Anthony McIntyre 📺 While the current generation lives in an age where intellectual discussion and free inquiry are increasingly suppressed by the coercive cops or no-platformed by the cancel cops, investigative journalists fulfil a vital function unclogging the pores through which information flows.
 |
| Kyran Durnin |
Cutting through the fog that the twinning of cancel and coercion invites to descend on society in a bid to have it know less rather than more, is what drives those serious about their journalism rather than those who have found their station as shills. Roadblocks won't halt them, cries of Verboten won't scare them away.
BBC Spotlight on Tuesday evening with its Kyran: The Lost Boy documentary once again demonstrated its ability to serve up a mix of unsettling events and investigative journalism. I imagine many in authority long for the day of effective border controls to prevent any cross-border incursions by diligent reporters like Mandy McAuley.
Earlier this year, when Jennifer O’Leary and the Spotlight team took the public into the horrible world of coercive control over, and violence against, women that resulted in the rape and murder of Katie Simpson, the serious shortcomings of those in authority were laid bare. Now Mandy McAuley and her team have been poking under unwelcoming stones only to be met with a venomous hiss. There are many things in this world that react unkindly to light. Those who have either failed missing child, Kyran Durnin, now presumed murdered, or covered up his fate play more than mere cameo roles in this unfolding drama.
Recently the Disney series Say Nothing brought back into public view the question that will simply not disappear, the forced disappearances of human beings. Kyran Durnin now seems to have joined that hidden band, with An Garda suggesting that there is “really no doubt” that the child is dead.
Although Gardai are now convinced that Kyran has been dead for two years, Spotlight, courtesy of a taped recording made by Andy Spearman of Drogheda Life revealed that the child’s grandmother claimed to have been with both the child and his mother in her home as recently as summer past. She then claims not to have seen nor heard from either since. When Mandy McAuley sought to doorstep her in her Drogheda home the granny told her to get off her property. But McAuley is not the type to be easily dissuaded, as her televised confrontation with Alan Oliver, suspected of involvement in numerous killings of nationalist noncombatants, underscored. She will keep turning up where she is not wanted. Andy Spearman told her that he has had to consider the one possibility he had not ruled in when he first interviewed the grandmother a matter of months ago. Upon learning that the child was most likely murdered two years ago:
I was shocked to the core. How could that be? I don't often stay awake at night thinking about things, but I did with this because, you know, either she was lying through her teeth to me, or the guards are wrong.
There are serious questions for the agencies involved in the fate of Kyran Durnin, ranging from An Garda, Tusla, the child's school and social services. The oversights and bungling brought to light by Spotlight invoke memories of Peter Connelly in London, who became immortalised in the Baby P narrative. Kyran Durnin’s mother by her uncooperative behaviour and fabricated accounts has failed to put clear blue sea between her persona and that of Tracey Connelly, the mother of Baby P. It has yet to be officially confirmed that she was the woman arrested upon returning to the country from abroad and yesterday released without charge. An Garda have been briefing its preferred journalists said it was never expected that the arrest of a woman on suspicion of murder would result in charges but was part of a longer term strategy of evidence accumulation. Observers can only hope it is not as long term as its strategy for confronting the hate fuelled violence of the far right.
The last time Drogheda forced its way into national headlines was when the teenager Keane Mulready-Woods was butchered and his body dismembered. It might not be for a good reason that once again national preeminence falls on Drogheda in relation to another deceased young person. It is for very good reason that Spotlight has helped ensure that the disappearance of a dead child does not disappear from public view.
 |
| ⏩Follow on Twitter @AnthonyMcIntyre. |
As a parents these cases just appall. Looks like a typical happy cheeky wee boy.
ReplyDeleteAnd to think of the wall of silence that has been put up to prevent discovery of his body and fate.
DeleteRe Say Nothing - best discussed on another page, Steve. It is off topic here.
Fair enough Anthony, would be interested in your thoughts though.
DeleteSteve - I responded on the page where the Muiris review of Say Nothing is
DeleteMeant to ask regarding Don't Speak, how did you find the representation of roles by the actors? I don't mean what went on, I mean did they capture what the people were actually like? And did Adams actually have the colossal pomposity to refer to people as " child"?
ReplyDelete