Further details have emerged shedding light on the controversy that led to Brian Stanley, the Laois-Offaly TD, resigning from Sinn Féin.
As first revealed by The Irish Times on Saturday, a complaint made by a woman over a meeting with Mr Stanley in Dublin on the night of October 11th, 2023, led an internal Sinn Féin inquiry to conclude in a draft report that the TD’s conduct on the night constituted “sexual harassment”.
The draft 18-page report – seen by this newspaper – states that this amounted to “gross misconduct” and that it breached Sinn Féin’s ethics and party discipline guidelines.
Before the party’s seven-day deadline for Mr Stanley to comment on the draft report had been reached, Mr Stanley – on the night of Saturday, October 12th, last – issued a public statement resigning from the party.
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The TD, once a senior figure within Sinn Féin who has since been replaced by the party as chairman of the powerful Public Accounts Committee, strongly criticised the internal party inquiry and its work.
Further information can now be revealed around what the inquiry discovered about what happened on that night and how, in some aspects, the accounts of the woman and Mr Stanley to the inquiry are in direct conflict.
The woman at the centre of the controversy first became acquainted with the now former Sinn Féin TD about a decade ago through voluntary work with the party. She worked for the party for a period in 2016 and 2017 but her employment ended after a probationary period.
Internal party documents show Mr Stanley suggested to the inquiry that the woman’s unhappiness at how the party treated her was relevant to its work but she insisted there was no issue and it happened years earlier.
Last year the woman sought Mr Stanley’s advice on applying for jobs in the EU.
She claimed in evidence to the inquiry in the run-up to her October 2023 meeting that he phoned her repeatedly, though her account was strongly denied by Mr Stanley.
Initially, she suggested a coffee in Portlaoise, but Mr Stanley insisted that the meeting should happen in Leinster House in the evening, she claimed in evidence to the inquiry. Mr Stanley told the inquiry that the young woman told him it suited her to come to Dublin to meet him.
She denied this, claiming that the Dublin meeting was at his insistence.
A meeting was arranged for the evening of Wednesday, October 11th, 2023.
Early that evening, the woman texted Mr Stanley to say there were storm warnings and they should perhaps postpone the meeting. She claimed to the inquiry that he phoned her repeatedly assuring her that she should come. He claimed in evidence to the inquiry that he agreed to the meeting “reluctantly”; she claimed that she felt constant pressure to travel up to Dublin to meet him.
She claimed to the inquiry that Mr Stanley had told her he had booked a room for her; he strongly denies this in his testimony to the inquiry.
When she arrived in Dublin, Mr Stanley met her outside Leinster House and drove her car into the car park. They had dinner in the Leinster House canteen, each having a glass of wine. Afterwards they went to a nearby pub, where they had two more drinks – the woman claims that she felt pressured to drink, but Mr Stanley denies this – and thereafter to the hotel the TD was staying in nearby.
He told the inquiry that the woman was wondering where she would stay or if she should go home (she lives outside Dublin). He told her that he had booked a room for himself and she could “kip up there” – as he had expected there would be two beds, a double and a single, in his room.
The woman claimed to the inquiry that she had been assured by Mr Stanley that he had booked a room for her; he denied this.
He told the inquiry he was surprised there was only one bed in the room; she said she was shocked that there was only one room and one bed, but felt she could not go anywhere else.
Mr Stanley claimed in evidence to the inquiry that he slept on the floor; the woman claimed he did not. There is no suggestion of any physical engagement or anything of an illegal nature.
However, the woman told the inquiry she was deeply traumatised and upset by what had happened. Mr Stanley claimed that she became “irate and annoyed” the following morning when he did not want to discuss the circumstances of her departure from her role in Sinn Féin six years earlier – something that the woman strongly denied.
The woman told the inquiry that she was upset and traumatised in the days following the incident.
She communicated with Mr Stanley by text message on the Friday morning to express her feelings – and to send him a request for €60,000 to compensate her.
Text messages given to the inquiry show she told Mr Stanley that she deserved “compensation” for the “emotional trauma” he put her through on the Wednesday night and demanded that if he left €60,000 in cash divided in six envelopes in her letter box she “will not pursue things further”.
