Rapist Attacked Victim Again After Hospital Leaked Her Information
Laws are in place to protect rape victims who wish to maintain their privacy while seeking justice but they likewise permit survivors come forward and waive that anonymity if that is their wish.
In 1993 Lavinia Kerwick became the commencement woman in Ireland to do so on the Gerry Ryan prove on 2FM, going public on live radio. Her account of her ordeal and her struggle to receive justice led to changes in the law.
Despite progress, some victims of sexual assault or rape who want to identify themselves are all the same finding obstacles being placed in their path, often by the courts themselves.
Since May 2019 The Irish gaelic Times has been reporting on one adult female's legal battle against a courtroom-imposed gagging order. This is the start fourth dimension we, or anyone else, can proper name her.
Aisling Vickers sits at a neat wooden kitchen table, a brightly coloured Orla Kiely styled fruit bowl to one side. Her home sits in a short row of houses tucked abroad on the outskirts of the pretty village of Enniskerry, Co Wicklow and inside walking distance of the Powerscourt country estate. This is the home she grew upward in and it is, she says, filled with happy memories, the domicile of eight siblings who remain close to this day. It has been modernised since and at present artwork and silver-framed photographs of her family adorn the walls, including a shot of her and hubby David on their wedding solar day.
It'due south a pleasantly well-baked morning when we come across, socially distanced, in Aisling's dwelling at 10am – a time negotiated to allow her to first drib her girls off at a local schoolhouse. She offers tea and java and makes lite-hearted small talk nearly her trial and error gardening skills (the extension looks out on to a rolling back lawn, the Wicklow Mountains raring up in the furthermost horizon).
"I feel very privileged to take grown up around here. Nosotros had a lot of liberty back then, we had the fields of Powerscourt, the hay bales, just playing and having lots of fun."
When Aisling was aged seven her father died from cancer, at just 48 years old, and that took its toll on her family.
"It was very upsetting, but being immature and not really understanding I didn't grieve for my dad until much subsequently on in life. My mother really did take up the role of both parents and she gave me everything I needed or wanted in life."
I was catapulted into a globe that nobody should exist catapulted into, in particular a kid
Two years after her father's death the summer of 1987 rolled in, promising to be yet another summer of hay bales, of squeezing the last drop of playtime from long summer evenings. Rick Astley was topping the charts and Johnny Logan had just won the Eurovision with Hold Me Now. Madonna posters plastered Aisling's sleeping room and she had learned off the words of Truthful Blue and Like a Prayer so she and her friends could sing them.
But that summer would bring terror, fright, cocky-doubt and shame into the heart and mind of a nine-year-quondam girl all the same trying to construct the world around her. It would encounter the innocence of childhood shattered for Aisling.
"I was catapulted into a world that nobody should be catapulted into, in particular a kid."
One of the families whose children Aisling played with were the Hannons, who lived about five houses up. She palled effectually with 2 of the younger Hannon girls, playing on the road, the fields and in each other's homes.
Declan Hannon was 17. Looking back she thinks now it might have been odd that he was hanging around these younger children and playing games with them. Only nobody thought anything of information technology at the time.
Aisling recalls one occasion at the Hannon home, similar to many others before it with the children running effectually, playing hide and seek, trying to notice the best hiding spot. Declan Hannon suggested to her they hibernate together in a shed in the thousand.
"Innocently I thought we were just hiding from the grouping." She now knows he was simply trying to isolate her from the group and she thinks perhaps he targeted her considering he saw her as vulnerable now her father was out of the picture.
Once in the shed Hannon raped the child. Shocked and terrified Aisling had no idea what was happening to her. Hannon told her non to tell anyone, that information technology was "our footling secret". "I was shell shocked. I didn't know whether this was normal, whether information technology was happening to everybody or what."
A couple of weeks later Aisling was over again in the Hannon abode, playing with the younger girls in their bedroom when Declan Hannon came in.
"He came upwardly with some sort of alibi to isolate me. He brought me into the boys' sleeping room and raped and sexually assaulted me. Once more there was always, don't tell anyone, nobody is going to believe you."
She says this warning made her experience similar she had washed something wrong and if she told anyone she would get into problem herself.
"I was completely naive, and upset and but didn't know what was going on, merely also petrified, absolutely terrified because I didn't know was I going to get into trouble, had I done something incorrect. I didn't want to talk to my mam nearly it or my family unit, so at the time I just forgot about information technology."
A tertiary attack came soon after, this fourth dimension Hannon bringing her to a wooded surface area near their homes and raping her exterior.
"I simply didn't know when this was going to cease or was this going to continue. I had a lot of shame at the time. I idea to myself I couldn't do this to my mother. If I told her, I'd get into so much problem. My dad had died two years earlier... I didn't want to put her through any more than stress.
"When I call up almost it now, the pressure that I had at the time for a nine-year-old girl was just phenomenal and to call up that he had done those things to me and that I had to work through that at that age and still non know what was going on."
The abuse came to an terminate after another girl walked in on the last attack – again, Hannon had isolated Aisling during a game of hibernate and seek and told her they would hide in a caravan.
