Tuesday, February 04, 2025

'The only chance at some sort of justice': Michael Shine's victims on what redress should look like

GERARD MURRAY has a number of tattoos that are visible on his arm.

Each one depicts a bird or wildlife creature.

I ask him about them. It wasn’t one of those off-topic questions a journalist asks at the beginning of a difficult interview to break the ice.

The question just slipped out after we had wrapped up the interview and my recorder was switched off. 

They weren’t a loved one’s name in cursive text, a football crest or a scattering of Chinese symbols that men so often choose when they sit into a tattooist’s chair.

The answer was not what I expected. Birdwatching. It is both his hobby and his therapy.

Standing in the shadow of tall trees, the forest is the only place where he feels calm and free.

“Now when I look down at the picture on my arm I’m reminded of that feeling,” he tells me.

Gerard claims that his early life was marred by violent sexual assaults, both by disgraced doctor Michael Shine when he was just four, he tells The Journal and at the hands of a cruel Christian Brother teacher when he was in secondary school.

The trauma led him down a pathway dotted with drink, drugs, homelessness and suicide attempts.

Today, Gerard has been clean for decades and found stability in his home life.

But he is haunted by the memories of his youth and he insists that he will never move on until he finds “some sort of justice”.

He feels robbed of the opportunity to get this in the criminal court because of a Court of Appeal ruling not to put Shine on trial due to the long period of time between the alleged abuses and people coming forward about them. 

Now his only chance at “some sort of justice” is to take a civil case.

As the media and society evolves, there is greater conversation around the terminology used when reporting on sexual abuse.

Is it right or wrong to use the word ‘paedophile’? Does ‘survivor’ sound more empowering than ‘victim’? But there is one word that surprisingly causes just as much debate and discomfort – ‘redress’.

It is more palatable to take money off the table and insist that the pursuit of truth and justice is all that matters. But it’s not so black and white. Money talks after all. It sends a clear message to those who have suffered, and can prove that they have suffered, that the harm inflicted on them is recognised.

Journalist Allison Morris, in an interview with the Sunday World’s Crime World podcast last year, discussed Operation Kenova, which is an independent investigation into the Stakeknife scandal in Northern Ireland. She did not skirt around the topic of redress for the families whose loved ones were killed.

“People don’t like talking about money and civil actions, but money in some of these cases is really important,” she said, before adding: “While some people find it distasteful to speak about, I don’t particularly. I think (we need to) talk about the civil actions.”

Allsion Morris then went on to give the example of one woman she had interviewed.

At the age of 15 this woman was pulled out of school after her father was killed. She was forced to stay at home and mind her siblings because the family had lost its breadwinner and her mother, a young grieving widow, took on two cleaning jobs to put food on the table.

Children like this girl “gave up any hopes and dreams that they had,” Allison recalled. Had her father not been killed, she would have stayed in school and followed her dreams of a better life and financial stability.

While redress cannot undo the hurt inflicted on that woman and her family, nobody could argue that she does not deserve a token of recognition for all that she has lost, both on a human and financial level.

The financial toll of abuse

The same goes for the victims and abuse claimants of Michael Shine.

Some of these men left school early because the mental toll of what they had suffered impacted every aspect of their lives.

Others made wrong choices when they turned to drink and drugs to numb the pain.

Some advocates believe that steps to address the long-term medical and mental health issues affecting victims is where redress should begin.

Ian Armstrong claims that he was sexually assaulted by Michael Shine after he severed tendons in his hand in 1982 and was rushed to hospital for surgery.

He told me that a discretionary medical card should be offered to every victim as part of any redress scheme.

It would be a modest token of reconciliation from the health service, because many of the boys was assaulted during medical examinations or procedures.

The knock-on effect of this was that it led to many of these men living in fear of doctors or hospitals.

Peter O’Connor, for example, suffered burns to more than 90% of his body after an explosion during the Troubles.

Despite his need for long-term treatment and plastic surgery, he ran away from the hospital before he was due to be discharged because he was so afraid of Michael Shine – who he claims had sexually assaulted him just two months before the bomb blast during an outpatients appointment for a separate medical condition.

Separately, Cianan Murray has not shied away from talking about the fact that he cannot settle at night without taking a sleeping tablet. He once went on a night away and forgot to bring his medication, which left him pacing the floorboards of the hotel room all night.

His trouble sleeping began in the mid-1990s when he first made a statement to gardaí about the alleged sexual abuse.

The cost of decades worth of GP visits, prescriptions andcounselling appointments is a financial cross that these men must bear.

Trying to access money

An article on The Journal this morning describes how the victims and abuse claimants of Michael Shine are concerned that they may be forced into a battle for compensation, as the congregation of nuns that ran the hospital where Shine worked is trying to withdraw funds that were specifically designed to deal wtih abuse claims. 

The congregation signed an agreement the day before it sold the hospital to the North Eastern Health Board in 1997, and the text of it makes its express purpose clear. It is to indemnify the State against claims “arising out of or in connection with” potential liability in respect of possible claims of alleged abuse.

The money cannot be spent on anything else, but the debacle over this fund opens up a broader conversation about the role that redress can play in this case.

Besides individual payments to victims and medical cards, there are other things that Shine’s victims and abuse claimantssay that they need.

Access to psychological services is at the top of their list.

Gerard Murray was a part of the Scoping Inquiry into Historical Sexual Abuse in Schools run by religious orders, because he had been sexually abused by a Christian Brother. 

He said that the State pays for six counselling sessions for each participant in the Scoping Inquiry. But he was afraid to open up about his feelings because he knew if he did it would take more than that fixed number of sessions to work through the trauma. “Knowing there is a time constraint prevents me from opening up to the therapist,” he said.

Instead, the lifeline for victims and abuse claimants of Michael Shine is the support and advocacy organisation Dignity4Patients. It was set up after whistleblower nurse and trailblazer Bernadette Sullivan pulled back the curtain on the abuse scandal at Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital in Drogheda.

But every year its management must fight and argue the case for continued funding. Today it is running on threadbare staff and needs at least two more workers to cope with increasing demand for its services.

Even if the terms of the Agreement preclude any of this from happening – the victims and abuse claimants have a wish list for how that fund would be spent if they were handed a magic wand.

Perhaps if the Medical Missionaries of Mary were to come forward and outline the reason that they want to withdraw this fund, Shine’s victims, the abuse claimants and the wider public could understand why the Congregation has gone down this road. 

But for now we are left wondering, what do they want the money for?