A young Sligo woman has accused her father of taking her “innocence, childhood dignity and self-worth” by abusing her almost every day for 10 years.

She said that every day of her childhood and teenage years was filled with horrific abuse and some of those memories were still alive in her mind.

In a victim impact statement at the Central Criminal Court in Dublin this week, she said “as a young girl growing up I was abused nearly every day by my father”.

“He took my innocence, childhood dignity and self-worth by abusing me each day; I never felt I was my own person.”

Recalling an incident of attempted rape when she was “cornered” in a cattle shed, she said: “I remember thinking he treated the animals better than me. I told him I felt like a chained up animal.”

The woman said her father would be angry and forceful if she tried to stop him which she said would frighten her.

The court was told that her 50-year-old father has since been diagnosed a paedophile by a psychiatrist and that he began abusing his daughter when she was five years old and after he developed an addiction to pornography.

He pleaded guilty to two attempted rapes and 10 sexual assaults on dates between 2003 to 2012 at the family farm and other areas nearby. He has no previous convictions.

The now 20-year-old woman first disclosed the abuse to her school chaplain when she was 17 years old. She said she always felt different from others and was bullied in school.

She said that a father was supposed to care for and protect his children, but he “treated me like an object that he could use and control”. As a child she felt she was unable to turn to anyone, “even after I realised what was going on”.

More on this case is in this week’s paper.

An inquiry has found that the Garda Síochána Ombudsman Commission(GSOC) was “mistaken” in designating a case involving a Sligo garda sergeant as a criminal investigation.

By Alan Finn

A father and son have climbed Britain’s three highest mountains in three days.

Jeremy Bird, the Head of Science at IT Sligo and his Paddy, a 17-year-old Grammar School student completed the marathon climb last week in memory of Jeremy’s late brother, also named Paddy, who died while attempting the same feat in 1966.

Jeremy and Paddy scaled Mount Snowden in Wales, Scafell Pike in England and Ben Nevis in Scotland over the course of three days in an effort that required a staggering 11,000ft of climbing.

“Last January I was chatting to my family and I said that we should set out to finish the climb that he started as a RAG Week stunt,” Jeremy said.

“It was carried out by students from Birmingham University in 1966 to raise money for charity. Two of them set off to break the three peaks record and one of them was my brother and his friend, Kevin Prendergast.

“I was only ten when we got news that two bodies had been found on Scaffel Pike, one of which was my brother, and it was hard to understand how it could happen in the middle of summer, but those mountains are bad news when the weather is bad.”

In order to get in to shape, as well overcoming an ongoing knee problem, Jeremy enlisted the help of his close friend, Catherine Kearns, who encouraged him to take on the challenge and prepare by scaling Knocknarea on a weekly basis.

After months of training, Jeremy and Paddy were ready to take on what would prove to be a physically and emotionally training challenge.

“We set off at 4am last Monday (June 13), we got on the mountain at noon and climbed Snowden up and down. We then drove to the lark district, climbed Scafell Pike in beautiful weather and climbed to the spot where my brother died and built a memorial.

“We then drove to Edniburgh, stayed overnight and climbed Ben Nevis and that was a different story because it such a massive mountain and there was snow on the top. It was also a miserable day for weather and because it was the last day we were tired and it was a tough climb being 4,000 feet above sea level.

“It was really emotional, we finished what he wanted to do and that is the best commemoration of Paddy we could do.”

SLIGO will be the European Volunteering Captial for 2017.

As part of Monday’s meeting of Sligo County Council, Ciara Herity of Sligo Volunteer Centre gave a presentation to councillors which outlined the significance of the honour for Sligo.

To put the achievement into perspective, she pointed to the other cities which have previously been the volunteering capital, such as Lisbon, Barcelona and London.

Council CEO Ciaran Hayes said: “This is probably the first time that a town with the population the size of Sligo has been given this type of honour.”

Meanwhile, Ciaran Herity remarked that the award of being Volunteering Capital is recognition of the ongoing volunteering work in this county.

“We pride ourselves in Sligo on our volunteering and time and time again we have shown that we can host national and international events with the help of volunteering,” she said.

She pointed out the work and diversity of volunteering such as the RNLI, Order of Malta, Samaritans, the Tidy Towns and different sports groups.

