Kathleen should resign over this.
Trevor Casey from Closes Road, Fairhill in Cork was sentenced on Friday to 13 years imprisonment for the rape and sexual assault of the two teenage sisters of his former girlfriend.
The girls were 14 and 17 at the time. The Courts aren’t finished with him yet. He’s up for the sexual assault of another girl too.
Labour TD Kathleen Lynch wrote to the Judge on behalf of his family as did Labour Councillor John Murray. Who fucking cares if his parents are good people. Many evil people have good parents. The parents were not on trial here, their son who raped kids was. There’s war in the Northside of Cork over this with Kathleen Lynch refusing to talk to the press for a long while. It seems Eamonn Gilmore when asked to comment on it would not til he talked to her and said he couldn’t make contact. Then Kathleen released this statement:
I have received a number of queries about a letter I wrote, which was referred to by Mr. Justice Patrick McCarthy when he was today imposing a sentence of 13 years on Trevor Casey for a number of extremely serious sexual offences.
I do not know Treovor Casey personally, as I made clear in the letter. I do know his parents as good and decent people and when his mother asked me to write a letter to this effect, I agreed. It would have been cowardly of me to refuse to do so.
These are horrific offenses, for which Trevor Casey has been found guilty and the judge has imposed what he considered to be the appropriate sentence. I have no issue with the court process or the sentence imposed.
I have always been an advocate of proper support for victims of sexual attacks and believe serious offenders should receive and serve appropriate sentences.
My letter did not and was not intended to understate in any way the offences committed against the two victims in this case. I deeply sympathise with them and hope that in time they will be able to make a full recovery from their ordeal.
Kathleen Lynch T.D
Not good enough. Kathleen Lynch needs to follow what her own party said when Bobby Molloy resigned. Will Brendan Howlin ask Kathleen to resign?
I am of the opinion that no politician should be writing any letters to any judges for any reason connected to any sort of a court case unless it forms some part of evidence.
Our justice system is supposed to be independent and it is sullied if there is a perception there that a letter from a politician can have any effect at all on an sentencing outcome. If there can be no effect, then why write the letter?
I am extremely disappointed in both politicians.
Political Resignations? For bad judgements? What Ireland are you living in Damien? 😉
in fairness, she has apologied for her mistake:
http://www.labour.ie/press/listing/120870136285570.html
anyway, resign as what? molloy resigned as a minister, you don’t actually expect kathleen to resign as a td? she made an error of judgement and has apologised. if only most politicians did the same!
Dermot, she has apologised for hurting the victims however she hasn’t committed to not trying to interfere with judicial process in the future. She had no direct connection to the defendant so there can’t be any question that she was just using her status as a politician in an attempt to alter the outcome of the trial.
Resignations don’t happen in Irish Politics. In any other country if a politician was revealed as trying to get a child rapist a more lenient sentence and thus in a way condoning his evil actions then she would have to resign her seat.
However in Ireland the bar is set so high that nothing be it corruption, incompetence or moral degradation has so far proven to be grounds for dismissal. If the Labour leadership refuse to punish Lynch in some public manner then the next time a government disaster results in them calling for accountability and resignation then these claims will ring even more hollow.
However can we really blame the leadership of Labour. If Lynch was punished then the Irish people would rally to her side as if she was the victim in this case. We saw a Fine Gael minister only forced to step down (with regret from his leader) after racking up more allegations of corruption in 2 years in power than an entire Fianna Fail cabinet would manage in a full term and yet he still tops the poll in Tipperary. A Labour minister was found with male prostitutes in the Phoenix Park and he still gets elected each time with a doe eyed sympathy vote. We elect a Fianna Fail Taoiseach who clearly is so mired in planning corruption he can’t think straight and not only that but he gets enough of a personal vote to bring in a running mate who only 939 people wanted. We have a PD health minister who is asset stripping the rural medical infrastructure in exchange for a first class Dublin health system and in return the people of Dublin return her to power thus abandoning their fellow citizens.
Irish politicians don’t resign because the Irish electorate is more morally bankrupt than they are.
