Adams' brother sought over alleged abuse

[pintsofguinness]

He is the MP. I believe it's his job! Our MP lets his fcuked up brother run about a youth club.
Jaysus....they wonder how clerical abuse was let go.

So did the police and social services

[pintsofguinness]

He is the MP. I believe it's his job! Our MP lets his fcuked up brother run about a youth club.
Jaysus....they wonder how clerical abuse was let go.

So did the police and social services

And so too did West Belfast MP.....Gerry Adams.

and he says he told them

[mylestheslasher]

If Adams told the youth club that they had employed a Paedophille then i think he took the right approach. If he did not then I think that reflects very badly on him. It may not be his direct job but I know I would expect that of my MP/TD.

However, most blame must go to Social Services and PSNI (although since he had not been convicted perhaps legally they cannot inform anyone of an allegation made against him, even if they were the ones that failed to act on the allegation)

What is most wrong about all this is that Gerry and not Liam is now the story and everything is about getting a kick at him. That tells me a lot about the media in this country.

[Gaoth Dobhair Abu]

If Adams told the youth club that they had employed a Paedophille then i think he took the right approach. If he did not then I think that reflects very badly on him. It may not be his direct job but I know I would expect that of my MP/TD.

However, most blame must go to Social Services and PSNI (although since he had not been convicted perhaps legally they cannot inform anyone of an allegation made against him, even if they were the ones that failed to act on the allegation)

What is most wrong about all this is that Gerry and not Liam is now the story and everything is about getting a kick at him. That tells me a lot about the media in this country.

Agree.
Why has this now turned into a Gerry Adams witch-hunt, the one at fault is the man who carried out the vile actions, also the Police and social services. Adams is on record as sayiing he informed Clonard about his brother, what more could he do. Alot on here sitting on a high horse, God forbid you were ever in GA's position, Christ the man suffered abuse himself from his own father.

[Minder]

If Adams told the youth club that they had employed a Paedophille then i think he took the right approach. If he did not then I think that reflects very badly on him. It may not be his direct job but I know I would expect that of my MP/TD.

However, most blame must go to Social Services and PSNI (although since he had not been convicted perhaps legally they cannot inform anyone of an allegation made against him, even if they were the ones that failed to act on the allegation)








What is most wrong about all this is that Gerry and not Liam is now the story and everything is about getting a kick at him. That tells me a lot about the media in this country.

Agree.
Why has this now turned into a Gerry Adams witch-hunt, the one at fault is the man who carried out the vile actions, also the Police and social services. Adams is on record as sayiing he informed Clonard about his brother, what more could he do. Alot on here sitting on a high horse, God forbid you were ever in GA's position, Christ the man suffered abuse himself from his own father.

I thought he said he was never abused by his father.

[Gaoth Dobhair Abu]

If Adams told the youth club that they had employed a Paedophille then i think he took the right approach. If he did not then I think that reflects very badly on him. It may not be his direct job but I know I would expect that of my MP/TD.

However, most blame must go to Social Services and PSNI (although since he had not been convicted perhaps legally they cannot inform anyone of an allegation made against him, even if they were the ones that failed to act on the allegation)








What is most wrong about all this is that Gerry and not Liam is now the story and everything is about getting a kick at him. That tells me a lot about the media in this country.

Agree.
Why has this now turned into a Gerry Adams witch-hunt, the one at fault is the man who carried out the vile actions, also the Police and social services. Adams is on record as sayiing he informed Clonard about his brother, what more could he do. Alot on here sitting on a high horse, God forbid you were ever in GA's position, Christ the man suffered abuse himself from his own father.

I thought he said he was never abused by his father.

Sadly abuse isn't just physical or sexual, can't imagine the emotional and mental torture he went through knowing what his daddy did.

[TirEoghaingodeo]

How the sins of the father came back to haunt Adams

The Sinn Fein leader's revelation that Gerry Adams snr sexually abused members of his family could mean a re-evaluation of his own role during the Troubles, argues Malachi O'Doherty

Tuesday, 22 December 2009

 

gerry Adams has disclosed that his father was a thug and a paedophile. It is an extraordinary revelation that will now feature in every history written of the IRA.

Gerry wants us to hear him as an individual speaking for a family, but it is inevitable that the character of Gerry Adams senior and his effect on his son will be examined for their historic relevance.

