The Sister of No Mercy (Negru Voda = Mulligan)

Publication date: 12 June 1999

The Sister of No Mercy

Published 12/06/1999 | 00:11

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A former nun was this week convicted of the brutal rape of a ten year old girl in her care. She held the young girl by the ankles while her male friend carried out the rape. How could anyone, least of all a nun, do such an evil deed? Aideen Sheehan on the life of the Sister of Mercy who betrayed the sacred trust of a child

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There were concerns about Sr Dominic long before her female victim first complained to the Gardai. But alcohol and wild parties rather than sex abuse were then the main issue that concerned people about Nora Wall.

There was talk locally of wild drinking binges and parties in St Michael's in Cappoquin, Co Waterford, the childcare centre which she managed.

The nun had been having male visitors back to the centre late at night. There were a number of different men involved, including Paul `Pablo' McCabe, the schizophrenic vagrant who was convicted this week, with the former nun, of the rape of a 10-year-old girl.

Their young victim said she'd seen the nun and McCabe having sex. Paul McCabe claimed they were friends who went out dancing once. But Nora Wall denied both the sex and the dancing and said they were merely friends. Having grown up in St Michael's, `Pablo' McCabe sometimes would stay overnight, she said.

The local talk about drink and men finally had a result. Eventually rumours about the parties and male visitors came to a head and in 1990 Sr Dominic was dramatically removed from her post, her possessions were cleared out of her bedroom and she was dispatched back to her order.

When the end came, the authorities acted swiftly. Sr Dominic was literally removed from the centre and her belongings were taken out and passed on to her. The South Eastern Health Board stressed yesterday that she had been removed by the Sister of Mercy Order, as she was not an employee of the board.

However the ignominy of her departure didn't prevent a Health Board official giving her a reference letter couched in the most glowing terms.

``Applicant is of an extremely warm and caring personality with a natural flair for challenges. She is exceptionally kind and considerate with an outstanding character.

``Ms Wall is a professional child careworker whose abilities I have always found to be of the highest order,'' it read.

Despite the glittering praise it has now become clear Sister Dominic's fall from grace was about as far as a human being could go.

As a nun supposed to be in loco parentis to a young girl, not only did she sexually molest the helpless child, she also held her down while her male friend raped her.

It was behaviour of an unspeakably vile nature, all the more strange since Sr Dominic had been trained with the benefit of all the latest theories on child care.

After the oppressive institutional care of the 1950s and '60s, Nora Wall had been part of a new wave of `professional' childcare workers that was supposed to stamp out the autocratic tyrannies of the past with enlightened child-centred understanding.

She'd qualified in the first childcare course at St Joseph's in Kilkenny, and later colleagues said that she'd become fluent in all the social services theories and jargon.

In 1978 she'd been appointed manager of St Michael's in Cappoquin and there she began a 12-year reign that for at least one victim was one of terror.

For Sr Dominic, who was just 30 when she began the job, it was a significant appointment just a few miles away from where she'd grown up.

The daughter of a farmer, Nora Wall had been raised in the Nire Valley in Co Waterford, a scenic beauty spot in the Comeragh Mountains, close to Clonmel.

Although ``devastated by the revolting crimes'', the Sisters of Mercy said yesterday they were legally constrained from disclosing any details of her career. So reluctant were they to talk that they refused even to reveal the most basic details such as when Nora Wall had joined the order.

She had been a house parent in a centre previously and as the manager of St Michael's she was in charge of up to 30 children and 15-20 staff in the former industrial school.

She'd also been responsible for recruiting and training staff, accounting for and discharging the budget drawn up by the Health Board, as she boasted when applying for her most recent job two years ago.

Despite leaving Cappoquin under a cloud in the early '90s, no complaints were ever made to the Gardai about her behaviour until her victim came forward in 1996.

During the course of the Garda investigation no further allegations of sex abuse by other children were made though opinion was split 50-50 between children who praised her regime and those who had hostile memories.

Sr Dominic continued as a nun until 1994, first heading for Romania as a supervisor at the Negru Voda orphanage, where she won high praise from the Belfast Action Team she worked with who recommended her thus:

``I would have no hesitation whatsoever should the occasion present itself in the future to have Nora as part of any of our programmes. She was quietly dedicated to the tasks in hand.''

Returning to Dublin in 1996 she undertook voluntary work at the Regina Coeli hostel for women and children behind the old Richmond Hospital building in central Dublin, cleaning and guarding the door. She was no longer wearing a nun's habit at this time.

A volunteer who worked with her there said she remembered a quiet unobtrusive woman who didn't invite questions about her past.

``We were aware she had been a nun, but she never talked about her past, and she wasn't overtly religious or anthing like that,'' she said.

Nora Wall then took up her final job as manager of the Back Lane hostel for men, also in central Dublin, which is run by the St Vincent de Paul. She got the job partly be singing her own praises in her application for the job.

In a reference, the South Eastern Health Board also gave her such profuse praise that St Vincent de Paul did not feel any need to check her credentials further.

``She was very well qualified, and when you get a reference that good, you certainly wouldn't feel the need for a garda check. We had no suspicion that this case was underway against her 'til after she left us,'' said National Services Coordinator Liam O'Dwyer yesterday.

