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A FALSE ALLEGATION that Garda whistleblower Maurice McCabe had sexually assaulted a child was included in a Tusla file because a caseworker failed to delete information from an old case.
That is according to RTÉ’s Prime Time, which cites a source close to the organisation.
The programme’s reporter Katie Hannon said that she has spoken to someone who has seen the document, which has yet to be released to the McCabe family.
She says the source claims the counsellor who included the allegation in their report claims that the issue was not a “copy and paste error” as had been believed. The source says the counsellor was working from a template of a previous referral.
In the process of typing up the document, the counsellor failed to delete the allegation of sexual assault.
Hannon says her source said the error would “jump off the page at you”, but was still used as a building block for subsequent complaints and files about McCabe.
Hannon also says that Health Minister Simon Harris’ account of the events does not tally with that of the girl whose allegation forms the basis of the file.
The creation and use of the file by Tusla and gardaí will be investigated by the Charleton Tribunal, whose terms of reference were released yesterday.
The tribunal is due to issue an interim report to the Justice Minister three months after it is established. Twenty days into witness testimony, Charleton will also inform the minister on its progress, its likely duration, the number of parties represented so far and any other matters that the Houses of the Oireachtas should be aware.
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I’ve a dog at home that knows what was going on here absolute smear campaign followed by one of the biggest attempted cover ups in decades disgraceful stuff
@Totalitarian:
Nail on the head.
Who was the girl who made the allegation or did she ever exist?
The girl was the daughter of a colleague of Maurice’s I think?
@Liam O’Reilly: You’ve got to assume that in the case of a real allegation someone, somewhere along the line is going to interview the alegged victim, and in this case surely she’d say wtf? Or words to that effect.
@Liam O’Reilly: she was 6 years old and McCabe had made a complaint against her father before the allegation, now she is suing tusla!
@ciaran: apologies her father was a garda also, I bet he has been offered early retirement
She was the daughter of a Garda who McCabe has suspended for gross misconduct. Absolutely disgraceful that a person could blatantly lie about such a serious allegation like that and that her father persuaded her to do it. She and the father should get jail time for it.
If she’s that young the guard won’t even be named.
Boeing – she was 6 at the time and you want to jail her?
This finger pointing and claims and counter claims is helping nothing here. Let’s get the terms of reference sorted and hope the public inquiry can get the actual facts. Whether this is possible remains to be seen be this he said/she said stuff is ridiculous.
@Boeing Lover: She’s a child. And as I understand it she, and by extension her family, have been dragged into this and are also a victims of all this mess. Perhaps because of misunderstandings like this her identity must be hidden.
@Anto Curran: lets ignore the allegation for now, stay focussed on how authorities looked at it as the “perfect” way to get at McCabe and follow the story from there to now,
eyes on the prize
The way I understand it is that she went forward with this claim in 2013 and said it happened to her as a 6 year old and that she is now in her late teens. No she should not be named due to her age but yes her and her family who are making the false claims should be held to the full force of the law. I’d rather be accused of murder than falsely accused of sexual assault on a child, absolutely despicable thing to do to someone just as a pay back
Quite something that we are living in a state that has used its resources to smear an honest man with the most heinous crime.. it’s unbelievable .. yet they voted confidence in themselves the other night and are now more focused on whether it should be Leo or simon and making sure to tell us how fantastic enda Kenny has been.. they seem to conviently forget they were the state while this was happening.
It’s funny how not so long ago the majority of people here had nothing but support for the gardai to get more pay yet all of this was going on it the back ground! I spoke to various ‘members’ who I associate with and there general consensus was even sickening… To them he was a traitor & a rat, turning on his own kind. In fairness 1 of the lads spoke the truth and said “what am I to say I agree with him, I am a young guard and my life will be made hell in my station if I say I agreed with him” I bet many felt that way but felt they had no option however, somethings lads said were terrible! In all honesty the faith in gardai from top to bottom has been shattered.
@LITTLEONE: The policing authority was also out yesterday expressing confidence in the commissioner and senior Garda management. The mind boggles.
