SO WHY DID IT TAKE 34 YEARS TO SAY SORRY?
Garda chiefs had realised the Kerry Babies probe was ‘negligent’ and blood test supported Joanne Hayes...
AFTER 34 years, the gardaí have finally apologised to Joanne Hayes for wrongly accusing her of murder during the notorious Kerry Babies investigation. However, that apology has already been condemned as ‘34 years too late’ by human rights and women’s groups.
Detectives, now retired, had insisted on pinning the baby murder charge on Ms Hayes despite her protestations and clear evidence that she might be innocent.
It is only now, after DNA test results have conclusively proved that she was not the mother of a baby boy named Baby John, that the force has said sorry, both in writing and in person to her.
However, even when blood test results back in the 1980s proved she was not the mother, there was still no apology.
Instead, Ms Hayes ended up being dragged before the infamous 1984 Kerry Babies Tribunal, which was set up just days after Garda management privately acknowledged to the Justice Department that
investigating officers in the case had been ‘grossly negligent’.
Yesterday, Orla O’Connor, director of the National Women’s Council of Ireland, said the apology was ‘of course too late’ while Colm O’Gorman, executive director of Amnesty Ireland, said it was ‘profoundly shocking’ that it took 34 years.
Neither Ms Hayes nor her lawyer Pat Mann were available for comment last night.
However, it is understood that gardaí were in touch with both through a family liaison officer.
And yesterday morning, Acting Garda Commissioner Dónall Ó Cualáin apologised to her in person and handed her the apology in writing. Later, Superintendent Flor Murphy said: ‘It is a matter of significant regret for An Garda Síochána that it has taken such a long time for it to be confirmed that Ms Hayes is not the mother of Baby John.
‘On behalf of An Garda Síochána, I would like to sincerely apologise to Ms Hayes for that, as well as the awful stress and pain she has been put through as a result of the original investigation into this matter, which fell well short of the required standards.’
And he added: ‘After all these years Baby John deserves the truth. Someone is Baby John’s mother. Someone is Baby John’s father. Someone knew his mother or father. People have carried a lot of pain and hurt over the last 30 years.’
‘It really vilified her’
The murdered baby, who had been repeatedly stabbed, was found on a beach 70km from the farm where Ms Hayes had given birth to her own baby. Garda suspicion that she was Baby John’s mother led them to charge her with his murder. And later, during the 82 days of the Kerry Babies inquiry, every aspect of her private life was exposed for a shocked and scandalised society to see.
This was because, at the time she gave birth to her own baby, who died at birth and had been buried on her family’s farm, she was a single mother having an affair with a married man.
Ms Hayes, who has never sued over the way she was thrust into the centre of one of the country’s longest-running murder mysteries, is understood to have taken the apology ‘well’.
While Ms O’Connor, of the Women’s Council, said the apology was too late, she added: ‘At the same time it’s important and it’s significant that there is an apology and also that gardaí are re-investigating the case.
‘It really is a reminder of how women were treated and how Joanne Hayes was treated, both from the Garda investigation but also from the tribunal.
‘It really vilified her, even though, at that point, all of the facts were clearly there.’
Mr O’Gorman of Amnesty Ireland, said: ‘Of course an acknowledgement of the injustice she was subjected to is always a good thing. But the fact that it’s taken 34 years for her to receive a public apology for being so publicly shamed and humiliated is something that I think we should all reflect on.
‘I think that anybody that is too young to remember what happened in 1984 will find it very difficult to understand just the degree of humiliation and attack that she was subjected to.’
No-one has been convicted of the murder of Baby John, who was stabbed in the heart and found wedged between rocks on a beach in Cahersiveen. A cold case review has been set up.
Ms Hayes’s initial statement that she gave birth to an illegitimate baby boy at her parents’ farm in Abbeydorney, and could show gardaí his body, was not initially believed. Detectives instead thought the 25-year-old receptionist gave birth to her baby in her bed and stabbed him to death before members of her family disposed of his body.
But the day after she was charged with the Cahersiveen baby’s murder, her own baby was found on her parents’ farm.
Subsequent tests on a section of lung taken from Baby John showed he had a different blood group to Ms Hayes, the man she had been having an affair with and the baby she gave birth to.
The charges against her and her family were withdrawn a few months later. Superintendent Flor Murphy said yesterday: ‘A viable DNA profile has been obtained from samples taken from Baby John in the course of the original investigation. This sample has been examined and compared, and as a result of this analysis, we can conclusively state Ms Joanne Hayes is not the mother of Baby John.’
He added: ‘At all times Ms Hayes has co-operated fully with An Garda Síochána.’
The controversial 82-day tribunal was set up to look into the events leading up to charges put, and later withdrawn, against Ms Hayes and members of her family.
But just days before it was established on December 13, 1984, then Justice Minister Michael Noonan laid out his proposal for a judicial inquiry into the case. The December 6 memo, drafted by Mr Noonan’s department, stated then Garda commissioner Larry Wren concluded that ‘some aspects of the original criminal investigation were being concealed’.
It added: ‘Officers conducting the criminal investigation into the death of the Cahersiveen baby were grossly negligent in their handling of the case.’
Mr Mann told the Mail in December 2015 that the internal review showed ‘that Garda management were already unhappy and concerned about the conduct of their own detectives’. He added: ‘It does now beg the question, why on earth did we then need to have a big tribunal to look into Garda conduct when the Garda and the government already knew what they were dealing with?’