The question is: what formative influence, if any, did abuse and child rape play in the creation of the Provisional IRA?

Not much, if the father was an exceptionally evil and twisted man, for Gerry, however damaged he might have been himself, cannot be blamed for the whole movement.

But this disclosure, coming against the backdrop of revelations about abuse by priests and members of religious orders, prompts us to wonder just how sick the Catholic nationalist culture was.
Gerry Adams lived with a father, who was a brute, and went to school at the Christian Brothers - many of whom also were sadists.

He gives every impression of being a man who survived that, as did thousands of others.

Indeed some of his contemporaries merely laugh at the suggestion that the Brothers left them with emotional scars.

But those who faced beatings and abuse at school and at home hadn't much space within which to be relaxed and happy.

Perhaps that is a clue to why Gerry Adams writes so sentimentally about the women in his family background, for they provided some escape perhaps.

It may also be a clue to why he often speaks of the republican movement as a family.

He speaks as if his father besmirched the republican tradition, but with an understanding that the tradition itself is noble and decent.

But what if the anger that drove the war was an anger that should properly have been directed at fathers?

Gerry Adams senior was one of a generation of republicans in Belfast that included men like Joe Cahill and Billy McKee.

Would it be news to them that Adams senior was taking sexual release on the bodies of his children?

Gerry junior's claim that this has nothing to do with the party is probably a vain hope and a naive one if he really believes it.

The story raises questions about how the IRA conducted itself, in his generation, towards children.

It orphaned many, including the children of Jean McConville. That was not a conscientious attack on children, but much else that the Provos did was.

Thousands of young men were shot in the legs by them. They were made to lie on the ground and a gun was brought to the backs of their legs in a form of abuse that has strong sexual resonances.

Most of those young men were hoodlums and car-thieves and drug-dealers. Many were sons of republicans and their criminality was a revolt against violent parents.

The single greatest expenditure of small arms fire by the Provisionals was, therefore, in a generational war against young men, many of whom were motivated by violence in the home.

Many sex-offenders were shot dead by the IRA. Gerry says blithely that, even in the 1980s, he would have gone to the RUC and reported abuse to them.

That is implausible and can only have traction among those who don't know their history.

Any other republican who had reported Liam Adams to the RUC, who had done what Aine did, would have been shunted down to the border for a quiet word with Freddie Scappaticci and then shot in the head.

And any other paedophile who had raped a child in west Belfast would have been killed by the IRA, not reported to the police.

What we need now is not a political explanation of the IRA campaign, but a psychosexual one.

And the appaling prospect is that it fits within a yet-larger story of abuse and the contempt for children that festered inside the Catholic Church and the religious orders who taught the young Provos and their fathers.

The question over Gerry Adams is whether he would have become a ruthless warlord and devious politician if he had not been nurtured by a paedophile and educated by sexually conflicted men in black.

And Sinn Fein now has to ask itself whether it can afford to have its modern origins examined in these terms.

There are two possible way this could go for Gerry himself.

He is clearly managing intense personal questions about his past with aplomb. Others would break.

He presents himself now as the patriarch of a large and united family, bravely addressing its pain and moving on.

This may all be absorbed by the wider public as a huge credit to him. He would like us to see him as a compassionate and feeling man and he may succeed.

In that event, he will appear much larger than he is now.

But will he still fit in as the party leader?

He has already redefined himself in one stroke.

Just standing in a room with him will feel different now for many who thought they knew him.

The other possibility is that he will get mired in questions about his conduct. Whatever he says, the most likely reason for disclosing his father's abuse when he did was to remove his niece Aine from the centre of the story about abuse in the Adams family.

That can be read as monumental cynicism.

And the war itself, which he remembers as heroic and warranted, will be re-evaluated in the context of the culture of abuse out of which it grew.

Great family man and survivor, or twisted manipulator whose cynicism can now be explained by a background of abuse; these are the possible images of Gerry Adams that will prevail.

And the rest of the party must be feeling like helpless witnesses to his astonishing story.



