He wrote a letter for child abuser – what was he thinking?
HOW gross would the crimes committed by former journalist Tom Humphries have to be for his friend, ‘The Sunday Times’ chief sports writer David Walsh, to decline to provide him with a character reference?
Six years after his sexual abuse of a teenage girl was first discovered, Dublin Circuit Criminal Court last week heard how former ‘The Irish Times’ sports journalist Humphries had manipulated and groomed his young victim.
Humphries began texting the then 14-year-old in 2008 on the pretext of helping her with schoolwork and camogie. However, the persistent messages quickly became highly sexualised in nature.
Humphries sent the girl pictures of his penis and asked that she send him explicit pictures of her body in return. When the relationship became sexual, he implored her to “be my whore” and said he would “love to see my gal with meat in her mouth”.
The journalist’s targeting of this vulnerable schoolgirl, who suffered from an eating disorder, was relentless. They exchanged more than 16,000 text messages between January and March 2011, when Humphries’s estranged family reported him to gardaí.
The allegations against him were the worst kept secret in the media and in April 2011 details of his alleged crimes were splashed on the front page of the ‘Sunday World’, which named the writer.
So, why then, 20 months later, when his book ‘Seven Deadly Sins’ was published in late 2012, did Mr Walsh refer to Humphries as “the most talented sportswriter I’ve ever read” and “a fine man”?
Was he unaware that Humphries was being investigated at that time for grooming and abusing a young girl? Was he aware of the ‘Sunday World’ story, published the previous year, which had named him.
Fastforward to Humphries’s sentencing hearing at the start of this month, where the disgraced former journalist pleaded guilty to two charges of engaging in a sexual act with a girl under the age of 17 and four counts of sexually exploiting the same child, and Mr Walsh was again willing to defend Humphries’s character.
In a testimonial letter, handed into the court, Mr Walsh described the defendant as a “hugely regarded, hugely respected national figure”.
Defending his decision to write the letter in ‘The Sunday Times’ at the weekend, Mr Walsh said: “The young girl whose trust Tom betrayed has suffered terribly from this crime. I wrote a personal character reference for Tom because we have been friends for 30 years and, despite the serious wrong he had done, I could not abandon him.”
This rather glosses over the terrible abuse meted out to Humphries’s young victim. He didn’t just betray this girl’s trust, he spent years systematically destroying her life. In a victim impact statement read to the court, the girl detailed the horrific impact of the abuse on her life.
“I suffer permanent flashbacks and severe panic attacks. I have had to block out my childhood from the age of 14. I lost trust in men, a loss of my childhood due to the ordeal of having to deal with the police, counsellors, solicitors and social workers all through the ages of 14 to 16,” she said.
“I had to deal with sexual encounters at such a young age with a man three times my age, which made me physically, emotionally and mentally ill.”
Did Mr Walsh consider the impact of his character reference on Humphries’s victim?
What must it feel like to know that this wretched creature, who manipulated her into sexual acts and robbed her of her childhood, can still elicit public sympathy from his mates in the media?
Mr Walsh has said that, given his long friendship with Humphries, he did not feel he could abandon him.
But he could still have provided support to his friend, if he wished, in private.
He did not have to compose a letter for a convicted child abuser in the hopes, presumably, that his endorsement would somehow mitigate any sentence that is ultimately handed down.
Mr Walsh was not the only person to submit a character reference to the court. A former inter-county hurler provided a separate testimonial in which he lauded Humphries for his years of voluntary service to the GAA and said he was shocked when he learned of his crimes.
This reference to the former journalist’s years of selfless volunteerism is in stark contrast to how Humphries manipulated his position of trust as an adult to abuse a child.
After initially advising the vulnerable girl on a personal difficulty she was experiencing at the time, Humphries then preyed on her insecurity and took advantage of her.
‘Did David Walsh think about the impact of his character reference on the victim of Humphries’s abuse?’
If his family had not taken the courageous and principled decision to report him to gardaí, then there is every chance he would have continued his abuse of the girl indefinitely.
Friends of Humphries, once one of the pre-eminent sports journalists in the country, may lament the wasted talent and the fact that his personal and professional life now lies in ruins.
But, people in positions of authority, which includes the chief sports writer of ‘The Sunday Times’ and former inter-county hurlers, must realise that the habit of writing testimonials for child abusers – extolling their respectable families or their professional abilities – are extremely damaging to their victims.
Humphries hid the fact that he was a sexual predator for years and any character reference, written by friends who were kept in the dark, is necessarily deficient. It doesn’t tell the full story.
Mr Walsh may say that he was acting in a private capacity when he authored a character reference for his friend, but ‘The Sunday Times’ will have to ask itself if it’s happy to be associated with a character reference for a paedophile who abused a child.