21 minute read
Emma Sheerin Peadar Whelan 12&45
Misogyny causes and allows violence against women
BY EMMA SHEERIN
The use of this term, one might argue, is relatively novel in Ireland. The phenomenon itself is sadly not. A new way of describing, acknowledging, and challenging something that is as old as time itself.
If we’re honest with ourselves, the frank conversations about the prevalence of ‘gender-based violence’ are commonplace in the wake of one particularly shocking event, after which there is a tendency to go back to normal, to go back to sailing along, saying nothing.
Until the next time. The brutal murder of Ashling Murphy on 12 January struck a chord with our nation in what was described by many in the following days as a ‘watershed moment’. Thousands lined our streets to mourn her loss.
Candles were lit in windows. Column inches were filled and leaders came together to call for change.
She was going for a run. A hashtag trending on Twitter, a slogan across Instagram stories, young women angry that this had happened, dwelling on their own evening runs.
At the heart of the reaction are two conflicting narratives. ‘She was just going for a run in the middle of the day’, ‘I do that, it could have been me’, ‘She didn’t deserve to be murdered’.
When I think about these often well-meant words, uttered at flower strewn roadsides and in candle-lit town centres by people with compassion and love in their hearts, the first question I find myself asking is ‘who does deserve to be murdered?’
An obvious, if unintended, inference in this commentary is that all those women killed by their partners, or their exes, or by strangers late at night, whilst socialising, or running alone in the dark, or walking home from work, ‘should have seen it coming’ or ‘left themselves open to it’. That it was their own fault.
‘She was going for a run in the middle of the day in a public, well lit, densely populated place’. She followed all the advice that women grow up being bombarded with,
21 women have been murdered in Ireland since the beginning of the pandemic. The north has the highest reported domestic violence levels in Europe
• Forensics tent at the scene of brutal murder of Ashling Murphy in Tullamore and memorial the victim; (above) A vigil for outside Leinster House, Dublin
the guidance we learn from childhood around ‘keeping ourselves safe’, and yet she still fell victim to a brutal attack that ended her life.
For those already enraged by the dialogue that surrounds violence against women and girls, the raft of responsibilities that little girls are tasked with in terms of personal safety, and the fact that victims are told what to do but perpetrators never seem to be addressed, the realities around Ashling’s murder led to more anger.
Ashling Murphy was a daughter, a sister, a girlfriend, a colleague and a friend. She was a teacher, a talented musician, a Gael. All of these things tell us that her short life brought value beyond measure to Irish society and that her loss will be mourned by many. But none of them were necessary for her death to be a tragedy, for her life to have had worth.
In speaking at length about her attributes and pointing to how she ‘did everything right’, we risk furthering the assertion that women can somehow bring violence on themselves.
In the same way that men shouldn’t have to conjure up a vision of their mother or sister or daughter as a victim in order to feel anger about it, we don’t need to justify anyone’s right to live in peace and safe from violence.
There have been 21 women murdered in Ireland since the beginning of the pandemic. The Six Counties has the highest reported domestic violence levels in Europe. According to the UN, women aged 15 to 44 are more at risk from domestic violence and rape than war, malaria, car accidents, and cancer.
We know that women who live in poverty and those from newcomer communities are most at risk, with fewer opportunities to escape violence and less recourse to justice.
The statistics are frightening.
How do we deal with it? Our current strategies, which have included arming teenage girls with rape alarms in social sciences classrooms and telling women to avoid public spaces at night, are clearly not working.
2008
• NOTHING NEW: Our culture told us that women are lesser, inferior, unworthy. It naturally follows that they’ll be the subject of attacks
Ad campaigns that advise women how not to have their drinks spiked, to only go out with others, to plan their journeys home are not helpful. In fact, these instructions are an extension of the violence women are already taught to fear.
