This evening in London, Irish woman Margaret Kennedy will receive a major award. Few people in this country will have heard of her. Most of her work has been in the UK, where she founded a most unusual group eight years ago. In Ireland, however, she has been given the cold shoulder.
Margaret is being honoured with the Emma Humphreys Memorial Award, granted to those who, through their writing or campaigning, have raised awareness of violence against women and children. It is dedicated to the memory of Emma Humphreys, convicted in the UK for murder at the age of 16.
A child prostitute, and victim of child abuse, she had killed her 32-year-old boyfriend after he had repeatedly raped and beaten her. She spent 10 years in prison, until her sentence was quashed on the grounds of provocation. Her case changed legal history for the many women victims of violent partners. Anorexic for many years, Emma died in 1998 at the age of 30.
The award is a major event for those involved in the area of abuse. Margaret Kennedy has campaigned all over the UK on behalf of two groups - women abused by ministers of all Churches, and children with disabilities who have suffered abuse.
Her organisation, Ministers & Clergy Sexual Abuse Survivors, now has 250 members, mostly in the UK but a small number live in Ireland. "The women I have supported over the years," she says, "were sexually molested, coerced, exploited and manipulated into having sex with the clergyman from whom they sought help. They were vulnerable and looking for help, not for sex with their pastor. This must be seen within the continuum of sexual violation against women."
Margaret describes herself as a feminist Christian, and maintains her Catholic faith. About half the members of her group have been abused by Catholic priests.
Others were exploited by ministers of different faiths, and Margaret makes no distinction between Churches in this regard. The abuse of power, she says, is not confined to any one religion, and she has found uniformity among bishops and elders of all faiths in their negative response to the victims.
In Ireland, very few women have spoken out about this abuse of their trust at a particularly vulnerable time. We do of course know of the highly-publicised cases of Annie Murphy and Bishop Eamon Casey, and of Father Michael Cleary and Phyllis Hamilton. Margaret Kennedy is convinced that there are many more Irish women who suffer such abuse in silence, and she is keen to provide whatever support possible for them.
So far, though, her work in Ireland has mainly been in the area of disability and abuse. A specialist consultant in this area, she has been invited to train staff in a number of Irish institutions for people with disabilities..
She argues that abuse of disabled people, particularly children, is far more widespread than we realise. She points to American research, which indicates that disabled children are three times more likely to be abused than other children, and she deplores the apathy and lack of research which surrounds this issue in both Ireland and the UK.
In Ireland, Margaret experienced this apathy at first hand. She had received anonymously a copy of a damning report into the Kilcornan Centre, a Brothers of Charity institution for learning-disabled people in Co Galway. Alarmed at its contents, she wrote in December to the then minister for health, Micheál Martin.
She expressed her grave concerns about the residents' welfare. "You would think, as you read the report, that this was a Dickensian age!" she wrote. "It begs the question - where was the health board/Government in the scrutiny of such institutions?" The report, carried out by an independent group, has never been published.
Problems with the Kilcornan Centre and another Brothers of Charity institution were raised in this newspaper almost a year ago. Last week, both were added to the Redress Board list, and residents who have suffered abuse can now seek compensation.
There may be up to 100 abuse victims in these centres, and Margaret Kennedy has urged the Minister to provide independent advocacy for them as they are still resident in the same institutions they may now be seeking redress from. So far, this has not been provided.
Margaret herself was shocked at the lack of response from the minister to her letter; she received only a bare acknowledgment, and her attempts to phone and alert Department of Health officials to the plight of the residents at these Brothers of Charity centres were rebuffed in a similar manner. This, she says, is eerily similar to the silence surrounding abuse in past decades in the industrial schools, for which society is now paying so high a price. But who, she wonders, will care enough to pay attention to those among us whose disability means that we cannot speak up for ourselves?
Margaret Kennedy is a whistleblower of today. She should be listened to. She deserves better than the rebuffs she has so far received from official Ireland.