Read more: http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/opinion/how-the-sins-of-the-father-came-back-to-haunt-adams-14607445.html#ixzz0aPoz0TLx



Probably the worst article i've ever read. Unionists seem to think the troubles arose in a vacuum, or because of child abuse, or anger towards abusive fathers that was turned against the Brits. Unreal

[mylestheslasher]

Indeed, there were plenty of child abusers in the RUC, B Specials and British Army - you know the ones that shot and beat kids of the street. What a ridiculous piece of journalism that is.

[pintsofguinness]

How the sins of the father came back to haunt Adams

The Sinn Fein leader's revelation that Gerry Adams snr sexually abused members of his family could mean a re-evaluation of his own role during the Troubles, argues Malachi O'Doherty

I didnt read past that bit.

[Puckoon]

If Adams told the youth club that they had employed a Paedophille then i think he took the right approach. If he did not then I think that reflects very badly on him. It may not be his direct job but I know I would expect that of my MP/TD.

However, most blame must go to Social Services and PSNI (although since he had not been convicted perhaps legally they cannot inform anyone of an allegation made against him, even if they were the ones that failed to act on the allegation)








What is most wrong about all this is that Gerry and not Liam is now the story and everything is about getting a kick at him. That tells me a lot about the media in this country.

Agree.
Why has this now turned into a Gerry Adams witch-hunt, the one at fault is the man who carried out the vile actions, also the Police and social services. Adams is on record as sayiing he informed Clonard about his brother, what more could he do. Alot on here sitting on a high horse, God forbid you were ever in GA's position, Christ the man suffered abuse himself from his own father.

I thought he said he was never abused by his father.

Sadly abuse isn't just physical or sexual, can't imagine the emotional and mental torture he went through knowing what his daddy did.

He didnt know until the issue with his neice reared its head. He never knew what his father was doing. At least thats what I took from his statement.

[Myles Na G.]

How the sins of the father came back to haunt Adams

The Sinn Fein leader's revelation that Gerry Adams snr sexually abused members of his family could mean a re-evaluation of his own role during the Troubles, argues Malachi O'Doherty

Tuesday, 22 December 2009

 

gerry Adams has disclosed that his father was a thug and a paedophile. It is an extraordinary revelation that will now feature in every history written of the IRA.

Gerry wants us to hear him as an individual speaking for a family, but it is inevitable that the character of Gerry Adams senior and his effect on his son will be examined for their historic relevance.

The question is: what formative influence, if any, did abuse and child rape play in the creation of the Provisional IRA?

Not much, if the father was an exceptionally evil and twisted man, for Gerry, however damaged he might have been himself, cannot be blamed for the whole movement.

But this disclosure, coming against the backdrop of revelations about abuse by priests and members of religious orders, prompts us to wonder just how sick the Catholic nationalist culture was.
Gerry Adams lived with a father, who was a brute, and went to school at the Christian Brothers - many of whom also were sadists.

He gives every impression of being a man who survived that, as did thousands of others.

Indeed some of his contemporaries merely laugh at the suggestion that the Brothers left them with emotional scars.

But those who faced beatings and abuse at school and at home hadn't much space within which to be relaxed and happy.

Perhaps that is a clue to why Gerry Adams writes so sentimentally about the women in his family background, for they provided some escape perhaps.

It may also be a clue to why he often speaks of the republican movement as a family.

He speaks as if his father besmirched the republican tradition, but with an understanding that the tradition itself is noble and decent.

But what if the anger that drove the war was an anger that should properly have been directed at fathers?

Gerry Adams senior was one of a generation of republicans in Belfast that included men like Joe Cahill and Billy McKee.

Would it be news to them that Adams senior was taking sexual release on the bodies of his children?

Gerry junior's claim that this has nothing to do with the party is probably a vain hope and a naive one if he really believes it.

The story raises questions about how the IRA conducted itself, in his generation, towards children.

It orphaned many, including the children of Jean McConville. That was not a conscientious attack on children, but much else that the Provos did was.

Thousands of young men were shot in the legs by them. They were made to lie on the ground and a gun was brought to the backs of their legs in a form of abuse that has strong sexual resonances.

Most of those young men were hoodlums and car-thieves and drug-dealers. Many were sons of republicans and their criminality was a revolt against violent parents.

The single greatest expenditure of small arms fire by the Provisionals was, therefore, in a generational war against young men, many of whom were motivated by violence in the home.

