Now perhaps Martin McGuinness was speaking yesterday, about Sean Brady, with no sense of irony. It wouldn’t be the first time a Sinn Fein leader ignored all potential accusations of hypocrisy to make a point. The point McGuinness was making yesterday was that Sean Brady, by being party to vows of silence by children abused by his priestly colleague Fr Brendan Smyth, should now consider his position.
This is ironic, of course, because McGuinness’ own Party President, Gerry Adams, would appear to have taken similar vows of silence relating to his own brother’s sexually abusing behaviour. Liam Adams, it is alleged, sexually abused his own daughter, Aine . It certainly seems to be the case that Adams made no particular effort to alert the police or other authorities to the allegations that his brother – working in close proximity to children – was a systematic child abuser and rapist (just like Fr Brendan Smyth).
Adams also seems to have taken his time to get round to highlighting the systematically abusing behaviour of his own father – previously revered in IRA circles.
The astonishing hypocrisy of McGuinness will, no doubt, be noted by other commentators. The parallels between the two cases are astonishing. Both men, it would appear, seem to have put their “causes” before the welfare of children. The causes were, on the one hand, Irish Republicanism and, on the other, Irish Catholicism. Both causes are now thoroughly tainted. But, then again, the tainting started long ago when Adams and his cohorts decided that the means to achieve political ends was to enter into a bloody and sectarian campaign of brutality and destruction, and when the Catholic Church came to the conclusion, decades ago, that it should undertake a systematic cover-up of clerical child abuse.
I’m rather of the view that anyone who, voluntarily, enters into a life-long “vocation” must have odd personality traits. It may be the case that both Sean Brady and Gerry Adams had troubled childhoods. We know that Adams’ own father was a child abuser. Studies have indicated that abused children often have personality disorders that might make them more likely to engage in violent or abusive behavior, themselves, in adulthood. But what we do know is that both these men have contributed to grotesque damage to this society.
It’s about time that society insisted that they – Brady and Adams – leave it in peace.
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