Just as online misogynistic abuse can simultaneously hurt one woman’s feelings whilst normalising the narrative
that women are fair game for abuse, our society’s habitual victim-blaming not only burdens individual women, but feeds into the narrative that women are weak, defenceless creatures who require protection, and should expect to encounter risk just by virtue of their being there.
Ireland of old was governed by gender norms, societal expectations, and, perhaps most important of all, Catholic moral teachings. Violence against women was woven through the fabric of the states North and South.
‘Homes’ for ‘unmarried mothers’, Magdalene laundries, rogue adoption agencies, all of them attacks on Irish women and girls who weren’t even afforded the dignity of an education in relation to the bodily functions that they were then expected to navigate.
Even beyond the criminalisation of pregnant people, it remained a taboo subject, the nature of the reaction depending solely on marital status. A woman who dared to have children outside of (or too soon after) marriage was a legitimate target of scorn and ridicule, and a woman who dared not to reproduce the second that a ring went on her finger was someone to be pitied and questioned at length.
No babies until you’re married. And then as soon as you’re married, babies straight away. If not, why not? Is something wrong? Are you putting your career before your family?
The legislature in the 26 Counties made it impossible for women to work in the civil service following marriage, because obviously a woman’s role began and ended in the home.
Rape wasn’t a crime if the offender was your husband. Divorce was illegal. If she fled because he ‘was bad to
• CALL IT OUT: When people say things and make remarks, the belief that women are fair game is legitimised
her’, that’s what she did. No-one ever questioned why she had to suffer that in the first place. Those who made midnight ferry trips to England to avoid the punishment of their parents were actually criminalised and risked real prosecution if they ever revealed their secret.
With the advance of the internet and social media, where we should be able to access more information and bust myths, instead we have worrying trends; online abuse, young people watching porn and creating dangerous expectations of sex, unattainable body goals promoting unhealthy eating habits and impossible standards.
It goes beyond chatrooms and forums, it’s in our public discourse, and in our schools and playgrounds, which is the most worrying aspect of all.
Jokes about menstruation are commonplace. Stereotypes paint women as moody, physically weak individuals who have no control over their emotions at certain times of the month.
No education about many of the symptoms that women learn to accept; the irregular bleeding, the severe pain that might be a signal that something is wrong, the disorders that end up being medicated with a prescription for the contraceptive pill instead of an investigation and a proper cure. We still pay a tampon tax and period poverty is something that teenagers up and down the country worry about.
Women distinguished in the arts, politics, sport, subjected to ridicule and abuse based on their physical appearance, their weight or what they wear, as opposed to their performance in their respective fields.
Internalised misogyny is so commonplace that women will frequently turn the same twisted words that have been used against themselves into insults or jibes for others. We’ve grown up with a discourse that is so prevalent that we don’t think about the phrases we use or how harmful they are.
Then when someone goes too far and there is resistance, the defence comes rolling in; ‘It’s only a joke, don’t be so sensitive’, ‘Cancel culture’, ‘You can’t say anything these days’. As with all the ‘isms’, and it’s no coincidence that those who use misogynistic slurs will often spout sectarian and racist bigotry, sexism needs silence to succeed.
Rather than defending the right to free speech at the expense of half the population, these are opportunities for us all to check ourselves, think about our words, and make improvements where we need to.
And we do all make mistakes. People say things and make remarks that they don’t really mean, without thinking of the impacts. The problem is that, every time rogue words and insensitive ‘jokes’ go unchallenged, the belief that
women are fair game is legitimised.
There is space for us all to learn, and in doing so we must be examples, and show example. It’s not just lads’ banter. Call it out. Don’t laugh along when you know it’s not funny. Pull your friend for remarks about his significant other. Be a friend.
Don’t ask ‘where she was’ or ‘what she was wearing’ about a victim of an attack. We have made significant progress. Sexism is no longer accepted as an official policy of the state, but we have a lot to do if we’re to treat women as true equals.
