notorious as a child molester, using his position in the Catholic Church to obtain access to his victims. During a period of over 40 years, he sexually abuses and indecently assaults at least 143 children in parishes in Belfast, Dublin and the United States. His actions are frequently hidden from police and the public by Roman Catholic officials. Controversy surrounding his case contributes to the downfall of the government of the Republic of Ireland in December 1994.

Born John Gerard Smyth, upon joining the Norbertine Roman Catholic religious order in 1945, he changes his name to Brendan. The Norbertines, also known as the “Premonstratensians,” are aware of Smyth’s crimes as early as the late 1970s, yet they do not report him to either the Garda Síochána or the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC). He is moved from parish to parish and between dioceses and countries whenever allegations are made. In some cases, the order does not inform the diocesan bishop that Smyth has a history of sexual abuse and should be kept away from children. He abuses children in parishes in Rhode Island and North Dakota and at one time works in Boston and is suspected of similar actions while on pastoral work in Wales and Italy. Norbertine Father Bruno Mulvihill makes several attempts to alert church authorities about the abuse committed by Smyth.

Smyth’s first conviction follows the reporting to police of his abuse of four siblings in Belfast’s Falls Road. After his arrest in 1991, he flees to the Republic of Ireland, where he spends the next three years on the run, staying mostly at Kilnacrott Abbey. This leads to the collapse of the Fianna Fáil–Labour Party coalition government in December 1994 when the poor handling of an extradition request from the RUC by the Irish Attorney General‘s office leads to a further delay of Smyth’s trial. An award-winning UTV Counterpoint programme on the scandal by journalist Chris Moore, followed by a book, accuses the head of the Norbertines and the Archbishop of Armagh of mishandling the case, and the Norbertines of negligence and a failure to tell others of Smyth’s crimes, enabling him to sexually abuse large numbers of children for 40 years.

Smyth dies in prison of a heart attack at the age of 70 on August 22, 1997, after collapsing in the exercise yard, one month into a 12-year prison sentence. The Norbertines hold his funeral before dawn and cover his grave with concrete to deter vandalism. He is buried in Kilnacrott Abbey, which is later put up for sale with 44 acres of land, including the grave.

On October 27, 2005, the title “Reverend” is removed from his gravestone following a campaign by one of Smyth’s victims.

Reviewers of the case differ as to whether there is a deliberate plot to conceal Smyth’s behaviour, incompetence by his superiors at Kilnacrott Abbey, or some combination of factors. Cahal Daly, both as Bishop of Down and Connor, a diocese where some of the abuse takes place, and later as Cardinal Archbishop of Armagh, is recorded as having been privately furious at the Norbertine “incompetence.” Smyth’s activities are investigated by the Northern Ireland Historical Institutional Abuse Inquiry, finding that: “…despite knowing his history of abusing children, the Norbertine religious order moved Smyth to different dioceses where he abused more children…”

In 2010, Daly’s successor as Roman Catholic Archbishop of Armagh, Cardinal Seán Brady, faces “huge pressure to resign” after he admits that in 1975, he witnessed two teenage boys sign oaths of silence after testifying in a Church inquiry against Smyth. Survivor groups see this as evidence of collusion, but Brady says he “did not have the authority” to turn Smyth in. On March 17, 2010, the Deputy First Minister of Northern Ireland, Martin McGuinness, calls for Brady to resign.

In 2013, some of Smyth’s alleged Rhode Island victims between 1965 and 1968, both male and female, call for the Diocese of Providence to investigate Smyth. As of 2019, he is among those listed by the Diocese of Providence as being “credibly accused” of committing sex abuse.

Module 6 of the 2014-2016 Northern Ireland Historical Institutional Abuse Inquiry is dedicated to Smyth’s crimes in Northern Ireland.

A two-part dramatisation of the Smyth case, Brendan Smyth: Betrayal of Trust, is broadcast by the BBC on March 13, 2011, with Ian Beattie in the title role and Richard Dormer as Chris Moore.

(Pictured: Father Brendan Smyth, Our Lady of Mercy, East Greenwich, Rhode Island, USA, c. 1965)