Michael Shine Struck Off – What’s Going On In Drogheda’s Hospital?
By Bock Nov 24th, 2008 | Category: sexual abuse
We all know about Sick Building Syndrome, but this is the first time I ever heard of a mentally ill building.
Dr Michael Shine, who used to be a consultant surgeon at Our Lady of Lourdes hospital in Drogheda, has been struck off the medical register for professional misconduct after a number of men made allegations of sexual assault. It’s alleged that the assaults happened in the 1960s, 70s, 80s and 90s while Shine was examining children and teenagers at the hospital and at his office.
Now.
Did any member of the staff notice anything going on? We don’t know that, but we do know that nobody in the hospital expressed any concern. Not a single nurse. Not a single doctor. Not a single administrator.
Nobody in the hospital noticed anything happening even though Michael Shine would eventually be struck off the register for misconduct, forty years later.
Isn’t it extraordinary how unobservant the people in Our Lady of Lourdes hospital are?
These are the same colleagues who failed to see anything wrong in Michael Neary’s butchering of female patients in the very same hospital. The very same colleagues who circled the wagons to defend one of their own, in a hospital where nurses were afraid to speak out about barbaric practices that they knew to be wrong.
What is wrong with this hospital? What is wrong with the people who run this hospital? Is it a bad case of Blind Building Syndrome or should I be asking a deeper question? Perhaps I should be asking what’s wrong with our country, and why we show such deference to people like Shine and Neary.
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Shine was found not guilty of similar allegations a number of years ago and at that time a nurse at the hospital had put herself on the line to encourage one of his alleged accusers in the making of his complaint. I remember reading that her identity was revealed to her colleagues and to the press. She eventually gave up working there. She or another person at the hospital stepped in to stop Dr. Shine going abroad to do annual work in some Medical Missionaries hospital.
He was freed in a criminal case, but the High Court and the Fitness to Practise Committee think he’s guilty of serious professional misconduct.
There will probably be a number of civil actions after this.
It was indemic in the Ireland of the time. People didnt ask questions because were generally uneducated and the educated classes such as doctors and clergy were above reproach. You didnt ask questions. If you needed a limb off it was for your own good. No second opinions.
It may be a generalisation, but isn’t it the same in every case of abuse in an institution. The Brotherhood of silence reign supreme, and the rest are too scared to speak out. After all, no more than that filthy sack of shit and wouldbe Josef Mengele Neary, I’m sure Shine was a respected member of the community and, as the good doctor orgasm said, ‘above reproach’. Who would have believed them?
A question worth posing (perhaps) is is the past indicitive of the present. Are there, at this very moment, those who are to afraid to blow the whistle?
the civil actions will probably be statute-barred by lapse of time. Shiner could take on the Fitness to Practise Committee and the IMO like the doctor in Cork did, and that would take years, regardless of the outcome. In the meantime a stay would be put on the civil actions, so Shiner’s lawyers would get an idea of how much enemy fire is potentially out there. the insurers would use the free time to do a bit of settling, on the basis of a little now is better than nothing in ten year’s time, etc. It’s how the game is played in a constitutional common law country with a presumption of innocence and adversarial litigation.
Nuts
There’s nothing that frightens people like Neary and Shine. They had total power and complete deference was shown to them.
From Irish Independent November 1 2003
http://www.independent.ie/national-news/smiling-surgeon-walks-free-past-his-fraught-accusers-194564.html
Check out the Lourdes Hospital’s record on Symphysiotomy! Scary
I think there was a TV programme about that a little while back, but I couldn’t bring myself to watch it.
The entire hospital seems to be infected with contempt for its patients. Perhaps it’s the legacy of the nuns who used to run it.
Know this BOCK, it’s still happening because the arrogance of the ‘Doctors’ prevails. Doctors in Ireland R paid so much by the taxpayer that they will go to extremes to cover for their deviant and criminal colleagues in order to retain these payments which in many cases R sums in excess of €500,000.00. This is both a current and a historical fact.
I was due for a hemorroid operation in 1975 and I was getting “jokes” from all sides about Shine. Come to think of it only middle aged women seemed to joke. I’ve NO recollection of men joking about Shine.
I never did either afterwards.
shine was a cold hearted calculated serial abuser who cadjoled and manipulated his victims in order to take advantage of them ,alas in the ireland of the daythese young boys had no-one or no place to turn to for help, support or justice. unfortunately shines antics were a well known rumour/fact around Drogheda yet it took far too long to get any kind of satisfaction through the legal channels and yet again it was the brave victims who had to endure the torture of dragging this case slowly to its conclusion, well done lads.