From top: Mural in West Belfast; Liam Adams (top); Gerry Adams and his late father
As Gerry Adams rose through the Republican ranks in West Belfast his father and brother were molesting and raping children.
How did the Sinn Féin President deal with revelations of abuse within his own family while suspected paedophiles were being executed at the orders of the Army Council?
Warning: contains inappropriate tweeting.
1942: Gerry Adams Senior jailed for 8 years for shooting policeman. On release from prison, he goes on to found the Felons’ Club, a political centre on the Falls Road in West Belfast, which serves as a social centre for ex-prisoners throughout the Troubles. In 1948 his eldest son, Gerry Junior (“Gerry Adams”) is born, followed by a number of other children, including another son, Liam Adams.
1964: Gerry Adams joins Sinn Fein. Maria Cahill, granddaughter of Frank Cahill, brother of leading Sinn Fein member and subsequent IRA Chief of Staff Joe Cahill, is reported in the Irish Independent, 20 October 2014, as stating that her grandfather recruited Gerry Adams into the IRA.
1970-76: Liam Adams is IRA commanding officer in the Maze Prison. He marries Sally Corrigan and their daughter Aine is born. According to a source quoted in The Daily Mirror on October 20, 2014, during this period Joe Cahill was photographed abusing a 14-year-old girl in his car and the photographs subsequently used to ‘turn’ him into a double agent. The Daily Mail, of April 19, 2014, also states that during this period, “Sinn Fein figures” were patrons of the Elm Guest House, a celebrity paedophile brothel in London.
1977: Liam Adams commits his first sexual offence against his daughter Aine, then aged 4. The abuse continues for the next seven years, while Liam and Sally are together and (following their separation in 1982) during periods of parental access.
1980: 100 Republican women protest outside the home of Sinn Fein politician and IRA man Martin Meehan against the abuse by his wife, Briege Meehan, of her stepdaughter, Mary Meehan, during his imprisonment.
1983: Gerry Adams elected as West Belfast MP and President of Sinn Fein.
1984: Liam Adams smuggled out of Northern Ireland to America, for unidentified reasons, where he stays for 8 months, initially living with priest Patrick Moloney.
1985: Liam Adams moves back to Dundalk, in the Republic of Ireland, where he subsequently works with Cox’s Demesne Youth and Community Project.
1986: Liam Adams’ daughter Aine, now aged 14, informs her mother Sally of the sexual abuse and rape perpetuated by her father. Sally informs the Adams family, including Gerry Adams, who meets with Aine.
1987: Sally takes Aine to Grosvenor Road RUC Station, where she reports the abuse. Under pressure, Aine does not press ahead with the case because of Republican distrust of the RUC. Sunday Life, December 20, 2009, quotes an ex-intelligence agent as stating that subsequently the RUC used its knowledge of the allegations to turn Liam Adams into a double agent.
1995: Gerry Adams tells Sinn Fein supporters in North Belfast that they should not report incidents such as child and drug abuse to the RUC.
1996: Liam Adams, now the most senior Sinn Fein party official in Louth, seeks nomination to run for Sinn Fein in the 1997 election. He subsequently withdraws his nomination, allegedly at the behest of his brother Gerry, and, according to Gerry Adams, leaves the party at this point. The same year, Gerry Adams’ autobiography ‘Before the Dawn’, in which he refers to Liam ‘affectionately’ as ‘our Liam’, and thanks him for his help, is published.
1997: Gerry and Liam Adams pictured talking and laughing together on a Sinn Fein canvass in Dundalk. The same year, Liam Adams chairs 40th anniversary commemoration at Edentubber for five IRA men killed in the Border campaign and introduces as the main speaker Sinn Fein National Chairman Mitchel McLoughlin.
1997-1998: Sexual abuse of a number of family members by Gerry Adams Senior is disclosed to Gerry Adams, who has ‘no previous recollection’ of the abuse.
1998: Liam Adams warns the media about a child abuse ring in Dundalk and Donegal.
1999: Liam Adams commences part-time work for a youth project in lonard Monastery in Gerry Adams’ Belfast constituency.
2000: 17-year-old West Belfast teenager claims in the Belfast News Letter, September 12, 2000, to have been shot by the IRA after having spoken out about being abused by a senior member of the organisation. This individual, an close friend of a prominent IRA chief, was allegedly allowed to escape to Donegal after admitting offences against young girls in the course of an IRA interrogation. Sinn Fein denies that this person was ever a member of the party and states that it knows nothing about the claims. The same year, Liam Adams confesses the sexual abuse of Aine to his brother Gerry Adams during a ‘walk in the rain’ in County Louth.
2001: The same year, Breige Meehan is elected Sinn Fein councillor for Newtownabbey.
2002: Speaking in relation to Catholic Church sex abuse, Gerry Adams states that the State “has to ensure that no institution in our community is immune from civic accountability”. The same year, a series of meetings commence between Gerry Adams, Aine and Sally regarding Aine’s allegations against Liam.
2003: Death of Gerry Adams Senior, who receives a full Republican funeral. Liam Adams ceases to work at Clonard. Statutory rapist Wally Bowens, having left Ireland with his 14- year old pregnant girlfriend, is reported by the People, August 3rd, 2003 to be posing as ‘Gerry Adams’ brother in law’.Continue reading →