Ireland’s Toxic Culture of Omertà

Recently walking into a garage to pay for diesel, I scanned the news stand, as is my habit, to see if I had missed any of the day’s events. Something did catch my eye, and surprised me. A county Louth paper, the Drogheda Independent, had a headline about the Lourdes Hospital’s, disgraced surgeon Michael Shine.

It seemed a group of his victims had come forward and the Taoiseach was considering a public enquiry. Such abusers leave deep scars that in many cases never truly heal, but he was enabled by the culture of that time. A toxic cowardly omertà still evident in Irish society.

The reason the story caught my eye was that I was once a patient of Michael Shine. At the till, I reflected on that brief experience as a twelve-year-old.

Much to my parent’s dismay, at age twelve, I was six foot tall, and had size twelve feet. My father was a fisherman, skipper and trawlerman in the Irish Sea and Atlantic Ocean. Wherever the fishing was at, he was there. He had a wife and four children who would literally eat him out of house and home. The four children that is, not my mother, who is a saint.

The height issue was not so bad. East German army coats – available from the now long-gone army surplus store in Dundalk, Jocks – tended to grow with you, but getting the size twelve footwear became problematic. Decent footwear in Ireland has always has been difficult to find and expensive. Even now if I want a decent pair of shoes, I have to go to Dublin for the size, range and quality.

Cheap footwear is a false economy, but when you’re size twelve at twelve back in 1989, you have to occasionally hang on until all the other bills are paid, and rightly so. None of us ever starved, but purchasing size twelve shoes, on occasion, had to wait, and this wait unfortunately caused a small issue over time to arise: an ingrown toenail. It went on for a while and caused some pain, which resulted in a referral to the Lourdes Hospital in Drogheda. I can’t remember whether I was twelve or thirteen by that stage.

Small Scar

I do remember that it was corrected very effectively through a small surgical procedure. As I type, barefoot, I can still see the small scar Michale Shine cut in, removing the side of the nail and the infected area of my left toenail. But before he did so, I had a consultation with him.

I was brought into a medical examination room, high up in the hospital, from where I could look out over the town. The room had a lot of windows, but was far too high up for anyone to see inside. I walked to the side of the examination table, and I think I heard him say something about my toe, so I took off my runners and socks and went to get up onto the medical examination table.

His response was “no, no, your pants as well.” I was wearing jeans at the time. I did as I was told and found myself on the examination table sitting upright, looking out over the roof tops of Drogheda. Boxershorts had not entered my wardrobe at this stage of my life. I think the under garment I was wearing are referred to as slips – men’s underpants. So, from hip to toe, on both legs, I was bare skin.

Shine placed his right hand on my upper left thigh, for my ingrown toe examination, tapped my thigh twice with his palm, smiled a shark’s smile and told me I was a “fine big boy”. Now DaVinci’s Vitruvian man measures a palm as the width of four fingers and I say it with no shame that Shine’s hand was just the width of another four fingers away from my cock. I should probably say penis, but it’s not a word I would ever use and in fact it’s a bit creepy to be honest.

The memory or indeed the incident has not affected me. It might have added some uninvited flavouring to my psychological or sexual development as a confused teenager that I could have done without. But honestly it has not adversely affected me.

I am lucky, very lucky in comparison to some. That was as far as his hand went. In fact, when he said it, I said nothing but stared over his shoulder at the only other man in the room, a junior doctor. It is the memory of the look on his face, that has stayed with me ever since.

I have learned a lot about people over the years. One thing is about how people perceive fear. Experience has taught me that they feel it in one of two ways: fear for themselves or fear for others. It can be a fleeting moment, which you can correct, or it forms who you are for ever more.

In my time with the Airport Police, I was fortunate enough to have been trained in behavioural detection. What I have learned about people, through many life experiences, allows me to honestly assess my memory of that junior doctor’s fear. It was only fear for himself. The nameless coward was mute, grey with fear and looked at me as if to say: please don’t say anything.

The enablers who reside within and contribute to the toxic culture of an organisation or indeed society are sadly simply cowards. Many are not bad people; in fact, most are not, but their cowardliness contributes to the very problems they grumble about. Some in positions of supervision and management are dangerous cowards, as they misuse their limited power and will push you under the bus in a heartbeat to save themselves.

I wonder how many boys were not as lucky as me, and actually said something? You can imagine the enablers, can’t you? Silencing the innocent to save themselves. I imagine that junior doctor would have seen nothing if I had said something.

Perhaps you’re even one of them yourself, an enabler? It’s a disease in Irish society that needs to be challenged at every level. To target those who speak out, tell the truth and call it as it is, is an attack on your own safety and your own democratic right.

False Rumours

Sadly, enablers cannot see that and the coward in them likes to see the whistleblower get what he deserves, which reinforces their cowardliness. They may even spread a false rumour, like the DAA Airport Duty Manager who held court in the airport control room weeks after my departure, informing those present that I was in trouble for being a wistleblower. It is not the case; it was not the case.

Or the Police Inspector who wanted me to facilitate and provide whatever training I could to a candidate for a position in the Airport Police Dog Unit, even before he had been interviewed. I might never have bothered pointing out how it might look to other officers, or how people would perceive that. I had wasted my time objecting, as the candidate still got the job. People like this all needlessly and carelessly damage our democratic society. We spend so much of our lives in a workplace; of course it is part of society. The values and culture we experience there permeates society.

I can speak about these things as I declined DAA’s unfair dismissal offer of €4,800 in return for a non-disclosure agreement. An agreement that listed forty-two separate pieces of legislation that would have inhibited me from taking any further legal action against them. If they have done nothing wrong, why have forty-two pieces of legislation and a non-disclosure agreement? Evidently, I did not sign.

The main evidence that I wanted was in a redacted report. The enablers’ legal team had the evidence statute barred. I wasn’t prepared to move forward without it.

That legal interpretation, I will argue in the future, in employment law is a scam and one that the Workplace Relations Commission are failing to acknowledge as such. Perhaps because it makes their lives easier. The statute of limitations to take a case for unfair dismissal or penalisation in the workplace, under employment law, is six months. I would argue it is not six months for the admissibility of evidence of penalisation in the workplace. This is a legal scam that a weak Workplace Relations Commission are enabling! But don’t judge them too harshly.

The enablers are alive and well in Irish society, just ask the victims of Michael Shine.

Feature Image: Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital, Drogheda