@twit: the curriculum in Templemore needs to change, 6 months frog marching around Templemore teaches you nothing but insular us and them mentality
the link between promoption and politics needs to be broken, oversight needs real powers with actual consequences not just token powers, alas the list goes on and on
@For Connolly: doesn’t that say its own story.. having confidence in people who were behind this smear campaign.. something else..
She is now sueing tusla for all of this.She is a guards daughter,who Sgt McCabe reprimanded at work.story is it was revenge.
McCabe should sue the them and tusla in turn.. what sick twisted individual could ask his daughter to do something like that. I couldn’t bring myself to think of someone I love being abused in such a way , let alone use them as a pawn to seek revenge.
@ciaran: you’ve completely missed the point. In this comments section alone there has been claim and counter claims and his daughter did x and his daughter did y. You tell me how this helps the investigation into what really happened??
If we didn’t discuss it or hypothesize the government will sweep it under a rug. If we showed no interest the media would stop reporting we have every right to talk about this and try and make sense of the lies…
I Think The girls father is one of the cops that got mentioned in MC cabes whistleblowing
@Fionn Bohane:The ‘girl’ , now a young woman, denies what she had informed her counsellor way back in 2013 and blames the counsellor & Tusla for distorting her original claims:
This is quite disturbing – who was the actual villain of this piece? The young woman? Or was it the counsellor?
@John Flanagan: neither, the villans are hiding in plain sight, how obvious can it get?
@Anto Curran: I do not blame the girl, her snide father has some questions to answer, however after the false allegations were made o Sullivan described it as perfect !! now lets see what she top brass, journalists and politicians did from there, did not hear how tusla, DPP( used to legitimise the story) or gardai contacted McCabe to interview him about the false allegations. Now 8 years later they have run out of cover and the sordid dealings of our pillars of society are coming to light
Now Mk34 that just doesn’t add up. If you were reprimanded at work would you drag your teenage daughter into a fictitious sexual assault case for others to get wind of down the local. The consequence for the daughter would be far greater than the sergeant .
There’s more to this than meets the eye or ear.. !!
@Gareth Cooney: the fact is that the Garda was the subject of a complaint by Sergeant McCabe for having consumed alcohol on duty and it was the daughter of that Garda, the subject of the complaint, whose under age daughter subsequently made a complaint. The complaint was never the subject of a prosecution.
The inference of a retaliatory complaint is the only common sense inference to be taken.
There is and continues to be a relentless campaign to make innuendos against Sergeant McCabe.
It is important that these criminal libels by innuendo are complained of An Garda Siochana.
And the dog ate my home work……
@B9xiRspG:
Is the issue not that they were using another actual report as a “template”?
Which is of course incredibly unprofessional, dangerous and ultimately possibly criminally negligent.
This is being misreported as a template error, as if the official template (which you’d assume should be blank) always has the offence on it to start with and requires deletion every time. That couldn’t be right.
I really don’t understand the significance of this.
Instead of a “Cut and Paste” error, it now transpires this was a “Paste and Cut” error?
I.e. the “counsellor” copied another report, pasted it into McCabe’s, and then didn’t cut out the offending line?
So what?
It was still criminally negligent at the very best. Still appalling. Still disgraceful. Whether “cut and paste” or “paste and cut” doesn’t mean anything.
Was it deliberate and part of an orchestrated attack is what’s important. And people are going to have a lot of difficulty believing it wasn’t.
They obviously looked at it and came up with this lie as it didn’t seem as incompetent. It does. This ‘cut and paste’ and ‘template’ BS is a smokescreen anyway.
@jason bourne: it’s an after the event rationalisation. The third attempt may be more plausible but equally incorrect. It’s a process of refinement.
If TUSLA uses templates in this way, which I don’t accept, it would mean that all TUsLA reports are potentially contaminated. That is an appalling vista, if the assumption of use of a template is correct.
@jason bourne: you made remarks against me of which you can now be made accountable for in the upcoming tribunal ..i have not forgot you assault
How the Garda commissioner is still in her job and how the Government didn’t topple over this is unbelievable..
No pressure from the media for any of the parasites to resign,,the rte family are a big part of the problem here with their bias.
I’d be worried everyone would vote in the crowd that bankrupt the state. but ya she should definitely of stepped aside while the investigation is carried out.