I don’t think the Labour TD in question gets elected on a sympathy vote, colm, particularly as it seems most people in the constituency (I live there) now appear unaware it ever happened. But it did hurt him, badly – went from poll topper in 1992 to last seat in 1997.
It came out on Morning Ireland this morning that she didn’t actually write to the Judge. She wrote a letter which was given to the judge, but was not addressed to him. Not sure if it was addressed to someone else, or just a “To whom it may concern” type of thing, but not quite as bad as originally described.
She still shouldn’t have done it. Most TDs nowadays refuse to write any letters to do with court cases, although it was a very regular practice until the uproar over Bobby Molloy.
I know it’s easier to rely on the “Child abuse! rabble rabble rabble” effect, but can someone explain what she actually did wrong? So far there are just vague allusions to her attempting to pervert the course of justice, claims that aren’t remotely borne out even by the material in the original post.
And where did she think the letter was going? Sounds like a total copout. It’s just as bad, the only difference is that someone else was the delivery boy. It was still a letter designed to plead the case for a rapist whether she gave it to the judge or his family did.
It is a cop out. It’s a bit fucking late for an apology Dermot. The standing of this guy’s parents being brought into this case is symptomatic of Ireland’s “ah, sure it’s only a bit of rape” attitude.
If she can’t be bothered checking where her correspondence goes then she’s not fit to be a TD and should resign her seat.
After speaking with other party members Kathleen Lynch decided that it was the wrong thing to do writing the letter to the Judge. This isn’t the first time that she has put her nose into things that are none of her concern. Her excuse is terrible and it shows that Katleen Lynch is all for doing things for a friend, nod, nod, wink, wink….an apology in this case is not enough. The fact that she states
‘I have always been an advocate of proper support for victims of sexual attacks and believe serious offenders should receive and serve appropriate sentences.’
shows that her letter was really only to let the Judge know he comes from ‘good stock’ and his parents might be upset having to visit their son in prison, would she have wrote the same letter for the rest of us? Katleen Lynch is old enough to know better.
Keith: She wrote a letter which was given to the judge, but was not addressed to him.
Damien: And where did she think the letter was going?
As I undertand it, convicts, including rapists, are allowed to have mitigating circumstances introduced at the sentencing stage. And if what i read in the press is a reliable guide, evidence of the convict’s character is allowed as part of that.
She was asked by defence counsel to supply a reference for them to use, which they did in their pleadings at sentencing.
Kathleen Lynch was an idiot to write a letter for somebody she didn’t actually know — it was his parents she referred to favourably.
There is a difference between what she did and what Bobby Molloy did. Bobby Molloy directly contacted a judge behind the scenes.
(And I also think it the logic of Kathleen Lynch’s point is perverted. Her case was that he came from “good stock” was meant to suggest he should get a bit of leeway. Wrong, Kathleen, so-oooo wrong. I take it as evidence that he had no excuse and should be treated more harshly. There might be some excuse if he’d been raised to not know better (i.e. came from “bad stock”), and prison could be used to rehabilitate him.)
im sure if kathleen lynch had 2 daughters in this situation, she would not be taking into consideration that the rapist came from good stock.
The first comment on this post is the only way…. NO interference in the legal system should be allowed/condoned/accepted/nodded and winked…..
It isn’t so long ago that a Supreme Court judge was ‘intercepted’ while walking his dog and as a result a drunk driver who had killed a mother was released. While the Lynch case is not the same it is just part of the nod and wink element….
Bye, Barry
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I voted for Kathleen Lynch last time, 2007 I think it was. This was before her letter scandal about that sexual assault case.
Her flier came through my door today so I logged on here to remind me what she did.
I’m still disgusted with her. Definitely won’t be voting for her this time or ever again. Labour should have kicked out her. I’m tempted not to vote for the other Labour candidate, John Gilroy but it would seem harsh to punish him for what Kathleen Lynch did.
D
Kathleen Lynch Has interfered with Judicial process The Minister of Justice
should take note and have her sacked.Its deplorable that she wrote a letter on
behalf of a rapist.The Labour party are as much to blame as they should have sacked her I will not vote for them again
I trust that noone in her family ever go through the trauma of rape.
Just saw her on TV she should hang her head in shame.
Annoyed and disgusted