I’ve never felt comfortable with a reporter doorstepping anyone at their home – not even a corrupt Fat Cat.
But the Irish media is usually very good at handling sensitive stories, particularly those concerning children and sexual assault.
Even suicides appear under the euphemism “died suddenly” in order not to distress the next of kin.
It all makes the law an even bigger ass after a recent court ruling preventing the media identifying children who have been allegedly murdered once somebody is charged.
We’re on a slippery slope to a 1984 dystopian society when Irish judges can easily make such radical calls on how archaic laws are interpreted.
As things stand today – until the Coalition brings in new, promised legislation to resolve this out-and-out censorship – the media can’t even dentify convicted child killers.
How could any democratic legal system deem it acceptable to allow such veils of secrecy?
It shamefully gags the victim’s family from keeping their loved one’s memory alive in public.
The ruling could also prohibit child sex abuse victims from automatically waiving their right to anonymity when they reach adulthood.
It must be deeply upsetting for these survivors to know they must go cap in hand to ask a judge for permission to tell their own story right now.
But their application could be rejected – even though it might be a cathartic process for them to speak out about their ordeal.
Even those in Soviet gulags – including Russian Nobel Prize winner Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn – eventually got to tell their harrowing stories.
And I thought we were supposed to be a nation of storytellers?
George Orwell, who once worked in a Dublin newspaper office before penning 1984 and Animal Farm, must be spinning in his grave.
The Government needs to throw the book at someone here. Ministers want to pretend they were rabbits caught in the headlights when this
judgment was made but they knew this was coming down the pike.
I cannot comprehend how they sat back and knowingly allowed a law that effectively protects paedophiles and child murderers.
Justice Minister Helen McEntee went on radio on Thursday to say new legislation will be rushed through to change it. But why wait so long?
I won’t hold my breath either because it could be kicked down the road if there’s an unexpected curve ball with Covid-19 or the Government collapses.
Minister McEntee has dropped the ball on too many occasions – like with the glaring omission of an entire chapter from the Civil Law and Provisions Bill, being labelled “a boon” to vulture funds. She should’ve done the honourable thing then and fallen on her own sword.
There’s also her shocking failure to tackle Golfgate but Judge Seamus Woulfe is a can of worms best left for another day. I will say, however, it would be a wonderful show of solidarity if the Irish public blanked him as the good people of Co Mayo did with Captain Charles Boycott.
Minister McEntee has made the classic rookie mistake of overloading her plate. Other pieces of new legislation she’s juggling include the revenge porn law, a bill on white-collar crime and nepotism legislation that – surprise, surprise – won’t target TDs employing family members.
She would’ve been better served tackling our broken Family Law courts because there’s many fathers out there who won’t get to see their
children this Christmas.
The Opposition needs to call on her to put a time frame on fixing this censorship mess.
Otherwise, if left to her own devices, she’s bound to drop the ball again. The rookie tag apparently drives her bananas, according to one of my sources in Leinster House. Perhaps she’d prefer “neophyte
politician” or “gaffe-prone”?
