Cahill: social services knew of my abuse but didn’t act
MAIRIA Cahill has called on social services to explain why they didn’t act after they were made aware of her abuse almost 20 years ago.
Ms Cahill went public with claims in 2014 that she was raped by an IRA member when she was 16, and later faced her alleged attacker in a Provo kangaroo court.
After a scathing report from the Police Ombudsman, she received an apology this week from the Chief Constable George Hamilton for police failings in the abuse probe. Yesterday she also said social services were told about it but failed to act. In an interview on BBC Radio Ulster she called for a proper explanation.
The Department of Health said it will respond appropriately when officials have properly reviewed the Police Ombudsman report.
“Social services were aware in 2000, that’s something that hasn’t been in the public domain,” she said.
“I deliberately didn’t put it in the public domain because I rang social services before it came out to give them a chance to explain. The response that I got was to thank me for my call. I really
want social services to step up to the plate and explain their actions in relation to this.”
She said the Ombudsman report stated that social services received an anonymous tip in September 2000, but closed the file two months later.
“I want to know from them why they also have failed us as victims,” she said.
While accepting Mr Hamilton’s apology, she called another from Sinn Fein’s president Mary Lou McDonald as “woefully inadequate
and cowardly”. Ms McDonald unreservedly apologised to Ms Cahill.
But Ms Cahill criticised her statement, saying she did not go far enough.
“I want them to admit that there was an IRA investigation into my abuse, that I was brought into a room to face my rapist by the IRA,” she said.
“That senior Sinn Fein members knew about my abuse from 1997 while it was continuing and they didn’t suspend him until
2000 and that I have been telling the truth and they have been covering up in relation to this issue.”
Ms Cahill is a grand-niece of prominent Belfast republican Joe Cahill, and made the claim that she and two other alleged victims were sexually abused by an IRA member.
Her alleged abuser has denied all wrongdoing and was later acquitted of rape and IRA membership when the case against him collapsed in 2014, when the three women withdrew their evidence.