Until we’re addressing the barriers faced by women, and implementing policies that ensure they have the same opportunity, we’re perpetuating inequality. And whilst we have inequality, we’ll have a target for misogynists. Misogyny causes and allows violence against women. Addressing it is the only cure for it. �
Emma Sheerin is a Sinn Féin MLA for Mid Ulster and Assembly Equality spokesperson
Dedicated to the memory of ASHLING MURPHY
Following the launch of the Operation Achille report by Northern Ireland Police Ombudsman Marie Anderson PEADAR WHELAN sums up the reactions, implications and limitations of this shocking publication
COLLUSION
HIDING IN PLAIN SIGHT
A further chapter in a British state policy of collusion and murder that left up to 50 people dead, killed by the UDA between 1990 and 1998 was just one of the shocking conclusions from the most recent report of Northern Ireland Police Ombudsman Marie Anderson.
Reacting to the publication of Operation Achille, an investigation into collusion between British state forces and loyalist gun gangs Director of Relatives for Justice Mark Thompson highlighted the limitations of Police Ombudsman Marie Anderson’s findings.
Speaking at a press conference on Tuesday 8 February Thompson, citing the Ombudsman’s admission that her inquiry could only investigate 9 attacks that left 12 people dead due to lack of resources, disclosed that the inquiry “touched on” 27 killings and attempted killings while also blaming the South Belfast UDA for 50 deaths in the period under investigation by Anderson, from 1990 to 1998.
Solicitor Niall Murphy of KRW Law, also addressing the press event organised after the publication of Operation Achille stated that the report “represents a further chapter in what must be considered a state policy of collusion”.
In their commentary of the report, handed to the families on Monday 7 February after numerous delays, and 30 years and two days after the Sean Graham’s Bookies massacre, Murphy and Thompson were scathing of the role played by the RUC Special Branch in controlling and protecting the UDA killers responsible for nine attacks across South Belfast, between 1990 and 1998 that lead to the deaths of 12 people.
The men were addressing the press conference, on Tuesday 8 February, attended by family members of those gunned down by UDA gun gangs and whose killings were the subject of the North’s Police Ombudsman, Marie Anderson’s, Operation Achille report including that on the Sean Graham’s Bookies massacre in 1992 in which five people were gunned down, and one attempted killing linked to the South Belfast UDA.
Anderson’s report found that the RUC was controlling and protecting as many as eight
Anderson’s report found that the RUC was controlling and protecting as many as eight agents who were embedded in the UDA and were responsible for multiple killings and stated that the RUC was guilty of “collusive behaviour”
• The report showed the role played by the RUC Special Branch in controlling and protecting the UDA killers responsible for attacks across South Belfast, including the Sean Graham’s Bookies massacre
agents who were embedded in the UDA and were responsible for multiple killings and stated that the RUC was guilty of “collusive behaviour”. Thompson went further and accused the RUC of
“actions which constitutes the wholesale running of a terrorist death squad”. Indeed Thompson, as Director of Relatives for Justice which advocates on behalf of people killed by British state forces during the conflict, revealed that the ombudsman admitted she didn’t
“have the resources to take on a comprehensive investigation” into these incidents before pointing out that “in the early 1990s
UDA gangs across South Belfast were responsible for as many as 50 killings involving these same agents”. He also focused on the limited scope of the Ombudsman’s powers saying “the roles of MI5 and the British army’s undercover intelligence gathering unit the Force Research Unit (FRU) were missing from the report”. “These agencies are beyond the remit and powers of the Police
Ombudsman’s office”, said Thompson before revealing that a number of the loyalist agents involved in the multiple killings
“worked across these three agencies - Special Branch, FRU and
MI5”. Referring to the use of the term “collusive behaviour”
Thompson outlined how repeated legal challenges to various Ombudsman’s reports launched by former senior RUC members, particularly the report into the 1994 Loughinisland massacre had limited the
Ombudsman’s scope and prevented her from accusing former RUC members of the criminal act of collusion. Indeed in a 2020 hearing a judge ruled that former
MARK THOMPSON,
Relatives for Justice
• Police Ombudsman Marie Anderson
MAIN POINTS OF THE OMBUDSMAN’S REPORT
In her findings the Police Ombudsman found that the long-held concerns of the bereaved families and survivors about RUC conduct, including complaints of collusion with paramilitaries , were “legitimate and justified” .
