Years ago, in the days when girls still hitchhiked, two friends of mine were thumbing from Dublin to Portlaoise. They were picked up on the Long Mile Road by a posh, taciturn woman who said she could take them. Now, an implied term of the hitchhiker’s contract with the driver has always been to make light and entertaining conversation. Last year I evicted two Parisian hikers in Galway, having rescued them from a wet roadside in Connemara en route to Dublin, because they sneered at my son’s (H1 Leaving Cert French) efforts to chat, and giggled together in the back seat. But, on that long-ago journey, nothing could draw more than a monosyllable from the driver.
She didn’t seem interested in where they were going (a festival) and even less inclined to reveal where she was headed. Portlaoise or Limerick? One of my friends, who sees silence as a challenge, was baffled when her pal in the front kept shooting her death-ray stares. In the end, desperate for something to say, she asked chirpily as they sat in a bottleneck hamlet: “Oh, is this Monasterevin?”
Cue another lethal glance from the friend and a weaponised silence from the driver. When she let them out shortly afterwards, the friend exploded. “Did you not recognise her?” she asked. “That was Rose Dugdale. On her way to visit her husband Eddie Gallagher. In prison. For kidnapping Dr Herrema. And holding him hostage for a month. IN MONASTEREVIN.”
You would think being associated with one hostage situation would be enough for a small midlands town — it isn’t Weatherfield, after all, where serial killers, paedophiles and kidnappers roam the Coronation Street cobbles with abandon. But no. Last week, Monasterevin again distinguished itself by hosting a siege, this time a relatively minor one in a pub. At least the gardai succeeded in freeing this particular captive when they arrived, instead of circling the place with armoured vehicles for two weeks, passing in food parcels and stationing Special Branch men in the snug.
“This wasn’t a product of an enlightened cyber-age but of medieval ignorance
The drama began when a woman thought she had seen Anthony Luckwill, a convicted child sex offender. In fact, it was a Dublin man called David Murray who bears a slight resemblance to the paedophile, as would just about any
40-something sandy-haired man with spectacles and a beard. Instead of quietly alerting the gardai, however, this busybody posted a picture of Murray on the KildareNow Facebook page, prompting another user to invite “a few lads down to kick the s**t outta him”.
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Shortly afterwards, Murray was confronted on the street by a mob, who threatened and harangued him and incited passers-by to join in the sport.
He tried to tell them who he was, but they weren’t having it. In genuine fear — the woman who posted the original error later commended the “lynch mob” — Murray took refuge in a pub and called the gardai, who escorted him to safety. When he went on RTE’s Prime Time to recount his experience last Tuesday, the traumatised Murray insisted on wearing his work ID on screen.
Defending her vigilance, the woman protested that “it’s better to be safe than sorry” and bleated the predictable “sue me now with the child in me arms” claptrap about “the safety of our kids”. And she blamed the gardai for not intervening sooner. That’s right, it was their fault for not warning Murray he had strayed into The Wicker Man and that he should flee before the villagers arrived with torches and pitchforks.
Social media deserve blame for this incident but only as an example of how some folk, ranting in echo chambers of their own prejudice, use Facebook to narrow their minds rather than broaden them. This wasn’t a product of cyber-age enlightenment but of medieval ignorance.
Scepticism an extra shield for wife beaters
• After businesswoman Norah Casey spoke of the “battering” she took from her first husband, snide online commentators noted the man was dead and couldn’t rebut the claims. But then, along with the shame of domestic victimhood, it is such scepticism that keeps women from unmasking abusive partners, especially when he doesn’t fit the short-fused stereotype. Wife beaters are often pin-striped professionals of the kind portrayed by Alexander Skarsgard in Big Little Lies. The part of Casey’s story that will have rung most bells wasn’t the time he lunged for a knife but his insistence she use the dinner-time cutlery in the right order.
Cut the lawn and crime cuts itself
It’ll hardly win you a spot in the Bloom festival, but “defensive gardening” might well spare you a visit from burglars in high-powered Volvos. An untidy front garden makes you more likely to be targeted, say gardai, because thieves will assume you’re away, but don’t limit your planting to pretty flowering shrubs. Last week, Operation Thor released a list of thorny plants which gardai say will have a deterrent effect when located around walls and under windows — think of it as a sort of Special Branch mission.
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Even the names sound menacing; who wouldn’t feel secure with Firethorn, Prickly Ash and Creeping Juniper patrolling their boundaries? And as for Chinese Jujube, it sounds more like a voodoo curse.
Asylum shake-up is long overdue
The decision to allow asylum seekers to work, or rather to declare unconstitutional the blanket ban on their seeking employment, should prompt a shake-up of the ridiculously drawn-out asylum process. It is cruel to leave applicants waiting for up to 13 years, and a swift hearing with one appeal option — rather than allowing failed asylum seekers to begin the whole process again — is the obvious solution. That will mean speedier results for genuine cases, but prompt deportation for chancers. Brian Killoran of the Immigrant Council of Ireland has claimed we have a duty to “trust” asylum seekers that all cases are valid. So why bother with a hearing process at all, then? Asylum seekers are no more likely to be honest than the rest of us.