Ex-SF chief Adams attends funeral of paedophile brother
FORMER Sinn Féin leader Gerry Adams was among the mourners as his brother Liam was buried in Donegal yesterday afternoon.
Liam Adams, 63, was a convicted paedophile who was found guilty in 2013 of raping and abusing his daughter. He was jailed for 16 years at Belfast Crown Court.
He was moved to the medical facility earlier this year for endof-life care. A small crowd gathered at St Eunan’s Cathedral in Letterkenny for yesterday’s funeral Mass. Mr Adams was later buried at Conwal Graveyard on the outskirts of the town.
The deceased man’s remains had been waked at his partner’s home in the Mountaintop area of Letterkenny since Wednesday.
Mr Adams’s funeral cortege was led by a silver Belfast taxi as it made its way on the two-mile journey to his final resting place after his funeral mass.
Gerry Adams did not carry his brother’s coffin but it was instead carried by a number of people, including three women.
Adams had given evidence against his brother in court.
However, Fianna Fáil leader Micheál Martin declared in the Dáil in 2014: ‘The effort to portray him [Gerry Adams] as taking action to support his niece is an obscene distortion of what actually happened.’ Under Dáil privilege, Mr Martin added: ‘In 20 years, he [Gerry Adams] did nothing to help his abused niece except tell the social services that she had head lice and lived in a dirty house.
‘He actively tried to talk her out of taking a case to the police. Even worse, he stood by as his brother moved between jobs in West Belfast and Louth where he [Liam Adams], an admitted child abuser, worked with children.’
Liam Adams had been receiving treatment for terminal cancer under hospice supervision after being relocated from Maghaberry Prison on humanitarian grounds.
Liam Adams began to abuse his daughter when she was just four years old and continued over a six-year period during the 1970s and 1980s. His daughter, now Áine Dahlstrom, waived her right to anonymity.
Her father was convicted of ten offences: three counts of rape, four of indecent assault and three of gross indecency. In 2015, Liam Adams lost an appeal against his conviction and sentencing.
The abused daughter first took the matter to police in the mid1980s. She did not pursue it further at that stage, claiming afterwards that detectives were more interested to hear information about her uncle, Gerry.
It would be another 20 years before she went to police again after finding out that her father was working in a west Belfast youth club attended by her own children. Liam Adams subsequently went on the run to the Republic, triggering a long extradition battle.
‘Small crowd gathered’