Many sex-offenders were shot dead by the IRA. Gerry says blithely that, even in the 1980s, he would have gone to the RUC and reported abuse to them.

That is implausible and can only have traction among those who don't know their history.

Any other republican who had reported Liam Adams to the RUC, who had done what Aine did, would have been shunted down to the border for a quiet word with Freddie Scappaticci and then shot in the head.

And any other paedophile who had raped a child in west Belfast would have been killed by the IRA, not reported to the police.

What we need now is not a political explanation of the IRA campaign, but a psychosexual one.

And the appaling prospect is that it fits within a yet-larger story of abuse and the contempt for children that festered inside the Catholic Church and the religious orders who taught the young Provos and their fathers.

The question over Gerry Adams is whether he would have become a ruthless warlord and devious politician if he had not been nurtured by a paedophile and educated by sexually conflicted men in black.

And Sinn Fein now has to ask itself whether it can afford to have its modern origins examined in these terms.

There are two possible way this could go for Gerry himself.

He is clearly managing intense personal questions about his past with aplomb. Others would break.

He presents himself now as the patriarch of a large and united family, bravely addressing its pain and moving on.

This may all be absorbed by the wider public as a huge credit to him. He would like us to see him as a compassionate and feeling man and he may succeed.

In that event, he will appear much larger than he is now.

But will he still fit in as the party leader?

He has already redefined himself in one stroke.

Just standing in a room with him will feel different now for many who thought they knew him.

The other possibility is that he will get mired in questions about his conduct. Whatever he says, the most likely reason for disclosing his father's abuse when he did was to remove his niece Aine from the centre of the story about abuse in the Adams family.

That can be read as monumental cynicism.

And the war itself, which he remembers as heroic and warranted, will be re-evaluated in the context of the culture of abuse out of which it grew.

Great family man and survivor, or twisted manipulator whose cynicism can now be explained by a background of abuse; these are the possible images of Gerry Adams that will prevail.

And the rest of the party must be feeling like helpless witnesses to his astonishing story.


Read more: http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/opinion/how-the-sins-of-the-father-came-back-to-haunt-adams-14607445.html#ixzz0aPoz0TL

Not a new theme:

Anseo
by Paul Muldoon

When the master was calling the roll
At the primary school in Collegelands,
You were meant to call back Anseo
And raise your hand
As your name occurred.
Anseo, meaning here, here and now,
All present and correct,
Was the first word of Irish I spoke.
The last name on the ledger
Belonged to Joseph Mary Plunkett Ward
And was followed, as often as not,
By silence, knowing looks,
A nod and a wink, the master's droll
'And where's our little Ward-of-court?'


I remember the first time he came back
The master had sent him out
Along the hedges
To weigh up for himself and cut
A stick with which he would be beaten.
After a while, nothing was spoken;
He would arrive as a matter of course
With an ash-plant, a salley-rod.
Or, finally, the hazel-wand
He had whittled down to a whip-lash,
Its twist of red and yellow lacquers
Sanded and polished,
And altogether so delicately wrought
That he had engraved his initials on it.


I last met Joseph Mary Plunkett Ward
In a pub just over the Irish border.
He was living in the open,
in a secret camp
On the other side of the mountain.
He was fighting for Ireland,
Making things happen.
And he told me, Joe Ward,
Of how he had risen through the ranks
To Quartermaster, Commandant:
How every morning at parade
His volunteers would call back Anseo
And raise their hands
As their names occurred.

[Hurler on the Bitch]

As I said in my earlier post, why is it gerry adams' responsibility to follow his brother around and alert everyone he comes in contact with of the allegations against him?

MP for the area knows of a paedo working with children.

Not an MP's job to vet people working with children, that's the job of the police and social services.

Hold on POG - an MP - Member of a British elected Parliament at that - is, in fact, a public figure. The reality is that by putting yourself forward for election you are accepting that your moral integrity will be open to scrutiny. Basically, any skeletons in the cupboard are fair game. GA has accepted that, in hindsight, he 'perhaps could have handled things differently' - that is, in essence, damage limitation on his behalf. As a man who walks and acts increasingly as if he is a world statesman, his legacy is on the line here. Sad fact is that his political obituary is in draft form and regardless of the part he played in bringing peace to Ireland, his credibility could be overshadowed by this episode which has festered for over two decades.

