{"id":428325,"date":"2026-05-02T07:27:12","date_gmt":"2026-05-02T07:27:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/428325\/"},"modified":"2026-05-02T07:27:12","modified_gmt":"2026-05-02T07:27:12","slug":"it-ended-not-on-our-victim-statements-but-on-kind-words-about-our-abusive-brother-it-was-absolutely-horrific-survivors-hit-out-at-court-character-references","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/428325\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018It ended not on our victim statements, but on kind words about our abusive brother. It was absolutely horrific\u2019 \u2013 survivors hit out at court character references"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-91174671_secondary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom4 indo-1d70522a_marginleft0 indo-1d70522a_marginright0 indo-1d70522a_margintop4\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\" data-testid=\"title-summary\">Recent high-profile case shows referees still not asked to stand by their words in court, despite change in the legislation\n<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Abuse survivor Miriam Henry is unhappy about character references used in court\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/ERA_20260501_154028.jpg\" loading=\"eager\" width=\"100%\" data-testid=\"article-image\"  \/><\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_caption1 indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_secondary indo-66f0fec7_regular indo-1d70522a_marginbottom0 indo-1d70522a_marginleft0 indo-1d70522a_marginright0 indo-1d70522a_margintop3 indo-b48c4984_left\" style=\"color:var(--color-grey-60)\">Abuse survivor Miriam Henry is unhappy about character references used in court<\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_primary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom0 indo-1d70522a_margintop0 indo-b48c4984_inherit\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\">Miriam Henry and her sister sat in disbelief as the glowing tributes were read into the court record about their brother, the man who had been convicted of sexually abusing them as children.<\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_primary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom0 indo-1d70522a_margintop0 indo-b48c4984_inherit\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\">\u201cWe had to sit there and listen to all the nice things people had to say about him used as mitigating circumstances,\u201d Miriam said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Recent high-profile case shows referees still not asked to stand by their words in court, despite change in&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":428326,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[48326,61,60,43],"class_list":["post-428325","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-catherine-fegan","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/428325","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=428325"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/428325\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/428326"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=428325"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=428325"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=428325"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}