On 11 June 1999 an RTÉ television news announcer stated that on the previous day A 51-year-old former Sister of Mercy, has been found guilty of raping a 10-year-old girl.
Nora Wall, originally from the Nire Valley, had been the victim's guardian while the child was in care at St. Michael's Centre in Cappoquin in County Waterford.
The Sunday World has learned that depraved cleric regularly visited St. Michael's Childcare Centre in County Waterford where Wall – then known as Sister Dominic – was working.
A Kilkenny businessman read the newspaper and recognised Phelan as the woman who had made a false rape allegation against him, and the defence came into possession of this evidence.
However Mr. Denis Vaughan Buckley for the state said that the Gardaí were not aware of these matters during their investigations, and rejected the claim that there had not been full disclosure of evidence, saying that these issues were not relevant to the case.
The director of the Dublin Rape Crisis Centre, Olive Braiden, welcomed the imposition of a maximum sentence, and said it would ensure that Nora Wall would be monitored for the rest of her life to prevent recurrence.
We beg anyone who was abused whilst in our care to go to the Gardaí.Even after the collapse of the case against the two accused, the Sisters of Mercy made no effort to apologise to Wall or to withdraw their statement of support for Walsh.
[18] At the Court of Criminal Appeal on 22 November 1999, the DPP accepted "fully and ungrudgingly" that former nun Wall and McCabe are entitled to be presumed innocent of all charges brought against them.
At the court hearing a lawyer for the DPP said he "very much regrets the errors which occurred in relation to the handling of this case by the prosecution" which led to the successful appeal.
The DPP's statement outlined the sequence of events from the decision to prosecute on 24 April 1997 up to their release by the Court of Criminal Appeal, initially on bail, in July just days after they had been sentenced to life and 12 years respectively.
He said the DPP had considered the transcript of evidence that was given at the trial together with additional information obtained by the Gardaí and had concluded that it would not be proper to proceed with his application for a retrial.
According to Irish Independent journalist Aideen Sheehan, Buckley shook hands, looking taken aback at the unexpected gesture, so rare coming from the opposing side after such a serious criminal trial.
After her acquittal, Nora Wall was asked by journalist Kevin Moore what she planned to do with the rest of her life: Well, I suppose to be practical and realistic people at my age are taking early retirement and being made redundant.
[1]Nora Wall currently lives in a private apartment on the grounds of Cuan Mhuire (a narcotic and alcohol rehabilitation centre) just outside the town of Athy in Co. Kildare.
An exception is the detailed account of the case by Breda O'Brien in Studies Review entitled: "Miscarriage of Justice: Paul McCabe and Nora Wall".
The judges noted that in her further statement of 2 April 2001, Phelan in part stated: In the trial, held at the Central Criminal Court in Dublin, I gave evidence on oath in the complaint against Nora Wall and Paul McCabe.
In April 2003, at a Women Lawyers' Association conference, Carney dismissed the claim of the director of the Rape Crisis Centre (RCC) that there was no such thing as a false sexual charge.
The above examples are taken from a detailed profile of Mr Justice Paul Carney in The Sunday Business Post on 13 April 2003, written by barrister and author Kieron Wood.
Fine Gael's justice spokesman Jim Higgins said it was dealt with sloppily the prosecution pursued the case "with vigour and determination" but on the day after the convictions the DPP moved to have them quashed.
In the Patricia Phelan case in 1997 (in which she accused the Kilkenny businessman), Mr Justice McCracken carried out a High Court judicial review and decided that there should not be a trial.
In his decision in the judicial review of the original Phelan case on 5 January 1997, Mr Justice McCracken said: "While I have great sympathy for [the two women], I have to say that I was not particularly impressed with their evidence."
We must question the ability of these people to conduct their jobs when such gross incompetence occurred in the Wall case with regard to the inadvertent calling of Ms Phelan as a witness.
In the book Suffer the Little Children published in November 1999 as a follow up to her TV series, Mary Raftery and her co-author Eoin O'Sullivan wrote: Dear Daughter concerned the experiences at Goldenbridge Industrial School, Dublin, of Christine Buckley, who grew up there during the 1950s.
These included memories of children being routinely and savagely beaten, having boiling water poured over them, being locked in a furnace room, being forced to stand all night in a corridor as punishment, and very young children being made to sit on potties so long that in some cases their rectums collapsed.The authors go on to say that "the programme produced an enormous response, most of it horrified at the deeply shocking nature of the abuse outlined," However they also acknowledge that the Sisters of Mercy had their defenders and that after the programme two sisters who were at Goldenbridge gave different accounts of one alleged episode.
"[35] Thus Mary Raftery believes that any apparent contradictions brought to light in the controversy that followed "Dear Daughter" were fully ironed out by the States of Fear programmes.
In February 1996 RTÉ broadcast "Dear Daughter" – Louis Lentin's TV documentary about alleged abuse in St Vincent's residential school, Goldenbridge, Dublin, which was run by the Sisters of Mercy.
The programme claimed that, on one occasion, Christine Buckley had been caned by Sister Xavieria so severely that the entire side of her leg was split open from her hip to her knee.
As Raftery herself puts it, "Outrage at the crimes committed against these children was expressed continuously for the three weeks of the series, across acres of newsprint and hours of radio broadcasts all over the country.
[42]Wall told teacher and religious affairs journalist Breda O'Brien that she has no doubt that the atmosphere generated by States of Fear was a central factor in the jury's willingness to believe the allegations.
It is in large measure the fault of the religious authorities who seem more concerned with limiting the damage to their own reputations and standing than in acknowledging their collective guilt and active negligence.