Cancer scare was religious 'trigger'

MUSIC CAREER:PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE Dana Rosemary Scallon decided to place more emphasis on her Catholic "ministry" after she had a cancer scare when in her 20s, she said during her evidence to a court in Iowa in June and October 2008.

Ms Scallon said she won a talent competition aged 15 and made her first recording that same year. In 1970, when she was 18, she won the Eurovision Song Contest and her song was a number one hit throughout Europe. She had a number of other hits during the following years, she said.

However, in 1978 a growth was discovered in one of her vocal cords and it took about five years before she was “back into full swing”. The cancer scare acted as a kind of “trigger” and after that she began recording more religious music, some of which she composed with her husband, Damien Scallon. Her first inspirational album “charted in England and it was a very good seller”.

During the 1980s she made contact with the Sisters of St Paul in the US, where the nuns had a substantial business. She sang for the pope in New Orleans and discussed her religious music activities with Cardinal Law in Boston. After she had moved to the US in 1991, she made nationwide appearances on EWTN, a global Catholic TV network.

Her brother John Brown worked with the Sisters of St Paul on their music business projects and the nuns began to release Dana’s music. However, when her brother split with the nuns, Dana felt she could no longer stay with them. She released music on labels that were more Christian than Catholic and this created tensions with some customers, she said.

Around this time, in the 1980s, she and her husband, and her sister Susan Stein and her husband, and her brother John decided her music would be produced and distributed by Heart Beat LLC, which would be one-third owned by each of the three siblings or their spouses.

Another brother, Gerry, was paid by Heart Beat to produce and play on her recordings, while on some of her recordings her husband’s brother, Fr Kevin Scallon, spoke prayers.

Asked what she meant by “ministry”, Dana said she wanted to help affirm people’s belief in their faith. She had never been primarily motivated by money.

In response to questioning, she agreed that some ministries had become driven by money.

Heart Beat, when it started, was focused on affirming people’s faith but “it seemed that it changed its focus”.

Ms Scallon was an MEP between 1999 and 2004. In 2005 she and her husband established DS Music Productions LLC, with the DS standing for, at the same time, Damian Scallon, Dana Scallon and Divine Saviour. The couple then got into dispute with Heart Beat and the Steins over Dana’s music and its handling of royalties due to her.

“From April of 2005, they had been withholding my artist royalties and that was also very, very hurtful,” Dana told the court. “I had just come out of politics, I did not have another occupation, neither did Damien, we had three children at college, and we had a mortgage for a house. It was extremely, terribly hard.”

Dana denied the charge she had cut out Heart Beat so as to increase the profits of DS Music Productions. “No, no, no, that’s a very valid decision that any distributing company can make. It is not to destroy another company, it is just in order to support your own.”