@David Garland:
By all accounts the government was on the verge of collapse, temperatures in Dail Eireann were at boiling point but ironically Maurice McCabe’s calling for a public inquiry on the matter which was his right to so do took the heat out of it and provided the government an opportunity to negotiate their way out.
@Emmet O’Keeffe: if our so called elected TDs had any backbone they would have decided to set an example of all involved, so in reality nothing has changed
It’s Ireland, that’s what the country is about put everything under the carpet sure it’ll go away. Disgusting little country.
@David Garland: The reason the Garda Commissioner, Fitzgerald, Kenny and indeed the Government are still there is because WE the citizens have done nothing but put a lot of comments on line instead of organising a vigil outside the Dail until they leave, and i include myself in this. Having said that there appears to be a vigil organised outside Finglas Garda Station on Saturday afternoon, according to Niall Boylan classic hits 4fm the other day.
A galloping pig with a blind chimpanzee on his back could see through the bull sh#t ,copy and paste indeed .
watch this space, said counsellor will lose their job, top brass wont…………
Welcome to Ireland
@Liam Dunne: no they wont as ff/fg do not need another whistleblower, they are hoping kennys head will appease
Oh so it was a template error. That’s OK then. Cancel the Tribunal.
Tribunal = Cash bonanza for legal profession
This is a fantastic story they’re telling. I’m totally convinced.
@Dave Thomas: Yep, nothing to see here..move on. Oh look what Trump just tweeted!
People like Sgt MC Cabe will be destroyed to protect the corrupted ways of our upper echelons of Irish society. How many have been before ? No wonder being a whistle blower against such corruption is a hazardous unwanted job . Hopefully more will step forward to expose the most corrupted…
From the article….
“Hannon says her source said the error would “jump off the page at you”, but was still used as a building block for subsequent complaints and files about McCabe.”
So, a glaring error being purposely ignored to suit a dispicable narrative, or gross negligence which by amazing coincidence just so happened to involve the man whom the state needed desperately to be discredited at that particular time.
@For Connolly: I don’t accept that the error was made in good faith in the first place. What happened afterwards was the intentional dissemination of a false statement knowing the statement to be false but there is no way that it was initially accidental.
It was wholly intentional from start to finish.
AGS then used the patent,y false statement to send out serving and retired members of the force to discredit Sergeant McCabe.
There was Simone coordinating this dissemination process and being kept fully informed of that process.
@Tony Daly: “I don’t accept that the error was made in good faith in the first place.”
You’re probably right. The only thing that I find curious about that though, is that if the file was a stitch up, rather than an error, why was it done in such a cack handed way that the error would ‘jump off the page’. Plausable deniability?
Stinks.
@For Connolly: it was likely an incompetent fit up but a fit up nonetheless. Plausible deniability might be crediting those involved with too much.
I’d sat that the instruction was received on High to do enough to justify a referral to AGS.
The fact that there was no prosecution shows that it was all done in bad faith. Had it been a genuine referral it would have been acted upon with further investigation. It was enough that Tusla referred this to AGS.
@For Connolly: and why refer it to AGS at all if it was a Pen internal administrative mistake?
The government tactic is clearly to try and contain this until Friday, and hope that we all get rat arsed for the weekend and forget the whole thing. Move along folks. Nothing to see here
The cut and paste contrivance did not cut it.
Next let’s try the template thing based on another case and ensure that there is no confidentiality.
Absolute power corrupts
The comments won’t be open on this situation much longer I’d say.
@Louis Jacob: Great observation
right that’s TUSLAS error cleared up (before the tribunal) Harris works fast, 2nd excuse but whose counting
good work rte, the ministers involved need a tribunal to find these things out, how utterly convenient
The procedure is an interview, followed by drafting a statement.
The draft statement is then carefully reviewed for consistency with the notes or recording of the interview.
The complainant is then asked to read and to approve the draft statement, to revise it, and usually to sign it or else, if a minor, a responsible adult confirms the statement as an accurate account.
The template explanation is simply not credible.
No one would play so fast and loose with the process in this way and accidentally send a false and misleading account from Tusla to An Garda Siochana.
The explanation sounds like an ex post facto rationalisation.
