DANA’S SISTER, Susan Stein, has engaged a libel lawyer in response to the presidential candidate’s statements about malicious and false accusations being made concerning sex abuse.
Ms Stein said last night her family had engaged Paul Tweed, a senior partner with Johnsons Solicitors, Belfast.
Ms Stein has said she stands over evidence her husband Ronald gave to a court in the US in 2008 where he said Dana and Ms Stein’s brother John Brown had admitted to him in 2005 that Mr Brown had sexually abused the Steins’ daughter, Susan Gorrell, in the 1980s.
Neither Dana nor Mr Brown answered calls to their mobile phones last night.
The sex abuse allegation was made during a court battle between the Steins, on one side, and Ms Scallon and her husband, Damien Scallon, on the other.
The transcripts show that the Iowa court was told the allegation was first made in 2005. A lawyer acting for Ms Scallon and her husband said that Ms Stein had allegedly known about the alleged abuse of her daughter for some years prior to 2005, but had continued to work with Mr Brown.
The court heard Mr Brown had denied the allegation while giving evidence by way of deposition.
Yesterday Ms Stein issued a statement to The Irish Times in which she said that as a result of comments made by Dana last week, she felt compelled to comment further on the case.
She said she was commenting in response to “accusations” made against her husband and her daughter in recent times.
She said when her daughter first told her of the alleged abuse she was 10 or 11 years old and very ashamed, frightened and embarrassed and did not want her father to know. She said she immediately contacted her sister Dana, who spoke to her daughter and to her and was also of the view that it would be better if their mother and father were not told and that they would “protect the family name” by not telling others.
Ms Stein said she was assured that her brother had received treatment and been cured and had asked God’s forgiveness. She said she had been told she should forgive him also. They then began working together again on the family business, Heart Beat, and this continued up until her husband, Ronald Stein, found out about the alleged abuse.
Ms Stein said Dana had been fully aware of the situation over the years. Dana had been in constant contact with Susan Gorrell about the alleged abuse, she said.
Mr Stein told the Iowa court in 2008 that “in January of 2005 John Brown called me at home and apologised for abusing my daughter for over a period of 12 years. He said he was sorry, he knew that God had forgiven him, and he would like to ask me for my forgiveness.
“I told him that this was a shock to me, I just learned this, and that – that I would have to think about it and then he asked well, what about Heart Beat, and I said you’re finished with Heart Beat, you will have nothing to do with Heart Beat, you will have nothing to do with my family.”
While Dana was not asked during the trial about the sex abuse allegation, she did appear to refer to it in an e-mail she sent to her sister Susan Stein in August 2005. The Iowa judge quoted the e-mail in full in his judgment.
Referring to Heart Beat, Dana wrote: “I know that the terrible manner in which John was forced from the company was nothing other than a business move to secure ownership. Is anything worth it?”
In a statement issued last week Dana said the allegations had first emerged in the context of a bitter court dispute between her family and the Steins in 2008 and had now “conveniently” re-emerged. She said she was sure the allegations were untrue because no action had been taken at the time.
