About Adams
There appears to be a double-standard at work in the press coverage of the Bishop Martin Drennan and Gerry Adams stories.
Eamonn McCann, 04 Mar 2010
Bishop Martin Drennan must wonder whether he would not have been better to join the Provos rather than the priesthood.
Drennan was among 24 Irish bishops airlifted to Rome on February 13th for a PR meeting with the pope on child sex abuse by clergy. On the previous evening, the Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams had been asked on The Late Late Show about his handling of sex abuse allegations against his brother.
The Galway bishop returned to a renewed clamour for his resignation. Abuse survivor Andrew Madden said that Church claims to have learnt lessons from the Murphy Report would sound “very hollow” if Drennan didn’t step down.
There is no accusation that Drennan colluded in child abuse or personally helped to shield perpetrators. What’s suggested is that, during his tenure as an auxiliary bishop in Dublin – September 1997 to July 2005 – allegations emerged which he ought to have known of, but about which he did nothing.
One notorious abuser served at the National Rehabilitation Institute in Dún Laoghaire – within Drennan’s area of responsibility – up to July 1998. Either he was culpably ignorant or shamefully unconcerned, say survivors. Either way, he should go.
Gerry Adams, on the other hand, doesn’t deny that he was told by his niece, Áine, in 1987 that as a child she’d repeatedly been raped by her father, Liam, the brother of Gerry Adams. The SF leader says that he believed her. But his story from that point conflicts both with Áine’s account and with facts subsequently unearthed by Suzanne Breen of the Sunday Tribune. For example, Mr. Adams says that he offered to accompany Áine to report the abuse to the RUC. She says he didn’t. He says he immediately disowned his brother and then had him “dumped” from Sinn Féin. The Tribune published photographs of the brothers seemingly at ease together at Liam’s second wedding and canvassing together for Sinn Féin during the period when the SF president says they were estranged.
There is no comparable accusation against Dr. Drennan, nor has any statement by him been undermined by subsequent revelations.
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