A RELIGIOUS campaigner who is alleged to have supported the parents
of the six children at the centre of the Roscommon abuse case did not
respond to media queries yesterday.
A court heard last year that a
“Catholic right-wing organisation” helped the parents secure a High
Court injunction in 2000 to prevent the children being taken into care.
During
this case, a childcare manager at the HSE separately told the court he
had been contacted by a woman called Mina Bean Uí Chroibín around the
time of the application.
She had said the family needed support rather than intrusive action by the health board.
The childcare manager said he had no evidence that she was involved in the application, but he suspected it.
Yesterday,
associates of Bean Uí Chroibín said she was not available to comment on
whether she had intervened in attempts by the health board to have the
children at the centre of the Roscommon case taken into care.
She
has previously insisted she had no involvement in the mother’s legal
battles and that her name should not have been brought up in court.
During
the 1970s and 1980s, Bean Uí Chroibín was a high-profile activist and
campaigned against what she once described as the “deliberate
destruction of the Irish Catholic Church”.
In 1994, she insisted
the Scoil Paipin Naofa school, housed on lands owned by her, only teach
the traditional Catholicism of the Tridentine faith.
The dispute
over religious education saw parents remove their children from the
all-Irish primary school and Bean Uí Chroibín clashed with the
Archbishop’s office after she allegedly banned diocesan advisers and
authorities from becoming involved with the school.
In another
incident four years later, she was one of a group of protesters who
disrupted a meeting at a school in Trim, Co Meath, where parents were
being given details of a new relationship and sexuality programme to be
taught to primary schoolchildren.
The Roscommon report published
this week by the HSE does not include any names, but it does refer to a
“Ms B” who contacted the Garda shortly after the High Court injunction
was secured in October 2000.
This woman told the Garda that anyone
who attended a case conference relating to the family would be in
breach of the High Court order. She said she was a teacher and that the
family had stayed with her the night before attending the High Court
case.
In her interview with the Roscommon inquiry team, the mother
of the children confirmed that the family had received help from a
group that had some local representatives and had been involved in
assisting the family with the High Court action.
“They got together with me and persuaded me differently,” the mother told the inquiry team.
In
response to a question as to whether the court intervention helped the
children, the mother replied: “No, I should have kept to the plan
[shared parenting]”.
Ms B also wrote to the then minister for
children asking that she write to the Western Health Board telling them
to stop “persecuting” the family.
The minister later responded that the
department had inquiries made on behalf of Ms B and advised that it
would be inappropriate to comment on an individual case.
The
report says Ms B was also present in court, along with other supporters,
in 2001 when the health board made another application for supervision
orders in respect of the six children. This application was adjourned on
a number of occasions.
A childcare manager also told the inquiry
that he received a letter, dated August 10th, 2001 from Ms B, describing
how workers from her organisation would help the family and indicating
that she had local workers involved.
She asked that the Western
Health Board withdraw all of their workers for six months to “allow the
children forget the threat of removal”.
SIC: IT/IE