Justine McCarthy: Vicky Phelan was the first among equals in facing down power

Vicky Phelan took a break from Twitter in August 2018. By that stage, many of us had feared she would be dead. It was six months after she revealed on the steps of the High Court that she had refused to sign a legal document forbidding her to speak about her €2.5 million settlement with Clinical Pathology Laboratories in Texas over her incorrect cervical smear test. On the same day, she said she had been told she possibly had six months to live.

Instead of quitting, she fought the system. That May she told TDs on the Dáil’s Public Accounts Committee she suspected defence lawyers had hoped “they were going to get a very sick woman [who] would be too sick to go to court”. Their mistake was underestimating a woman who believed in the power of an informed mind. She kept scrutinising files and medical notes and demanding answers from the Health Service Executive.

Even Vicky’s defiant spirit had a limit, though. That proved to be the condemnation piled on her by some Twitter users. Several doctors were among those who accused her of jeopardising the national screening service with her CervicalCheck campaign. By refusing to lie down and die quietly, she unearthed a systemic failure by the medical establishment involving doctors, the HSE and the Department of Health whereby women whose tests showed abnormalities but who were wrongly given the all-clear were not told about the errors. As a result of her tenacity, mandatory disclosure was placed on the national agenda.

Some doctors tweeted that withholding the information made no difference to the women’s survival prospects. To Vicky, that was disingenuous. As she told the Dáil committee, the longer you have had the disease, the shorter your future. Besides, it was “my information”, she pointed out.

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“I will be fighting to stay alive for the rest of my life so forgive me if I am angry and upset and fighting for change,” she said in her goodbye-for-now on Twitter.

‘The old ways’

Dr Gabriel Scally’s reports on the CervicalCheck scandal quote other women saying their doctors did not tell them because “I didn’t need to know” or because “it would make no difference”. One woman asked her consultant: “How will I be informed from now on?” “Watch the news,” he told her. Scally ascribed some medics’ attitude to “paternalism” and “verging on misogyny”.

Ireland is full of dedicated doctors but there are some who prefer the old ways and baulk at the prospect of greater transparency. To them, Vicky and her demands for reform posed a threat to the status quo.

Louise O’Keeffe posed the same threat when the State’s lawyers dragged her all the way to the European Court of Human Rights to establish that schoolchildren were entitled to be protected from sexual criminals in the classroom. Despite her victory, the State devised a legal system of redress that was so restrictive it disqualified numerous survivors who had previously issued legal proceedings but withdrew them after being threatened by the State’s lawyers they would be pursued for legal costs.

Louise proved to be another woman who knew the power of information and she used it to fight for other survivors. She demanded a meeting with the Taoiseach in Government Buildings, following which a review by a senior judge resulted in the widening of the scheme.

On the day Vicky died this week, Louise was back in the news, calling for redress for those who were abused as pupils in such fee-paying schools as Blackrock and Rockwell colleges, operated by the Spiritan order of priests. About 300 people have made allegations of abuse against 78 members of the order and lay staff.

In her own words: A tribute to Vicky Phelan

Listen | 58:46

CervicalCheck campaigner Vicky Phelan died this week, at the age of 48. Over the years, Vicky has joined us on a number of occasions as a guest on the podcast, sharing her story and her journey through treatment. Today we celebrate the life of an extraordinary Limerick woman who fought for justice for so many.

[ Vicky Phelan: Even heroes need to rest ]

As with doctors, there are many good priests. Tragically for children who were abused, there are others who embrace the principle that the reputation of the institution supersedes all else. Lucky for them, there has never been a scarcity of professionals to provide a safety net for that culture of secrecy, denial and brutal brinkmanship. Every time the Catholic Church tried to stop details of its sins against children from coming out, there were lawyers shielding it, whether it was the late Cardinal Desmond Connell’s aborted visit to the High Court in an attempt to withhold documents from the Murphy Commission of Investigation or the threat to sue the National Board for Safeguarding Children in the Catholic Church in Ireland (NBSCCCI) when its then chief executive, Ian Elliott, found that Bishop John Magee had mishandled abuse allegations in Cloyne.

Advice from lawyers

One of the last reports Elliott wrote in that capacity was an audit of the Spiritans in July 2012. By then, there were 143 allegations of abuse relating to 48 priests. Elliott criticised advice from lawyers that the order should not meet complainants, noting a “tension between legal advice and providing a pastoral response”. He also criticised the role played by psychologists and psychiatrists in facilitating the lethal rotation of abusing priests. He said: “Assessment reports appeared to believe that recidivism was low, based on poor evidence, often on simply what the accused priest said. There are examples of overly optimistic advice about returning the perpetrator to ministry following assessments.”

Yet another remarkable woman who recognised the value of information was the late Marie Fleming. She too went to the Supreme Court, except she was in a wheelchair with advanced multiple sclerosis and fighting for the right to be allowed to die with dignity. She lost her case in 2013 but the court stated there was nothing preventing politicians from introducing legislative measures for assisted dying.

[ Vicky Phelan obituary: A courageous advocate who gave a voice to Irish women suffering in silence ]

In an interview at her home in Annacotty, Co Limerick, last November, Vicky said she expected her death throes to be prolonged because she was a young and strong woman. She said she was haunted by the sound of the death rattle she had heard in another woman and was terrified her children would hear it in her. She asked Ireland for one final favour – that people in her circumstances should be allowed to die with dignity.

Following the posthumous praise poured on her in the Dáil on Tuesday, RTÉ reported that a government spokesman had dismissed support for an assisted-dying Bill currently before the house. No doubt, there is no shortage of lawyers, doctors, psychiatrists and psychologists on standby to protect this frontier too. That is, until the next Vicky or Louise or Marie surfaces to fight the establishment. Long may they all live.