How Joanne’s morality was put on trial
JOANNE HAYES was unceremoniously catapulted into the national spotlight and humiliated by the whole Kerry Babies saga.
The then 25-year-old’s entire life – and the real tragedy of the fact that her own baby was stillborn, and not murdered, in a field – was dissected as much as her morality and mentality. Every aspect was minutely dissected in a glaring and mercilessly unforgiving fashion.
The case rocked the country and remains to this day one of the most harrowing and high-profile of its time. As Irish Daily Mail writer Ros Dee later pointed out, it opened a ‘Pandora’s box of hatred and blame and misogyny and misery’.
And it all started when farmer Jack Griffin decided to go for a jog on Saturday, April 14, 1984.
He was running on White Strand beach near Caherciveen in Co. Kerry when he saw what looked like a doll lying on the rocks.
It turned out to be the body of naked baby boy wedged between rocks. He was the first of two babies found in Kerry, and was named Baby John before his burial.
Later that same day, Ms Hayes had given birth about 70km away in Abbeydorney to her own baby.
But Ms Hayes told nobody and buried her stillborn son on her family’s farm. At the time, she was a single mother of one and having an affair with a married man, Jeremiah Locke – who was also the father of her daughter.
As Ms Dee would later write, ‘for a nation that lived such a valley-ofthe-squinting-windows existence, where secrets were held fast and all kinds of dirty deeds were swept under the carpet, suddenly there it was, the dirty linen not only out of the cupboard, but hanging on the clothes line for all to see’.
Ms Hayes was soon in gardaí sights for Baby John’s murder after they discovered she had been pregnant. And they initially refused to take her up on her offer to show them where she buried her own baby.
At the time, the gardaí were criticised over claims they either assaulted or physically coerced members of Ms Hayes’ family to admit to having roles in murdering and disposing of Baby John.
Kerry Babies Tribunal Judge Kevin Lynch later found these allegations to be untrue.
Joanne Hayes was charged over Baby John’s death. The receptionist’s initial statement that she gave birth to an illegitimate baby boy in a field on her parents’ farm and could show gardaí his body was not initially believed.
Detectives insisted she gave birth to her baby in her bed and stabbed him to death before members of her family disposed of his body.
And they persisted in their theory the two boys were actually twins that she gave birth to and who had been fathered by different men.
But the day after she was charged with murder, her own baby was found on her parents’ farm.
Subsequent tests on Baby John showed he had a different blood group to Ms Hayes, Mr Locke and their stillborn baby.
The charges against her and her family were withdrawn a few months later.
The infamous case led to a controversial 82-day tribunal set up to look into the investigation against Ms Hayes and her family and claims they made about being coerced into making statements by gardaí.
However, the tribunal focused in detail instead on the morality of Ms Hayes having a relationship with a married man.
By the end of it, the gardaí were exonerated.
But some were later transferred out of the Investigation Section of the Garda Technical Bureau.
‘A Pandora’s box of hatred and blame’