A Sinn Fein councillor has called on party leader Gerry Adams to issue a statement regarding the conviction of his brother Liam for the rape and abuse of his daughter.
North Tipperary councillor Seamus Morris, a former Irish parliament candidate, has said Adams has to respond to claims that he failed to report the abuse of his niece for nine years.
Morris is the first Sinn Fein member to put pressure on
He is the first known member of Sinn Fein to publicly put pressure on his leader over the issue.
Speaking to the Tipp FM radio station, Morris was pressed about whether Gerry Adams should make a statement about his actions in the case.
He said “Of course he should, absolutely.”
Liam Adams was convicted of raping and sexually assaulting his daughter Aine Dahlstrom over a six-year period between 1977 and 1983.
The Irish Independent reports that she was four years old when the abuse began and is now aged 40. She waived her right to anonymity during the case.
Sinn Fein president Adams has yet to respond to claims that he took nine years to contact police about the abuse.
The report says he had been told about the abuse back in 2000 by his brother Liam but only made a complaint to police in 2009.
Officers are reviewing Gerry Adams’s handling of events to determine whether or not they consider he committed any criminal offences according to the report.
They will study the evidence he gave to his brother’s first trial, which was aborted earlier this year.
The PSNI has said that they consulted with the Public Prosecution Service in 2010 and were told there should be no prosecution of Gerry Adams.
Assistant Chief Constable Drew Harris told a Policing Board meeting in Belfast: “We will re-examine the transcripts of the recent court case but all the facts in our knowledge in 2010 have not been moved on materially since the recent trial.”
The report adds that Gerry Adams has confirmed that he was first told about the abuse back in 1987 by Aine Dahlstrom – and that he went to confront his brother Liam about it at the time.
Morris defended Gerry Adams’s actions at that time. He added: “He was probably public enemy number one with the authorities.
“Republicans didn’t go to the police in the six counties. Most things were dealt with internally. They just didn’t trust the police up there. That’s just the way it was.”
The court had heard that in 1987, Dahlstrom and her mother had reported the sex abuse to the RUC – now the PSNI.
They later retracted the accusations when detectives tried to exploit them for intelligence on Gerry Adams’s role in the IRA.
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