I was in and out of counselling and all of that had an event on me equally a teenager, as you can imagine
The attacks ended with the summer and Aisling says she suppressed the knowledge of them until they all came rushing back when puberty hit a few years subsequently.
"My teenage years were very rough. I was in and out of counselling and all of that had an upshot on me as a teenager, as you tin can imagine."
The first professional person Aisling told most the rapes was a HSE social worker. This woman was satisfied rape had taken place and referred her to Crumlin children's hospital which as well concluded the rape allegation was credible. But somehow Aisling's instance fell through the cracks; it took a twelvemonth before anyone got dorsum to her and the xiii-year-erstwhile girl wrongly concluded she wasn't believed.
Eventually Aisling was referred back to the original HSE social worker for counselling during which she revealed only that Hannon had sexually assaulted her; she was at present afraid to mention "rape" as she believed the social worker hadn't believed the rape accusation. This omission would afterwards have devastating consequences in court.
All this time, Hannon continued to alive in the area. Social workers visited the Hannon home and told them allegations of sexual assault had been fabricated against Declan. Other families in the area were as well brash merely Hannon denied everything.
Aisling continued to work through the trauma of the attacks and she and her mother made the decision not to go down the legal route. It had been a turbulent few years for her and her mother wanted to protect her from the strain of going to court every bit a child. It's a decision Aisling agrees with to this day.
She and her hubby, David, were expecting their first child in 2013 when the telephone telephone call came. When information technology came, it felt as if she knew information technology was always going to come up some day; a telephone ringing or a knock on the door and a decision to brand.
The garda on the phone asked Aisling if Hannon had driveling her. She said he had but said she needed fourth dimension to make up one's mind well-nigh whether to brand a statement or not.
"I had tucked away a lot of that horror and moved on with my life. Simply information technology was e'er in the back of my head; should I have washed something. When the telephone call came it was like the calling, this is what I accept to do. I knew I needed to do my bit."
She talked it over with David and a week later the garda rang her again and she said aye, she would give a statement.
The Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) recommended prosecution in Aisling's case.
The second trial complanate over those HSE counselling notes where Aisling hadn't used the word rape when describing Hannon'due south attacks
This was the start of a seven-year journey, which would involve three criminal trials and a trip to the Supreme Courtroom. The offset trial collapsed when a witness became unavailable. The second trial collapsed over those HSE counselling notes where Aisling hadn't used the word rape when describing Hannon's attacks because of her fear of not being believed. Justice Deirdre Irish potato ruled that the prosecution had non properly disclosed the counselling note to the defence and put a stay on any time to come prosecution of the rape offences.
In order to endeavour for a 3rd trial the DPP would have to appeal this ruling. The DPP successfully argued in the Supreme Court that Justice Murphy had no jurisdiction to end another trial going ahead. A third trial began in March 2019, half-dozen years after Aisling first spoke to gardaí.
The jury began deliberations in belatedly March 2019. Every bit the courts had gone into the Easter holiday, the estimate asked jurors to continue deliberating over the weekend. That Saturday morning Aisling and her husband experienced as eerily repose what is the normally bustling cluttered court business firm on Dublin'south Parkgate Street. They had just popped out for a java when Aisling's phone rang: discussion had come back from the jury minder; in that location was a verdict.
I was just staring at the ground and shaking. Guilty. Guilty. Guilty. Guilty. Guilty. Guilty. On all six charges
Aisling and David rushed back to the edifice, equally did the lawyers on both sides. "I wouldn't consider myself a nervous person merely I was trembling, my stomach was churning. I saw the jury come out. I was shaking. Yous just don't know what's going to happen."
She felt at that moment her world would autumn autonomously if the words "not guilty" were read out. "He would take won. I knew in my center and soul that even if he was found not guilty, I still knew what he had washed and what kind of man he was, and so he could never escape that. Merely information technology was paramount to me that he would be held answerable and that people believed me."
The courtroom registrar took the consequence paper – the formal document on which the verdicts are recorded – from the jury foreman in preparation for reading out the verdicts.
"I was just staring at the ground and shaking."
Guilty. Guilty. Guilty. Guilty. Guilty. Guilty. On all six charges.
Hannon of Ramsgate Village, Gorey, Co Wexford was convicted of four counts of rape and two counts of indecent assail at diverse unspecified locations in Co Wicklow on dates between 1987 and 1989. He had denied the charges.
And then long as he could be named, the vi years of legal twists and turns and accompanying emotional up and downs were worth it
"It was similar the weight of the world had been lifted off my shoulders. The emotion came out. I only said thank you, thank you, thank you. My husband let out a big yelp... I just knew then he was being held accountable, these people believed me."
She said she didn't care what happened next, so long as his proper name was out there in the public domain, preventing him from harming anyone else. And then long as he could be named, the six years of legal twists and turns and accompanying emotional up and downs were worth information technology.
During the trial, lawyers for the DPP had asked the court – and the court agreed – to impose reporting restrictions preventing the identification of whatsoever parties, despite the fact that the 1981 Rape Deed already makes information technology a criminal offence to do so. That law besides means that the anonymity protecting an accused homo falls away upon conviction, unless naming him would identity the victim.
