‘I felt I was running for my life,’ Burton told Jobstown trial
JOAN Burton had nothing to add last night to the harrowing evidence she gave during the Jobstown court case.
She declined to comment yesterday about the case which has become one of the major points of her long career in politics.
Instead, it was up to the Labour Party to issue a terse statement in which it said it noted the verdict.
It said: ‘We note the verdict of the jury announced earlier today.
‘The investigation of any criminal matter, and the conduct of any associated prosecution, is decided by An Garda Síochána and the law officers of the State who operate with complete independence from the political system.
‘As we have been all along, the Labour Party remains resolutely focused on our central tasks of holding the Government to account, and campaigning for decency, justice and equality in society.’
While the former tánaiste was staying silent yesterday, her evidence, and that of her special adviser Karen O’Connell, spoke of their sense of terror at being surrounded by protesters that day.
It was alleged that the men had, in Fortunestown Road in Tallaght, on November 15, 2014, falsely imprisoned Ms Burton and Ms O’Connell, restricting her personal liberty, without their consent.
In her evidence, Ms Burton said she felt she was ‘running for her life’ to escape surging crowds of anti-water charge protesters.
The former Labour leader’s voice shook and she became visibly emotional as she recalled the ‘wild’ crowd that had gathered.
She described how the windscreen of one Garda jeep she was in was smashed, and how she worried about where she would run to if the doors were pulled open.
She said she was subsequently hit on the neck twice, first by a ball and then by a water bomb, which soaked her hair and jacket.
Ms Burton said she was told by gardaí to move quickly to a side door of the church, where an unmarked car was waiting.
But as soon as she and Ms O’Connell were in, the car was surrounded by a large crowd, she said, which included a number of children. She had expected to be able to leave but this was impossible, she said. ‘There was a great deal of noise and shouting, and also banging on the car,’ she said.
‘People were shouting all the usual – b **** , c***. There was one woman towards the side and back of the car and she was enraged.’ The woman ‘wished all kinds of stuff on me – illnesses, death – she was just beside herself with rage’, said Ms Burton.
‘The banging on the car was very distressing. It was extremely intense,’ Ms Burton said.
She said she saw Deputy Murphy speaking into a megaphone, adding: ‘He looked pretty happy with himself, I have to say.’
Ms O’Connell described the crowds that surrounded her and Ms Burton as ‘an angry mob’, a ‘scrum’ and a ‘maul’, and said it was the most frightening experience of her life.
‘We were being pushed and shoved, an egg was thrown at me,’ she said. ‘I remember seeing a bottle being thrown. They were generally trying to prevent us from proceeding to the church.’
She told Dublin Circuit Criminal Court: ‘It was unlike any protest I had seen. I was concerned about the anger of the crowd and the fact it was going to be a very difficult situation to get out of.’
After the crowd grew during the event, she said gardaí advised that they leave by a side door.
They ran towards an unmarked Garda car, as the protesters ran towards them, she recalled.
They could not leave in the car as it was surrounded by protesters, she said.
She said the crowd screamed water slogans as well as ‘Labour, Labour, Labour – out, out, out’ and ‘horrible things’ like ‘I hope you die’, ‘Labour scum’, ‘you f ****** b **** ’ and ‘you c***s’.
Ms O’Connell said she believed they spent 45 minutes in the car, before gardaí surrounded them and ‘almost carried’ them to a waiting Garda SUV.
She said: ‘I was petrified, absolutely petrified. It was a horrible experience because I felt they were trying to get at us. If the guards weren’t there, I don’t know what would have happened.’ She said a garda physically pushed Ms Burton into the SUV, and she followed. As she did so, a protester grabbed her collar and had to be pulled off by a garda, she said. A protester smashed the windscreen of the SUV, she said, and she felt they were trying to get in. She noticed a lot of hostility to the gardaí, Ms O’Connell added.
‘There was a lot of hostility to gardaí’