Nora Wall completed an 11-month fixed term contract in the hostel, parting ``by mutual agreement'' at the end of 1997, though Mr O'Dwyer would not comment on her conduct in the job or on whether she had sought renewal of her position.

What she has done in the interim is unclear at the moment. But her past was catching up with her. And it was a past that was bizarre as well as evil, judging by some of the things said in evidence during the case, which concluded this week.

Some of Sr Dominic's alleged statements at the time make strange reading and suggest a confused idea of religion, to say the least.

``Only God knows what's really wrong,'' Sister Dominic is alleged to have said to her accomplice Paul McCabe after he raped the 10-year-old girl a rape that had been carried out with her connivance and physical assistance. She held the child down by her ankles, as the rape occurred.

Now the former nun is a convicted female rapist, the most unusual and inexplicable of all sex criminals.

She joins a very short but infamous list of deranged women including Myra Hindley and Rose West who have aided and abetted men, assisting them as they carried out brutal sexual abuse of children, though in the case of West and Hindley, the abuse ended in murder.

And, yet despite the sickening evidence laid against her and strongly corroborated, Sister Dominic, is still in complete denial. She pleaded not guilty throughout the proceedings in the Central Criminal Court and repeatedly denied that she had done anything wrong.

It's a case which is extraordinary in recent legal history in the State despite the mind-numbing procession of clerical sex offenders who have been brought to justice in recent years.

Even for those working with sex criminals, there is something deeply disturbing and monstrous in a relationship between a man and woman which leads them to act in concert in the malignant sexual abuse of an innocent child.

No doubt when Mr Justice Paul Carney reaches his decision in regard to sentencing Nora Wall and her convicted co-accused Paul `Pablo' McCabe he will take due account of all factors in the case, the evidence brought before him, the impact on the victim, the psychological reports on the convicted.

It is only in recent decades that it has been fully acknowledged that women can sexually abuse.

Yet some strides have been made in the accurate diagnosis of female sexual perversion, including the sexual abuse of children. The personality profile of the female abuser sometimes includes a history of abuse against themselves.

They may also have a history of self-abuse, often manifested during adolescence in the form of eating disorders such as anorexia and bulimia, promiscuity, drug and alcohol abuse, self-cutting and burning. They may be incapable of establishing longstanding relationships other than ones which are abusive or may even be sado-masochistic.

For a few such women, the religious orders provided a haven to hide. They provided opportunities to sublimate their sexual urgings in religious fervour or even situations where such urgings could be satisfied, often in perverted ways, as in this case.

In recent years, progress has been made in effective treatment of convicted sex offenders and their victims. People who enter such programmes must confront what was done to them and what they have done, sometimes in group analytical psychotherapy.

Yet during the course of this case in the Central Criminal Court, Sister Dominic consistently tried to blacken the name and the reputation of her victim. She said that the girl was known for making up stories and had previously alleged she was sexually assaulted by her own father. ``Nothing was beyond her,'' Sister Dominic said.

Yet, the evidence was overwhelming and the former Sister of Mercy and her co-accused were convicted of raping the then 10-year-old girl at St Michael's Child Care Centre in Cappoquin on a date unknown in 1987-1988.

From the first day of the seven-day case it was clear that the allegations of a nun raping a girl in her care was uncharted waters in terms of the unfathomable processes that would lead to such a heinous crime.

The court heard the grim evidence from the victim, now aged 21 that she was twice raped in her bed in the children's home by McCabe, while Wall held her down by her legs and ankles. One of the charges of rape was dismissed.

Sister Dominic was also convicted of indecently assaulting the girl at the home. Both Nora Wall and Paul `Pablo' McCabe will be sentenced on July 23.

During the case some of the most compelling evidence came from the co-accused Paul McCabe, in a statement he made to gardai.

He occasionally slept over at the home and he had got to know the victim who he found to be pretty and friendly. She had told him she found him attractive, he claimed.

On the night of her 12th birthday he went to a nearby town and got drunk, entering the girl's room when he returned, removing his clothes while she did likewise with her nightie.

They'd had sex and he claimed she was overdeveloped for her age, highly intelligent and knew ``the moral rights and wrongs of the world''.

When he told the nun about what happened she said he was ``like St Augustine''.

``Only God knows what's really wrong,'' she said, when he expressed the fear he might have done wrong, a grotesque piece of moral equivocation from a woman entrusted with the secular care of a young girl.

In court McCabe denied his written statement, said he never had any sexual relationship with the girl, and that he suffered from schizophrenia but wasn't getting proper treatment for it when he spoke to gardai

During questioning, he said he'd confused the alleged victim with another girl in the Sisters of Mercy home.

Now convicted of the grossest of crimes Paul McCabe and Nora Wall sat side by side in court, the oddest of couples even when they warmly shook hands at the outset.

The deeply tanned 50-year-old homeless man seemed unable to focus, by turns reading, sleeping, staring agitatedly around him and sometimes even coming into court drunk.

Nora Wall by contrast was the picture of middleclass propriety. In conservative skirts and cardigans with her neat haircut, emotion rarely flickered across her face as the unthinkable evidence mounted against her.

* Additional reporting Jerome Reilly

Persons: John Mulligan, Nora Wall aka Sr Callida