Sex laws are a mess

Not everyone remembers that the former Taoiseach Albert Reynolds led a Government that was brought down by a mishandled child abuse issue. In that case it was the predatory gropings of the appalling Fr. Brendan Smyth. This monster was the first of a string of abusers to be outed. He had been abusing children for more than a generation and the whiff of sulphur was always near wherever he was stationed.
His religious order was the Norbertines. Aware of his reputation, they moved him on every time the murmurs of discontent broke surface, from parish to parish, between dioceses and from country to country.
To no avail. Nowhere and no child was safe. You couldn’t even sit alone on a bus…
When in April 1993, the Garda received an extradition warrant from the RUC, asking that Smyth be returned to the North to face child sex-abuse charges, the Attorney General’s office (under Harry Whelehan) sat on the request for seven months.
In November 1993, the authorities here learned that Smyth planned to return voluntarily to the North. In June 1994 he was sentenced to four years’ imprisonment after pleading guilty to 17 charges of indecent assault against children. These were just sample charges…
There was uproar when it emerged that Whelehan’s office had delayed the extradition of a monster. When Albert Reynolds appointed Whelehan as president of the High Court, the shit really hit the fan. Dick Spring led Labour out of coalition with Fianna Fáil and in due course Albert Reynolds resigned as leader of Fianna Fáil in November 1994, and later as Taoiseach. Reynolds’ Fianna Fail ministers also resigned, and the government fell. Harry Whelehan, the AG at the time, also resigned.
Reynolds was rueful after the events. It’s the little things that trip you up, he said. Ah yes.
CLOSE TO HYSTERIA
Taoiseach Bertie Ahern must be feeling grateful today that another sex scandal hasn’t done for his Government, at least not yet. The fury that swamped Michael McDowell over recent weeks in regard to the issue of statutory rape came damn close to sinking the ship and all who sailed in it.
To be honest, this was another disaster that snaked up out of the long grass when there was nobody looking. But somebody should have been looking. There’s a whole machine there to do just that. So don’t go feeling sorry for them all.
That said, everything about it was calculated to raise a rant – and ranting there was aplenty. If you’d set out to design an issue that would set the Liveline blazing you couldn’t have done it better.
As is often the case, the public reaction came perilously close to hysteria. Of course, those personally and directly involved in rape cases have every right to feel appalled and enraged and to demand a solution. But there was a lot of people raging out there for little reason but their own anger.
And there was a lot of people expressing concern for children who in other contexts have little good to say for, or about, children at all.
Of equal significance, the Government’s hapless handling of the whole affair allowed a lot of reactionary, and at times illogical, thinking into the light of day. Emotion transcended reason. All kinds of agendas were dusted down and thrown into the ring.
So the age of consent has been levelled, if that’s the word, at 17 – maintaining the fiction that girls don’t have sex at 14 or 15 or 16 – even as a library’s worth of research and a plethora of figures, for example births to teenagers, tell us of how it really is. That’s progress for you.
SEXUAL INITIATION
Enda Kenny nailed his flag to the mast. He didn’t think we should lower the age of consent for girls even if they were all having it off all the time. Just because they’re doing it shouldn’t mean that we accept that it’s right, that we suggest that it’s okay, or words to that effect. The law is about setting the standards that we want to aspire to. And more bollox to that effect.
How Irish. How stupidly Irish. The law isn’t about ‘setting standards’. In the case of sex laws, it is about deciding what is and what isn’t a criminal matter. And under this new legislation, we have made the most innocuous sexual acts between consenting 16 year olds – which happen all over the country, among teenagers, on a daily basis – subject to potential criminal prosecution. Thank you Enda. Thank you Michael McDowell. As a result of your incompetence, the likelihood of any 15 or 16 year old confiding in a parent, a teacher or in the family doctor about having sex, or seeking contraceptive advice, is greatly reduced.
When will we get real about these things? The actions of sexual predators preying on children and adolescents aren’t even in the same universe as the activities of teenagers fumbling towards sexual initiation and knowledge. In a mature society citizens don’t find this difficult to accept. But we’ve a way to go yet.
As I write this I am reading that Colm O’Gorman of the One-in-Four organisation has castigated all political parties for exploiting the whole mess. He’s right, but the pity is that the impact of his words is greatly lessened by his membership of the PDs. All parties means all parties. And Michael McDowell, as the Minister for Justice, is finally the one who has to carry the can for (a) the fact that the Government were forced to call for the fire-brigade; and (b) for the utter inadequacy of the laws they have now enshrined.
Hard cases make bad law, always have, always will. We’ll be back at this mess in jig time.