We owe a debt of gratitude to Joseph McColgan. He has reminded us of something that is too easy to forget in modern, bien-pensant Ireland: that evil does exist, and it does take human form, writes Kevin Myers.
In this case, it has taken the form of Joseph McColgan. He is the face of evil: the soul of evil; the mind of evil, and the heart of evil. He is its quintessence, and it is to the shame of this State that we had him in our grasp, and we have let him go.
It passes all belief that this man was sentenced to only 12 years in prison for engaging in the worst sexual abuse of children that I - or any of us - have ever heard of. It is neither possible nor desirable to provide details of all he did; but in 1995 the court heard of the rapes of his two daughters and one of his sons, from infancy into adulthood: repeated, systematic, merciless rapes, of all orifices, accompanied by ferocious violence.
He began raping Sophia McColgan when she was seven. As she grew older, he used a cattle syringe to sluice her out with spermicide. That showed the deliberation that he took in his conduct: detailed, studied, careful deliberation was the hallmark of his activities, the hallmark of true evil. He would take Communion, then leave Mass early, ushering his victim away for a frenzy of violation, secure from interruption.
His first-born son, Gerard, was not spared the attentions of his father. In addition to being raped, he was flogged and tortured; his knuckles smashed with a concrete block, his head smashed open with a hammer, and his leg crushed by a trailer. The second daughter, Michelle, endured much the same as Sophia. Enough. There is more - far more - but we have heard enough.
McColgan revealed something of the depravity of his soul when he told the court that he did not have a fatherly bond for Sophia because she had initially been reared by her grandparents. Ah: the voice of true evil indeed, as if this is what we men do with little girls who are not our daughters.
Sophia was raped and violated for 17 years; yet the trial judge, Mr Justice Vivian Lavan, thought it appropriate to make the numerous terms of imprisonment to which he sentenced McColgan concurrent rather than consecutive - so, in effect sentencing him to just 12 years. With remission, he did nine years: eight years less than the regimen of rape and torture to which he had subjected his eldest daughter.
There is no point in asking what was going on in the judge's mind in making the sentences concurrent; we probably wouldn't understand any of it if he tried to explain it to us. To be sure, the guilty plea, as we all know, confers some mitigation of sentence, but on this occasion, it seemed to be worth 216 out of the 228 years of jail sentences that McColgan was given for his crimes. In other words, it seems as if his guilty plea won him 95 per cent reduction on his sentence.
This must stand as a record amelioration - and this for 26 charges which were unprecedented in their unspeakable depravity. And these charges, of course, were mere samples of what was available to the court. McColgan would have got 12 years for any one of these deeds, taken in isolation; but what effectively happened when the sentences were made concurrent was that the clock on the jurisprudential taxi was turned off after the first one.
Thus he was given a retrospective licence for the rest of his journey through a career of rape and brutality such as no court in this land has ever heard, and no judge in this land been asked to pass sentence on. Here, by God, was an exemplary opportunity to provide exemplary sentence upon a uniquely evil man; and Judge Vivian Lavan allowed the opportunity to pass, with the deplorable effect that McColgan, aged 62, is now free. How many sex offenders will now conclude that there is no point in mending their ways because, given the curious habits of Irish judges, further rapes will not attract any more real time in jail?
In the matter of the McColgans, all need not be lost, however. Those 26 charges covered only the three eldest children. There remains Keith, the youngest boy. Allegations that he was abused by his father never figured in the trial. The sampling process, which stood as representative of McColgan's abuse of Sophia, Michelle and Gerard, and which effectively closed the book on offences done to them, excluded Keith.
Therefore the allegations that Keith was also abused in ways comparable to those inflicted on his brother and two sisters have never been tested before a court. They remain open for investigation. Their alleged perpetrator is similarly open to prosecution, to a trial, and possibly conviction, if the evidence justifies it. And if he is found guilty, then he is liable to fresh sentences, which this time should reflect the enormous gravity of the offences.
Is there any reason why An Garda Síochána should not now begin a criminal investigation into the alleged sexual abuse of Keith McColgan over a period of four years?
Common justice to Keith demands that his rights are now vindicated before the courts of the land. No earlier court's decision has brought legal closure on those deeds or punishment to a perpetrator. Here is a prosecution just waiting to happen.