Mr Stanley replied in a text: “God [name redacted]. You know I would never do anything wrong on you. I never would never ever do that. And for me it’s just friendship. That is all we always had a good working relationship. Please this as been [sic] totally honest.”
The woman responded: “I have nothing else to say. I will consider not sharing what happened as long as you compensate for the emotional damage. Do not contact me again.”
He apologised in a further text, saying: “I sorry [sic] if I caused that but god [name redacted] you know me long enough to know that I’m genuine. And I’m really sorry and I mean that. Please accept that [name redacted].”
The woman now says that her request for money was an “unwise, idiotic and ill-judged decision while in a state of shock and powerlessness”.
She said she never pursued the request for money and instead spoke to a helpline and to people close to her to help deal with the emotional toll of the incident.
Mr Stanley strongly disputed the woman’s version of events and claimed that there was a conspiracy in the party to remove him.
But the party’s inquiry found in its draft report that Mr Stanley’s responses to her request for money were not consistent with his version of events.
The inquiry concluded in its draft findings that he sent her texts that apologised and did not dispute that something had happened. The inquiry found that the text exchanges suggested that she was telling the truth and were crucial to its decision.
It found that he was acknowledging that something had happened and was apologising for it, rather than denying any impropriety and wondering why he was being asked for money.
Referring to the messages exchanged between the woman and Mr Stanley, the inquiry found in the draft report that “any reasonable assessment lends credence to the complainant’s narrative of events. The threads speak to a complainant that is adamant that something serious happened and a respondent who is apologetic until the last text ...
“At no point does the respondent [Mr Stanley] refute that something serious happened or question what the complainant is referring to [as might be expected if the respondent’s narrative of events is true].
“All of which, in the panel’s view, lends credence to the complainant and not the respondent.”
In a small number of other respects, the inquiry also found Mr Stanley’s evidence to be “not credible”.
Having heard evidence from both sides, the three-person Sinn Féin inquiry team reached its preliminary conclusions on October 5th, and wrote to both parties with a copy of its draft report.
It found that “taking all the available evidence into consideration, that on the balance of probability that narrative as put forward by the complainant is essentially true”.
It concluded that his conduct “constituted a breach of the Sinn Féin Charter of Ethics”, in that his conduct constituted “sexual harassment” and, as such, “gross misconduct”.
Each side was given seven days to make any comment or submission on the proposed findings in the draft report. After five days, Mr Stanley issued a statement that was highly critical of the inquiry, and announced his resignation from the party.
“Given what has transpired and the work of my legal team, what is very clear is this process lacked objectivity, was seriously flawed and was devoid of impartiality,” he said in a statement issued through his solicitors.
“This ‘inquiry’ has been shown to have lacked any shred of credibility, not least due to a significant abuse of process. In many ways it resembled a type of kangaroo court. Legal examination of this matter will continue.” He said he would continue to represent the people of Laois as an “Independent republican”.
Mr Stanley’s resignation from the party meant that the inquiry process was at an end. The party referred matters to the Garda following his resignation.
In response to detailed questions from The Irish Times on Friday, his solicitors issued a further statement. They were especially critical of the leaking of the draft inquiry report, and pointed out that it was a “draft report, not a final report”.
“Its provisional findings, adverse to our client, are denied fully and our client continues to assert that they are not supported by the evidence presented to the panel conducting the inquiry.
“We repeat our client’s strenuous denial of any wrongdoing on his part,” Mr Stanley’s solicitors said. They went on to say that the Sinn Féin disciplinary processes “have been demonstrably abused throughout”.
This weekend, the woman at the centre of the complaint, who spoke to The Irish Times last week, also spoke to a number of other media outlets. She has been highly critical of Sinn Féin’s handling of the process, saying that the party was trying to protect itself, rather than stand up for her.
On Sunday, Sinn Féin said in response to queries from The Irish Times that it “does not comment on the details of internal party inquiries. These matters are now with the gardaí.”
As the general election looms ever closer, the controversy seems likely to continue.
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