The three-year prison sentence imposed on the former human rights campaigner Vincent McKenna, for sexually and indecently assaulting his daughter over eight years has been criticised as too light. Vincent McKenna, who is from Belfast and was a leading member of the 'Families Against Intimidation and Terror' campaign group, was sentenced at Cavan Circuit Court this morning. Lawyers for 37-year-old Mr McKenna, who has an address in Belfast, were refused leave to appeal. Vincent McKenna's 18-year-old daughter, Sorcha, said that she was disappointed with the sentence, which she described as lenient. The director of the Belfast Rape Crisis Centre, Eileen Calder, also condemned the sentence as inadequate.
Ten days ago, a jury at Monaghan Circuit Court took less than two hours to find Vincent McKenna, from Haypark Avenue on the Ormeau Road in Belfast, guilty of 31 counts of indecent and sexual assault against his daughter. He was convicted of the offences that took place between 1985 and 1993 when his daughter was aged between 4 and 13. Following his conviction Sorcha McKenna waived her right to anonymity in order to expose his actions.
Mr McKenna is a self-confessed IRA activist, though this has been rejected by the Republican movement, and he served a prison sentence for arson attacks in the early 1980s. In September 1999, he shared a platform with senior Unionist figures at a “Save the RUC” rally in the Ulster Hall and later named two men at a Unionist conference in London whom he alleged were behind the Omagh bombing. Mr McKenna later left FAIT and founded the Northern Ireland Human Rights Bureau that collated statistics on punishment beatings, expulsions, evictions and other human rights abuses in recent years.
