Sexual assault and fatal violence against women during the Irish War of Independence, 1919–1921: Kate Maher’s murder in context
Citation:
Ciara Breathnach and Eunan O'Halpin, Sexual assault and fatal violence against women during the Irish War of Independence, 1919–1921: Kate Maher’s murder in context, Medical Humanities, 2021, 94 - 103Abstract:
At the height of the Irish War of Independence,
1919–1921, 45-year-old Kate Maher was brutally
raped. She subsequently died of terrible wounds, almost
certainly inflicted by drunken British soldiers. This article
discusses her inadequately investigated case in the
wider context of fatal violence against women and girls
during years of major political instability. Ordinarily her
violent death would have been subject to a coroner’s
court inquiry and rigorous police investigation, but in
1920, civil inquests in much of Ireland were replaced
by military courts of inquiry. With the exception of
medical issues, where doctors adhered to their ethical
responsibility to provide clear and concise evidence on
injuries, wounds and cause of death, courts of inquiry
were cursory affairs in which Crown forces effectively
investigated and exonerated themselves. This article
adopts a microhistory approach to Maher’s case to
compare how civilian and military systems differed in
their treatments of female fatalities. Despite the fact
that the medical evidence unequivocally showed that
the attack was of a very violent sexual nature, the two
soldiers directly implicated were not charged with rape
or any other sexual offence. In her case, and in those of
other women who died violently while in the company
of soldiers and policemen, prosecutions of the men
involved resulted in acquittal by military court martial.
This was so both for women portrayed as of immoral
character and for others assumed to be ’respectable’.
It also reflects on the wider question of sexual violence
during the Irish War of Independence, concluding that
while females experienced a range of gender-determined
threats and actions such as armed raids on their homes,
the ’bobbing’ of hair and other means of ’shaming’, rape,
accepted as the most serious act of sexual assault, was
regarded by all combatants as beyond the pale
Author's Homepage:
http://people.tcd.ie/ohalpineDescription:
PUBLISHED
Author: O'Halpin, Eunan
Type of material:
Journal ArticleCollections
Series/Report no:
Medical Humanities;2022;1
Availability:
Full text availableSubject (TCD):
Digital Humanities , Making Ireland , Gender and violence , Rape , War of IndependenceDOI:
10.1136/medhum-2021-012178Metadata
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