Litany of errors that led to the smearing of Maurice McCabe

THIS week, the Charleton Tribunal into whether there was a smear campaign against Garda Whistleblower Maurice McCabe heard evidence of how a historical allegation of inappropriate touching of a child – which led to no charges being brought by the DPP – was resurrected in 2013 and 2014. HSE and Tusla workers told of their interactions with a young woman called Ms D in the tribunal. The evidence laid bare a number of glaring errors that culminated in the Garda whistleblower having an obscene, and much more serious, allegation against him circulated amongst gardaí and Tusla. 1 Laura Brophy, Ms D’s counsellor, told the tribunal that she initially called Keara McGlone, duty team leader for Cavan, Tulsa (then HSE Child and Family Services) to report allegations of a sexual nature and refer the case to the then HSE Child and Family Services. However, on August 12, 2013, Ms Brophy sent her written report about Garda McCabe to the HSE and mistakenly copied and pasted details relating to another woman, Ms Y, who alleged that she had been digitally penetrated, both vaginally and anally, by another named individual. The report also suggested that there was a threat to kill the victim’s father, and even though this was an entirely different incident, this was taken to be against Garda McCabe. This was included because she cut and pasted her report into one that she had prepared earlier and didn’t realise she had left a section of the previous one in the final version of the Ms D report. Ms Brophy said she only sent in the retrospective claim due to misinformation from a duty social worker that no report had been given before. The written report did not match the initial verbal report that Ms Brophy had given to Ms McGlone. Furthermore, Ms McGlone said she had not seen the written report from Ms Brophy until the tribunal showed it to her. Ms McGlone said that when she later received a verbal referral from a colleague about the case, it was consistent with the allegation from 2006. She then wrote to Supt Noel Cunningham on August 15, 2013, seeking a meeting to discuss the referral. Supt Cunningham had investigated the initial allegation against Garda McCabe in 2006. But she received no response from Supt Cunningham or any garda. Ms McGlone made no further attempts to pursue the case with gardaí. Laura Connolly, a Tulsa social worker, reviewed the file on April 30, 2014. She said it was her understanding that when they received retrospective allegations of sexual abuse they had to notify gardaí, which she did, even though it had already been investigated. Ms Connolly said ‘human error’ and ‘oversight’ resulted in her overlooking the fact that two different alleged abuse victims were named in the report. She sent the file to gardaí. It contained the wrong allegations that had been introduced as a result of the copy-and-paste error by Ms Brophy. In May 2014, Ms Brophy became aware of her error after being contacted by Ms D to tell her that the incorrect report had been received by gardaí at Bailieborough, Co. Cavan. She sought to have it returned to her but the file was not sent back until July 2014. And even at that stage, after the report was returned, details of the completely inaccurate threat to kill remained on the file. Maurice McCabe was at no time made aware of the serious allegations until he was finally contacted in September 2015, when he was written to about being a potential danger to his own children. It was at this stage that the series of events finally began to unravel and the mistakes became clear.