She paid tribute to these volunteers who she said “we could not operate without.”

In Sligo alone, Ms Herity worked it out that there is 364,000 hours of volunteering done each year which, calculated at the minimum wage, would cost €3,330,600 if those volunteers were paid.

She described the honour for Sligo as being a “very positive selling point” and that it would have “economic value” for the county.

There were some concerns raised by councillors in regard to the lack of funding. There are no routes of funding being given to the county as European Capital of Volunteering.

Sinn Féin Cllr Sean MacManus believes it would be difficult to match what has gone before without funding. “It is a fantastic achievement for such a small county on the periphery of Europe. It is an acknowledgement of the amount of work done by volunteers in Sligo. It will be difficult to match (the other capitals) and what they have done with no funding,” Cllr MacManus said.

Cllr Tom MacSharry also voiced concern over the lack of funding but offered his and the council’s help.

“Sligo his never found wanting. If there is anything we (Sligo County Council) can do, the council won’t be found wanting either,” he said.

THE fallout from Monday’s shock announcement that the McCormack company which operates 15 businesses mainly in the North West, had gone into receivership is still being felt.

The 208 members of staff, suppliers and customers who may have paid deposits, or have credit or vouchers are still unclear as to their situation.
Local TD Eamon Scanlon described the loss of jobs as a “major blow.”

Deputy Scanlon believes that the first priority should be to try and keep jobs in the North West.

“In the short term, efforts need to be made to secure as many of these jobs as possible. The McCormack name is well known throughout the North West and it has been a significant employer and service provider in the region. I am urging the receiver to ensure that these businesses are sold as going concerns so that jobs and services can be protected,” he said,

He described the speed at which the businesses were closed as “worrying”.

For more on this story, see this week’s Sligo Weekender newspaper – in shops now. A digital edition of the paper is available by subscription, see our homepage, www.sligoweekender.ie, for more information.

A plan which aims to make County Sligo a great place to grow old was launched recently.

By Luke Henderson

EASKEY is a place brimming with history and character.

One native, who has a mixture of both this history and character is Eugene Forde, a former postman who brought people’s mail to Easkey for 40 years.

There are several elements to Eugene’s story and perhaps this article won’t do that story any justice.

Eugene was the son of a veteran of the First World War, John Forde. His father John served with his fellow Easkey man John Gordon in the Connacht Rangers.

Eugene was also a postman in the village for 40 years and all of that aside, he is a keen motorbike enthusiast, restoring bikes from yesteryear.

But it is the change in Easkey that Eugene has seen over the course of his life which starts off the conversation. He is now in his 90th year.

“The change around here is unbelievable. I was born here in 1925. I was born across the river about 20 yards away from the Castle. There were eight of us in my family,” he said.

Sligo man Martin Keaveney is this year celebrating 60 years in the toolmaking and plastics business.

But in his lifetime of mould making, the Tonaphubble native broke the mould in many respects.

He was the first apprentice toolmaker in Ireland, he set up the first toolmaking business in Sligo town, his was the first Irish toolmaking company to export to the US and Africa, he was the first businessman to receive an IDA grant in retrospect and he was the first person from the West of Ireland to win the national Jacob’s Award as Outstanding Young Man of the Year.

And apart from all that he was also elected to Sligo Corporation on his first attempt and served a term as Mayor of Sligo.

Martin spoke to the Sligo Weekender this week about his successful and eventful career in toolmaking and politics.

He was born in 1939 and grew up on a small farm in Tonaphubble, which unlike now was then sparsely populated farmland on the outskirts of a much smaller Sligo town.

His parents came from Easkey and got the land as part of the Land Commission break-up of the big estates in the 1930s.
Martin spent three years in the Tech in Sligo after primary school and at the age of 16 went looking for a job. “I never considered going into farming”, he said.

The Gallagher family were setting up the Tool and Gauge tool making factory in Tubbercurry and in 1956 he became the first apprentice toolmaker in Ireland, a decision he has never regretted.

In his early days in Tubbercurry he stayed in “digs” with the local postmistress Mrs Leonard, as in those days it took an hour to get there from Sligo.
“It was a twisty road, full of potholes”, Martin remembers.

For Martin’s full story see this week’s Sligo Weekender- in shops now.