In May 2019 when Hannon was upwards for sentencing, Justice Michael White commended the infrequent backbone shown by Aisling in giving show on five unlike occasions over the course of three trials before he jailed Hannon for seven years. At the end of that hearing lawyers for the DPP again asked the judge to impose reporting restrictions on identifying either Aisling or Hannon. The judge agreed to practice so. Although Aisling was present in court, nobody on the prosecution squad had asked her for her views on this.
It was just in the post-obit days when she contacted this reporter to say she wanted Hannon to exist identified in news reports that she realised a error had been made. The estimate had imposed an order which couldn't exist lifted without everyone going back into courtroom.
This practice past the DPP of seeking orders to restrict reporting over and above the legal protections that are already in place to protect victims has become more than prevalent in the past five years, leading to difficulties for some victims who want to become public. Aisling says she believes it's "totally wrong".
She says the arroyo past the prosecution team led to a further two years of unnecessary court hearings and a protracted battle to non just have her assailant named merely even to place herself publicly and be freely able to tell her story.
"At the terminate of a trial and confidence it should be discussed with the victim, and you have the ability and so to either talk… or the ability to say nothing at all.
"I would take loved to have been afforded that at the time so I didn't have to get through the final 2 years," she says. But she is determined she doesn't have any regrets about going to gardai.
"They probably felt I wanted my privacy, and it wasn't an issue. But at that fourth dimension it was ever paramount to me to have his name published, irrespective of me and my name."
A courtroom hearing to elevator the reporting restrictions got put back a number of times. At i point Hannon, through his legal squad, even made the unprecedented submissions that the 1981 Rape Deed made no legal provision for rape survivors to name themselves and that what had become standard do since Lavinia Kerwick became the starting time person to go public when she spoke to Gerry Ryan in 1993 was, in fact, never sanctioned by the existing law.
Finally in October 2019 Justice White ruled that the defence were incorrect but he said he no longer had jurisdiction in the case as too much time had passed since the end of the trial and his hands were tied. It was too belatedly for him to lift the gag order he had imposed.
Hannon could now be named simply at that place was a fly in the ointment
Once again Aisling's example had taken an unexpected twist based this fourth dimension on court rules. The DPP went to the Court of Appeal. In the midst of a global pandemic the iii-judge courtroom heard submissions from both sides via video-link. Aisling was likewise able to tune in from her home.
On November 11th last the court published its judgment in the matter, ruling that the gagging order imposed by Justice White "was superfluous and ought not to accept been fabricated".
The Court of Appeal described Justice White'due south arroyo equally "disproportionately restrictive" and an "overly strict" view of when a judge's mandate has expired could deny an injured party the right to exist heard on an issue of very major importance to them.
Hannon could now be named but there was a fly in the ointment.
The previous month the very same courtroom had made a ruling in an unrelated instance which involved the prosecution of a adult female for murder of her child. The woman was found not guilty by reason of insanity and the DPP had sought a court society preventing her identification, citing section 252 of the Children Human action which prevents the publication of anything that would identify a child victim of crime.
In essence the judgment meant that a child victim of crime remains a child in perpetuity in the optics of the police force, until the legal loophole was fixed last April past a Bill pushed through by Justice Minister Helen McEntee.
Again Aisling would take to wait.
In May she was informed that despite the changes to the police her ability to waive her anonymity had to still be antiseptic in light of the order by Justice White. DPP officials told her they needed to go back to the Appeal Courtroom – six months afterward it had ruled White'southward order was superfluous.
On July 30th the DPP was able to raise the thing again before the Court of Entreatment. The Appeal Court informed DPP lawyers that their judgment from Nov stood and there was no longer any court club preventing the publication of the identity of Aisling. Finally Aisling could step out of the shadows.
When the Court of Appeal ruled Hannon could be named information technology came as quite a shock to Aisling to realise there was yet another restriction on her telling her story equally she saw fit, almost iii decades after Lavinia Kerwick told Gerry Ryan "my name is Lavinia".
Aisling says Kerwick's courage in speaking out was very empowering for her and she was moved to tears when she read Kerwick had used her Twitter page to pay tribute to Aisling, who at that stage remained an anonymous rape survivor.
Aisling, like Kerwick, wants to be free to speak out, to tell her own story and repossess her identity.
I've survived this, I've moved on, and I should be able to identify myself if I then wish
"These things happened to me but I've come out the other side and I fought for justice, this man is behind bars, I'1000 living a happy life, I have an identity, I am a person, I am a adult female, and to be able to talk as myself rather than being called a victim merely gives a little bit more empowerment.
"I don't want to be called a victim any more. I was his victim just I got control back once more when he was convicted of these crimes. I've survived this, I've moved on, and I should be able to identify myself if I so wish.
"I'm Aisling Vickers from Enniskerry, Co Wicklow. That's who I am."
Source: https://www.irishtimes.com/news/crime-and-law/my-name-is-aisling-woman-wins-battle-to-name-man-who-raped-her-when-she-was-a-child-1.4651980
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