I live in the Garda District concerned. I will post next my version of events. I am using the account given to David McCullagh by an RTE investigator the other night on TV and I am also using the events which were known locally since 2006. I have made sure not to damage anyone’s good name and I believe Sergeant McCabe was the victim of a smear campaign. Bear in mind that Julian Assange was accused of rape in Sweden and when someone threatens the establishment they resort to accusations of sexual impropriety against their victim. Remember no matter what Judge Charlton writes the senior Gardai will ignore it and continue on building their empire. Fianna Fail and Fine Gael will fully support them. Remember in my account, I am avoiding any opinion but trying to be objectve. I will write oin word docs and post when ready here. So stayed tuned in.
@Val Martin: redact names and print what you know today! cloak and dagger stuff has to stop, let any of the parties take issue in the libel courts and see how many takers there are
I would like to read your account where and when are you posting
@Val Martin: Planning to reinvent the wheel are you with new facts? If you ever had a full grasp of wrongdoing you should have turned it in. Your comments are next to nonsense, hard to understand and certainly cloak and dagger. Why would any person care about your so called ‘version’ of events? People want the truth, not another ‘version’.
Lies on top of lies.
This is not a something like a typo or a misspelling. “Accidentally” accusing someone of being a sex offender is clearly not something that could ever slip by the proof reading process.
The government, Tusla and the Gardai think we’re all morons and will swallow anything, even when their stories changes as often as the wind.
this just gets worse and worse, how dare you people insult my intelligence
@ciaran:
In our “betters” eyes, everyone outside of the golden circle is a Dutch Gold swilling layabout with the IQ of a small reptile.
Tribunal how often does that come around ? Looking forward to the world cup next year.
So it was just a coincidence that a complaint was made against Sergeant McCabe first place and then the complaint was made even worse by including a reference to another case.
I would hate to be the person standing over that explanation.
That bird don’t fly.
I’m utterly, utterly sickened by this whole thing. Fg, in the midst of this fiasco, voting confidence in themselves, FF displaying a true lack of balls by abstaining from the vote, O’Sullivan still in her post, lie after lie being told in the Dail, I could go on and on. Im so disillusioned with everyone in power and everyone coming up behind them. I wouldn’t trust a single sitting TD to take over the running of the country and that’s just sad. This whole affair has distinguished any hope I ever had of this country being run honestly and with accountability.
And never forget the complicity of rte and the Irish media in general in all of this. Had we real journalists, the entire shambles of ff/fg would have been brought down. But both parties saw to them decades ago.
@William Clay: when the appalling Terry Prone who can cause newspapers of records to redact the truth with a threatening rattle other tail also controlling via hubby the State broadcaster what do you expect? She knows where all the bodies are buried back to Haughey and is untouchable, only to be propitiated for favours by our leaders like some bitchgoddess. And they you’ve the other lad O’Bribe’em, corrupting said lawmakers and leaders in order to rob and steal a licence to print money so he too can control the horizontal and the vertical and this the minds of Sheeple and Shepherds. There is no hope.
@John O’Driscoll: edit: threatening rattle of her tail.
I’m surprised we the public can even comment on these articles, not long now though before the order to shut down comments come through I’d imagine. And then the clean up can begin, or should I say continue.
Wow , were being lied too . Now theirs a revelation .
8 years on from the Act giving rise to the Charities Regulator and still the powers of investigation and enforcement needed for him to do his job have not been created and/or not funded (information current as of 8 months ago in my personal experience). Apparently they’re still “building a list” of charities in Ireland. The ODCE is 25-50% under resources and it seems spends as much time shredding evidence against big corporate and individual malefactors as pursuing them. It took RTE i.e.nthe Prone and Savage fambly to decide yer man Kelly in Console was persona non grata of the year and should be thrown down by an investigations programme before either the Regulator or the ODCE would do anything about what the dogs in the street had been telling them for 15 months and more.
We had an Englishman in west Cork accused of murder 20 years ago and fitted up by the cops with dodgy witnesses and tortured ever since while being denied his right to Habeus Corpus. Scandals upon scandals in Donegal among get the cops there whom I once thought restricted their nefariousness to salmon poaching but in fact made it their biz to destroy families and tie explosives to masts and so on. The list is endless. State collusion in scandal after scandal, innocent lives wrecked and destroyed and tortured. Just what has to happen to bring this whole filthy dunghill down around the ears of those in whose interest this endless corruption of the State we all pay for exists and is perpetrated. What a disgusting little country this truly truly is.
