Irish Examiner
February 5 2002
Recognising Woods' good efforts does not mitigate her wrongdoing
by Ronan Mullen
One evening in December 1996, Dr Patricia Casey, then a member of the Medical
Council and chairperson of the Council's Fitness to Practice committee,
received a visit from journalist Susan McKay.The case
of Dr Moira Woods, who had been accused by a number of families of professional
misconduct in her diagnosis of child sexual abuse in the 1980s, was the subject
of McKay's visit. As director of the
McKay's interview with Casey didn't go well. The doctor felt the line of
questions had taken an unusual turn when she was asked for her views on
contraception and divorce. She later wrote to the Sunday Tribune complaining of
this. As things turned out, Casey had completed her stint on the Medical
Council by the time the Fitness to Practice Committee heard the case. But when
the verdict came in last week it was clear-cut: Woods was judged guilty of
professional misconduct.
Her supporters have rallied to her cause. Last Sunday, the same Susan McKay who
made Dr Casey realise that investigating Woods was no ordinary fitness to
practise case, published a lengthy article reviewing Woods' background. It
covered Woods' protests against the Vietnam War in the 1960s, her long
relationship with the official IRA leader, Cathal Goulding, and her involvement with the Dublin Well Woman
Centre, the Rape Crisis Centre and the Irish Family Planning Association.
Woods campaigned against the 1983 pro-life amendment, and believed abortion was
less traumatic an option for women than adoption. Despite this, in 1985, Barry
Desmond appointed her to head up the new Sexual Assault Unit at the
What McKay does not mention is that Woods' methods of verification left a lot
to be desired. The Medical Council has pointed to practices which included the
use of anatomically correct dolls to obtain information from children as young
as six, asking leading questions of the children and omitting positive comments
by the children about their fathers. It was also found that she failed to
gather all the evidence available, failed to review cases or findings and
failed to act in the best interests of children involved.
Nor does McKay mention that Woods' work resulted in misery for some families.
One father spoke about the missing years when "birthdays were missed,
Christmas wasn't the same and children's milestones passed by unnoticed".
As a result of the Rotunda investigations, children were taken into care who were later returned to their parents. One man was accused
of abusing his daughter and it was a long time before he was allowed even
supervised access. Even now, he feels branded. "People will always look at
me and say: 'There's no smoke without fire.'"
Clearly, Woods did not take up her post in the Rotunda to ruin innocent
people's lives. And when she began examining children in the late 1980s, it
must have seemed like there was a huge task to be completed - to free as many
abused children as possible from their exploiters. Time was of the essence and
resources were few. But this cuts little ice with the medical profession
because, in law and in ethics, doctors are responsible for how they deal with
each individual case. A kidney specialist who removes the wrong organ is not
going to be excused on the basis of the number of times he or she had done the
operation successfully. Yet some journalists seem to think Woods' forays into
sexual politics somehow mitigate her wrongdoing.
Emily O'Reilly even hinted, citing Woods' friends, that the fitness to practice
investigation might be connected with Woods' involvement in the handling of the
X case. O'Reilly's evidence for this was that the complaints against Woods were
lodged just a month after the X case became public. With respect to O'Reilly,
and to McKay, they are missing something. Of course, they are right to bring to
light the good things Woods did. And it would be wrong to portray Woods as a
monster who saw abusers under every family bed.
Rather, her story is very human, and thus very complex. She was overworked,
under-resourced, under-trained and she was guilty of
errors that had unspeakable consequences for the victims. For all sorts of
reasons, not least to avoid repeating the same mistakes, we cannot shirk the
truth. And if Woods feels that the Medical Council got it wrong, she should
appeal to the High Court and, arguably, journalists should show some restraint
until then.
Unfortunately, many in the media seem to presume that a person with liberal views
on sexual issues cannot make mistakes in the same way as a conservative person
can. The Woods case is one instance, but last week RTÉ's
Morning Ireland gave us another example. Mary Raftery,
producer of the States of Fear series, was interviewed by her colleagues about
the agreement by religious orders to pay ?138 million
in compensation to former residents of orphanages and industrial schools. Raftery was presumably brought on to give an impartial
expert perspective but what we heard was highly partisan.
The religious orders were "very experienced in trying to get out of their
legal responsibilities", she told the nation matter-of-factly. Her
interviewer, A´ine Lawlor,
who interestingly was the narrator on the States of Fear series, barely
interrupted Raftery in the nine-minute interview.
Neither did she seek evidence for any of Raftery's
wilder assertions, including the claim that Micheál
Martin was moved from the Department of Education for having facilitated access
to department records during the making of States of Fear. Raftery
implied that Martin was replaced by Michael Woods because the latter was
"a very well-known conservative" who went on to do a deal with the
religious orders.
What sort of nonsense is this? The same sort of nonsense, it seems, that says
Woods is the victim of some dark conspiracy, rather than face the unpalatable,
unglamorous truth: that she made mistakes that doctors are not allowed make;
that innocent people's lives were ruined as a result and that she has now been
censured by her professional peers.
Raftery has done the State some service by
publicising the evils of abuse in residential institutions, even if some of her
evidence in specific cases has been shown to be shaky.
Likewise, Woods did good in the many cases where she
properly found abuse. But the issues are wider than that and campaigning
journalists and doctors who do pioneering work should also be subject to
scrutiny. Perhaps they might read the latest Sunday Tribune which contains the
harrowing tale of one of Moira Woods' mistakes.
A woman who the Tribune calls Fiona Walsh had her children taken away after
Woods judged that they had been abused by their father. "These people with
education can do nothing wrong," says Fiona. "All we were trying to
do was tell the truth."
Isn't it interesting - how Fiona unconsciously linked the fact that the truth
went unheard, with the misery loaded unto her family. If journalists are to be
faithful to their self-declared mission to serve the truth, and we'd better
hope they are, then personal prejudices must be parked at the door of the
office, not brought into the newsroom.