Anderson said “collusive behaviours” identified in her report included: �� Intelligenceand surveillancefailingsthat led to loyalist paramilitaries obtaining military-grad e weaponry in a 1987 arms shipment �� A failuretowarntwomenofthreatsto their lives �� A failuretoretainrecord sand the d eliberate d estruction of files relating to the attack at Sean Graham bookmaker �� Thefailuretomaintainrecord saboutthe d eactivation of weapons, “ind icating a d esire to avoid accountability for these sensitive and contentious activities” �� Thefailureofpolicetoexploitallevid ential opportunities �� FailuresbySpecialBranchtod isseminate intelligence to murd er investigation teams �� A bsenceofcontroland oversightin the recruitment and management of informants �� Unjustifiableand continued usebySpecial Branch of informants involved in serious criminality, includ ing murd er and “turning a blind eye” to such activities.
• The scene after the 1994 Loughinisland killings – 'evidence of collusion is undeniable'
had “overstepped the mark” in finding RUC men guilty of collusion.
In his remarks solicitor Niall Murphy of KRW Law stated that “This report cannot be read in a vacuum, it must be considered in the context of other reports and the defence of ‘a few bad apples’ doesn’t work anymore, the whole orchard is stinking”. “There was an endemic policy of collusion in South Down, South, West and North Belfast, South Derry, North Antrim and Mid-Ulster, different police districts at different times, with different informers, different handlers, different weapons and different killers and different UDR barracks but the same policy. The blueprint remained the same and that is evidenced in this report”. Murphy name-checked various reports going as far back as 2007 when then Ombudsman Nuala O’Loan exposed, in Operation Ballast, 10 deaths linked to UVF killer Mark Haddock, a Special Branch agent in North Belfast. He also mentioned the Da Silva report on the killing of Pat Finucane as well as John Stevens reports into collusion and that of Michael Maguire into the Loughinisland killings. The “evidence of collusion is undeniable”, said Murphy. Among the findings of Operation Achille were those
'There was an endemic policy of collusion in South Down, South, West and North Belfast, South Derry, North Antrim and MidUlster, different police districts at different times, with different informers, different handlers, different weapons and different that reveal a clear pattern used by British intelligence agencies that allowed loyalist killers carry out their activities with impunity, killers and not least, the failure to warn people of loyalist threats to their different UDR barracks but the lives. In the case of former republican prisoner Sam Caskey who was shot in October 1990 the RUC failed to warn him that he was under same policy. The threat from the UDA. Also in the case of mother of two Theresa blueprint remained Clinton, gunned to death in her Balfour Avenue home on 14 April 1994, the RUC knew of at least three threats to the life of her the same and that husband Jim. Yet a senior RUC officer made the decision not to is evidenced in this warn him that his life was in danger. report' One of the most controversial aspects of the Clinton case is that a number of witnesses came forward and gave statements
Solicitor to the RUC identifying the suspected killer. These witnesses
NIALL MURPHY were willing to attend an identity parade but when they attended
• Special Branch agent and UVF killer Mark Haddock
• Desmond Da Silva report on the killing of Pat Finucane
• John Stevens • Michael Maguire
• Former Ombudsman Nuala O’Loan
Donegall Pass RUC barracks they found there were no protective screens which meant the suspect could see and identify them. These witnesses also claimed that the RUC read out their personal details, names and addresses, in front of the alleged killer and so out of fear for their own lives the witnesses refused to continue with the parade. The suspect was released without charge.