Someone remind me what does everyone in state employment sign prior to commencing employment ?
@Catherine Mc: A retirement card for the one’s job they are taking over, bad joke…
Alois, that is a bad joke, I’m actually serious isn’t there something about secrets of the state acts or is that gone ?
@Catherine Mc: Suppose to be but it is a 30 or 40 year rule or something isn’t it before it is released???
So they could be seen as being very inept or just very nasty as too many things went wrong as they say for this to happen?
The cover up continues!
As I remember that crackpot FG senior advisor Michael Mortell saying the morning after the last election, he said “The people didn’t want to take their medicine”, and this is the disgraceful “medicine” they’re trying to dish out to us now!
If this is a copy and paste then show the two files and get an explanation on how you could use a graphic template.
I would love for the media to introduce us to the Garda who used his daughter for revenge. The poor girl is innocent of course and she should be left alone, but I think it’s time the Irish public got to know about a type of person who would use his own children as pawns in a game of revenge. Lets see this fuuuuuucker
Dear sir
Please find attached copy of my Garda Mc Cabes file, I would appreciate any comments or advice prior to submitting for review, and I will then forward with recommendation to forward to the director for approval.
Surely this would have been a minimum requirement prior to the file being considered factual,, at any stage, so for me a technical or administrative error just does not seem creditable.
Smells to me, like something that came out of the back-end of a horse.
Horseshit!
The problem with an erroneous allegation of child abuse is that the guilty verdict is reached the moment the allegation is made and there is no going back. There should be absolute fail safe guards in place to prevent this flippant and shoddy file creation and automatic compensation for any victim of such unprofessional imcompetence.
More lies
This is going to make an unbelievable flim in a few years time like the cover up of magdeling laundries the thruth will come out and passage of time will make it less shocking .
Do they not prove read what they type?
This latest iteration in the search to find the excuse to appease public disquiet and bury the whole affair under the carpet is as blatant, transparent and bald-faced lie as any that have preceded it. It was not a “copy/paste error”, it was not a “templating error”, it was a deliberate attempt to level an accusation of the most hideous kind against a Garda whistleblower with a view to not only besmirch his reputation, but obliterating it. Everybody involved at every level needs to be fired and have their pensions removed.
The notion we’re all been led to believe that the original allegation was made maliciously is frankly absurd. Because McCabe happened to reprimanded this woman’s father in the past that this explains everything just does not make sense. If it was a lie why not make it far worse than it was for one thing. This claim against McCabe might be the reason McCabe decided he was a whistleblower in the first place in order to explain why this girl was saying what she said to his wife. And the lie by him just kept getting bigger and bigger in order to explain away this incident.
@Stephen: you are factually incorrect and have the sequence wrong. You are spreading false facts.
Tony I accept your determined to believe a simple story of good verses evil, but the facts don’t back up the narrative shoved down our throats by the media. But continue to believe it if you like but I don’t sorry.
@Stephen: you are saying nothing, just vague innuendos. Meaningless and sly at the same time.
For the few who don’t understand the technical aspect, this Template excuse is put forward because the Copy and Paste wasn’t credible, though it was less incredible than this Template scam. Any document is proof read so it is lies, lies and more lies.
As a victim of Garda Gombeenism I kept Noirin and Farnces posted, and they replied, but they did nothing, so it was on their watch, and it was protracted and premeditated by their subordinates. So contrary to Noirin’s dying wasp sting, SHE HAS DONE WRONG, and it is harder for her to go than stay, it is harder for us if she says as it will cost us €200m to have het made immune to prosecution for what she inflicted upon the decent and upstanding citizen that is Sgt Maurice McCabe. She has ruined lives and now this pigtail madame insists on ruining more – and Kenny is a sheepish scoundrel that he didn’t sack her like he did her sidekick Callinan.
The message now is that crime pays and nowhere more so than if you are a staff member of law and order, in Ireland only. Why don’t we get the Brazilian Comissioner over here to investigate -he’d have ‘em all locked up and throw away the keys!
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