Events
On 14 April 1984, a newborn baby boy was found stabbed to death on White Strand beach at Cahirciveen, County Kerry. A local woman, Joanne Hayes from Abbeydorney, who was known to have been pregnant, was arrested and she and her family confessed to the murder of the baby. However, they later withdrew their confessions and admitted instead that Hayes's baby had been born on the family farm, had died shortly after birth, and had been wrapped in a plastic bag and buried on the farm in secret. Tests showed that the baby whose body was found on the farm had the same blood type – A – as Hayes and its (married) father, Jeremiah Locke. However, the baby on the beach had blood group O. The Gardaí nevertheless insisted that Hayes had become pregnant simultaneously by two different men (through heteropaternal superfecundation) and had given birth to both children, killing the one found on the beach. Another theory put forward was that the baby's blood type had changed due to decomposition.
Hayes was charged with murder but the charge was thrown out by a judge, and the Kerry Babies Tribunal, headed by Mr Justice Kevin Lynch, was set up to investigate the behaviour of the gardaí in the case. Judge Lynch found that Joanne Hayes murdered the baby on the farm by choking it to stop it crying, in spite of state pathologist Dr John Harbison being unable to determine the cause of death. The judge rejected claims by the Hayes family that they had been assaulted by gardaí, or that the confessions were obtained through coercion. The report of the Tribunal did not explain how Joanne Hayes and her family came to make confessions containing identical details of events that never happened.
Read more about this topic: Kerry Babies Tribunal
Famous quotes containing the word events:
“One cannot be a good historian of the outward, visible world without giving some thought to the hidden, private life of ordinary people; and on the other hand one cannot be a good historian of this inner life without taking into account outward events where these are relevant. They are two orders of fact which reflect each other, which are always linked and which sometimes provoke each other.”
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