Incidentally the guns used to shoot Theresa Clinton dead were a deactivated Sterling sub-machine gun which the RUC handed over to the UDA knowing that someone within that organisation, believed to be UDA quartermaster and RUC agent, William Stobie, had the capacity to reactivate the gun.
The Magnum revolver also used in the attack was “stolen” from an RUC officer in 1991.
As with previous reports, not least the Maguire investigation
Names of those killed
HARRY CONLON
14 OCTOBER 1991 AIDAN WALLACE
22 DECEMBER 1991
PETER MAGEE JACK DUFFINJAMES KENNEDY
WILLIE McMANUS CHRISTY DOHERTY
IN SEAN GRAHAM’S BOOKIES ON 5 FEBRUARY 1992
MICHAEL GILBRIDE
4 NOVEMBER 1992 MARTIN MORAN
SHOT 23 OCTOBER 1993 AND DIED ON 25 OCTOBER
THERESA CLINTON
14 APRIL 1994 LARRY BRENNAN
19 JANUARY 1998
ANDERSON’S INVESTIGATION ALSO EXAMINED THE ATTEMPT TO KILL FORMER REPUBLICAN PRISONER SAM CASKEY ON 9 OCTOBER 1990
• Brian Nelson a member of FRU • Ken Barrett
• Still on public display – the RUC ‘donated’ to the British Imperial War
Museum the assault rifle used in the Grahams Bookies murders
into the Loughinisland killings of 1994 and Ms Anderson’s recent publication Operation Greenwich, the arming of Loyalist gangs with weapons imported into the Six Counties in the late 1980s from South Africa is crucial, particularly the ‘killing power’ the death squads attained through their access to the VZ58 assault rifle.
That the DUP linked Ulster Resistance movement was central to this smuggling operation tends to escape the media scrutiny it deserves.
Also that Brian Nelson a member of the British Army’s FRU and a UDA intelligence officer orchestrated the operation is also crucial to understanding the dynamic of British strategy in the late 1980s.
Arming the loyalists and using Nelson to target people, for example the targeting and killing of Pat Finucane whose anniversary occurred on 12 February, allowed the British to “take out” people they saw as a threat to their interests.
And in a grotesque example of the RUC’s disregard for those killed and injured in the Grahams Bookies attack the Ombudsman discovered that within weeks of the attack the RUC was in discussions with the British Imperial War Museum to ‘donate’ the killers’ assault rifle. It was eventually handed over in 1995 and in a macabre show of callousness to the families of the dead and wounded, it is on still public display.
If the story of the VZ58 is grotesque then the provenance of the 9mm pistol used in the killing of Aidan Wallace as well as the Sean Graham killings is incredible. The Ombudsman also uses the word “stolen” to describe how the semi-automatic pistol ended up in the hands of loyalist killers.
The Ombudsman outlined how two British Army issue SA80 rifles and two Browning 9mm pistols were handed over to a loyalist killer, believed to be Ken Barrett – the man convicted of shooting dead Belfast solicitor Pat Finucane.
Quoting from the Da Silva report into the Finucane assassination Anderson says that Barrett was instructed by a Special Branch officer to go to Malone Road UDR barracks and collect the weapons. A UDR corporal cited in the report claims he got a phone call from “the training department” on 30 January 1989 saying two “identified soldiers” would arrive to collect the guns.
The next day Barrett and another person arrived at the barracks and the corporal handed over the weapons.
When the corporal arrived back on duty on 2 February and was told the guns “were missing” he, instead of reporting this immediately, waited until the next day, 3 February before going to his superiors. His excuse for not alerting his superiors to the situation was that he hoped the weapons would “turn up”.
This report and others presents a clear body of evidence that exposes the central role of Britain’s intelligence services in the planning, organising and recruiting of loyalist killers for the sole purpose of mounting a campaign of sectarian terror on the nationalist community in the North.
This evidence is a clear indictment of successive British governments and proves again the intention of this present British government to close down all legal avenues of investigation into these actions. It is about burying the truth of their dirty war in Ireland. �
