THE GUARDIAN WRITER, THE IRA AND A HATCHET JOB ON ‘ME TOO’
You don’t get much lower than former journalist and secret IRA supporter Roy Greenslade’s attack on my motivation in going public, says
YOU may have missed the furore engulfing the former editor and journalist Roy Greenslade last week. That would be understandable, because despite most of the British and Northern Ireland press running the story since last Sunday, few from the Irish media, until yesterday, reported it.
Greenslade, in a column for the British Journalism Review, disclosed that he lived a secret double life as an IRA supporter and wrote articles under a pseudonym for the republican paper An Phoblacht while simultaneously working for the British and Irish media.
He has now become a member of Sinn Féin.
In a rambling, misty-eyed piece, he said he wished to explain to his grandchildren why he was a republican, while also writing about his support for “use of physical force”.
He didn’t declare it throughout his long career because he “needed a wage because I was on the verge of taking on a mortgage”. Principled, eh?
This was newsworthy stuff. Even the British prime minister “condemned” this revelation. However, given the Irish connection, involving a former senator who writes occasionally for this paper and who has had the public support of three former and one current taoisigh when discussing her abuse, it should have been reported from the outset — you would think.
In short, Greenslade is the reason I have been answering calls from journalists all week. Because, two weeks after I went public on BBC Northern Ireland’s Spotlight programme, Greenslade decided to attack my motivation for waiving my anonymity as a child abuse victim. You don’t get much lower than that.
In 2014, a few weeks after I waived my lifetime right to anonymity, I became aware of a Sinn Féin briefing campaign to some journalists and to its wider membership to attempt to discredit me in the hope the issue would go away.
Sinn Féin at this point was still trying to fudge it, and most of the journalists who covered the story at the time will remember this. Indeed, the public were appalled by the Sinn Féin reaction, which accused me — a child abuse victim — of casting a “slur” on the Sinn Féin party (since retracted).
So, my previous political history was raised by some online as a reason why I had decided to speak publicly, rather than deal with the substantive issue of just how wrong it was that the IRA had taken it upon themselves to hold kangaroo courts into abuse, and how appalling it was that the Sinn Féin party had a child abuser in its ranks for three years while some senior members in Belfast knew he was abusing children.
That was the issue, and I was entitled to speak about it. I did so for two reasons: to stop it happening to other children and because I became very upset about learning of the Liam Adams situation. That is what happens to abuse victims — disclosure triggers them, and it is what influenced Paudie McGahon to waive anonymity, again on Spotlight, five months after I did.
Despite this briefing campaign, I continued to take calls from journalists, and I appeared on countless occasions on live television and radio. Sinn Féin, meanwhile, has yet to answer — six years on — in any detailed manner the specific questions the BBC put to it.
And then, two weeks after I had gone public, Greenslade wrote a column in The Guardian, which questioned my credibility and criticised the BBC Spotlight Team. He was careful to say he wasn’t disputing my rape or, indeed, that I might have had a problem with how the IRA dealt with my abuse; instead, he insinuated that I had a credibility problem when talking about Sinn Féin because of my previous political history.
“Critics suggest that Spotlight’s presenter and producer were too willing to accept Cahill’s story and did not point to countervailing evidence,” he wrote.
Well, here was one hell of a problem, because the critics Greenslade was referring to, presumably, were Sinn Féin members — the very party I had accused of a coverup of abuse and the very party Greenslade failed to mention in the same article had his support.
I was devastated and traumatised by his piece, but I was also enraged — and I had every right to be. Here was a man with a powerful platform who had just told his paper’s wide circulation that a rape victim’s claims of how she was treated as a young woman should be weighed against her political history. So, I contacted
The Guardian through a solicitor. It doubled down.
In the same week, shortly after
The Guardian article appeared, former IRA director of intelligence and now deceased Sinn Féin Northern chair Bobby Storey sent what was reported as a “diktat” to Sinn Féin activists, which referred to my campaign to seek justice as “political opposition to Sinn Féin”.
There is no suggestion Greenslade knew of this memo; however, I would like to know now, given his revelations, if he did so. Regardless, trolling of me significantly increased after his article, and one month later, graffiti appeared on the walls in the area where I was raped.
At the time, several journalists complained about the Greenslade piece. Ed Moloney and Anthony McIntyre denounced him. Eamonn McCann described it as “ignorant, contemptible, a disgrace to journalism”. Malachi O’Doherty wrote on The Guardian website: “Roy, this is low. Lower still for being so transparently done in the service of the party. Apparently the only qualification for being a rape victim who deserves sympathy is to be a supporter of Sinn Féin.”
Ruth Dudley Edwards, in the Belfast Telegraph, pointed out that he had been a “long-term supporter of Sinn Féin” and ended with: “Is there any hope Rusbridger may remember that he’s supposed to care about journalistic ethics?”
Which brings me to Alan Rusbridger, who was Greenslade’s editor at the time, but who now claims not to have known about his support for the IRA. He could not fail to be aware, though, that Greenslade had previously written for An Phoblacht under a pseudonym — because it had been reported widely since 2008.
Indeed, these allegations had been made about Greenslade before, and O’Doherty’s comment was directly under the piece he wrote about me on The Guardian website. This evidence would suggest Rusbridger should have known there was an issue, but if he didn’t, he certainly should have when my solicitor’s letter went to the newspaper in 2014.
Indeed, The Guardian has confirmed to me that a reader complaint was received about Greenslade’s lack of transparency on his political affiliations. Rusbridger, as editor, was ultimately responsible for Greenslade riding roughshod over ethics in relation to this, but there was no insistence of retrospective disclosure or, indeed, a right of reply offered to me.
This is inexplicable and, therefore, Rusbridger’s public utterances on the whole disgusting episode fall far short from where I’m sitting.
Last week, I wrote to An Taoiseach and Minister Catherine Martin, because Mr Rusbridger was appointed by the Government to sit on Ireland’s Future of Media Commission in 2020. I think this should be reviewed, and I have received correspondence in return, and spoken to Micheál Martin. I am assured the Government is taking the matter seriously.
I also complained to The Guardian, which is conducting a review of all Greenslade’s articles on Ireland. Editor-in-chief Kath Viner stated: “If they wish to retain the trust of readers, journalists should always be open about their personal affiliations, as is made clear in The Guardian’s editorial guidelines on conflict of interest.
‘The Guardian has long held itself up as the bastion of women’s rights and championed abuse victims’
It is regrettable that this was not done by Greenslade in this instance. I can only apologise again that Roy Greenslade’s article was not handled appropriately in the first place.”
I am not in a position to reply fully to The Guardian’s response at present, but intend to do so after I have taken advice, as any sensible person would do.
The Guardian has long held itself up as the bastion of women’s rights and, indeed, championed previous sexual abuse victims. It is ironic, therefore, that it finds its reputation tarnished on this very issue by the actions of Greenslade, now retired.
The Guardian response joins a queue of apologies: from former DPP Barra McGrory on failings of the Northern Ireland Prosecution Service, the former Northern Ireland Chief Constable and even Sinn Féin, although it has now accepted a man who wrote a hatchet job on a rape victim as a member.
For Greenslade, who by now must be ruing the day he ever wrote about me, I have only one thing to say. Me too, Roy. #metoo.
Full disclosure: I am a rape victim who is not defined by her politics, either past or present. I also don’t like Roy Greenslade. Understandably.