Witch - hunted! - Nora Wall

Witch hunts were used by the early modern states between the fifteenth and the seventeenth centuries to destroy autonomous communities. Hence a high proportion of 'witches' were Jews, mountain dwellers and merchants. Of course the witch hunt against the Jews, with their autonomous society which so offends the bureaucracy, continues to this day.
In the past 20 years or so, the modern totalitarian state has produced a further witch hunt, designed to destroy family life, with particular emphasis on disrupting relationships across the generations. For the first time in human history adults are afraid to have contact of any sort with children. No longer does the village bring up the child, but the State demands that right and expropriates that basic human power.
Christianity is a religion whose basis is freedom and love, and hence, moral responsibility, and therefore it must be destroyed if the State is to rule over all.

When Nora Wall was convicted of rape in 1999, she was the first woman in the history of the Irish Republic to be convicted of rape.
She was the first person in the Irish Republic to receive a life sentence for rape.
She was the first person to be convicted on 'repressed memory' evidence. 
At the age of 19 she joined the Sisters of Mercy, to be known as Sister Dominic.
She was accused of participating in the rape of a 12 year old girl on the girl's birthday. When it was shown that this was impossible, she and her co-accused, a confused schizophrenic, were found guilty of another rape of this girl, some undetermined time earlier.
The fact that the woman who had made the allegation had clearly lied in the first place was of no interest to the authorities, a pattern that was to reoccur in many countries, including England.
Fortunately, the phoney victim later gave an interview to the press, claiming to have been raped in Leicester Square, London, and giving the name of a friend as a witness. And equally fortunately, a businessman who had been falsely accused of rape by the friend/witness recognised the name and informed Nora Wall's defence team.
Bizarrely, like turkeys voting for Christmas, the Sisters of Mercy released the statement, 'We are all devastated by the revolting crimes which resulted in these verdicts. Our hearts go out to this young woman, who as a child, was placed in our care. Her courage in coming forward was heroic. We beg anyone who was abused in our care to go to the Gardai.'
The Sisters of Mercy have never retracted this statement, nor apologized to Nora Wall.
Such is the atmosphere of witch hunts and show trials.
Fortunately, Miss Wall and her co-accused, who died in 2002, have now been fully vindicated.