[pintsofguinness]

As I said in my earlier post, why is it gerry adams' responsibility to follow his brother around and alert everyone he comes in contact with of the allegations against him?

MP for the area knows of a paedo working with children.

Not an MP's job to vet people working with children, that's the job of the police and social services.

Hold on POG - an MP - Member of a British elected Parliament at that - is, in fact, a public figure. The reality is that by putting yourself forward for election you are accepting that your moral integrity will be open to scrutiny. Basically, any skeletons in the cupboard are fair game. GA has accepted that, in hindsight, he 'perhaps could have handled things differently' - that is, in essence, damage limitation on his behalf. As a man who walks and acts increasingly as if he is a world statesman, his legacy is on the line here. Sad fact is that his political obituary is in draft form and regardless of the part he played in bringing peace to Ireland, his credibility could be overshadowed by this episode which has festered for over two decades.

He walks like he's a world statesman?
I've said all I have have to say on the subject last night.

[ziggysego]

Liam Adams hands himself in to police over abuse claims

A brother of Gerry Adams, who is wanted in connection with allegations he abused his daughter, has turned himself into Irish police.

Liam Adams went into a police station in Sligo on Monday afternoon.

It is understood detectives there could not detain him because they did not have the necessary European arrest warrant.

Mr Adams left the station after giving police his name and address and saying that he was willing to be questioned.

Liam Adams' daughter, Aine Tyrell, has waived her right to anonymity to allege that he sexually abused her when she was a young child.

The PSNI has confirmed that it has issued a warrant for his arrest but it only covers Northern Ireland.

It is understood officers are working to prepare the necessary European arrest warrant but that it may take some time.

Earlier this week, Sinn Fein President Gerry Adams appealed to his brother to come forward.

Pressure

However, he has come under pressure after it emerged that he first knew about the allegation against his brother in the late 1980s.

Since then, Liam Adams has worked with young people in a number of different capacities.

Gerry Adams has said that he intervened to tell a youth group in west Belfast that his brother should not be working there. However the Clonard Youth Project has denied that it knew at any point about the allegation against Liam Adams.

Another community project for which Liam Adams worked between 2004 and 2006 has criticised the authorities for not alerting them about his past when his application for a post as a youth worker was vetted.

They say that the police and social services have "serious questions" to answer about his subsequent appointment to the post.

Liam Adams was also active in Sinn Fein in Dundalk in 1997.

The Sunday Tribune has claimed he intended to seek the nomination to be a Sinn Fein candidate in the area in the 1997 Irish general election but was defeated by a local hardliner.

However, Gerry Adams has said this was not the case. He told Irish radio on Monday that his brother was never put forward as a candidate, adding: "I moved very quickly to get him dumped out of Sinn Fein."

During the interview in which Gerry Adams appealed for his brother to hand himself in, he also revealed that his father, a veteran republican, had been responsible for acts of physical and sexual abuse against his own children.

Sourced BBCi: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/northern_ireland/8427516.stm

[Trevor Hill]

Gerry Adams has some serious questions to answer here. If as suggested that he knew about Liam's wrong doings for over 20 years then why did he do nothing about it. Liam worked with kids in both Belfast and Dundalk. Now lets forget that he is Gerry's brother for one minute here. If any of you knew that a suspected paedophile was working with kids, of any age, would you not want something done about it? The whole thing stinks and it is made worse that the man in question happens to be the brother of a high profile politician.
I understand that a lot of people have a problem with the police in NI and they may be reluctant to report certain things, but this is different. Crimes against children are the bottom of the barrel, the perpetrators do not deserve to be protected from the authorities, no matter who they are. The Gardai and the Catholic Church have come in for a lot of stick over the last few weeks because they protected abusers in the past. Gerry Adams is no different. He knew his brother was accused of abusing a child and, like the Church and Gardai he turned a blind eye because he thought the accused was beyond reproach.
If I thought that anyone belonging to me, be that family or friend, was interfering with children, I would not hesitate to contact the relevant authorities. If anyone on this board or in the rest of society would do anything different then they are as bad as the people who abuse children. Those same authorities, be that the police or social services also have a lot of questions to answer, but lets not blame the wrong people here, the person most at fault here is Liam Adams.