"When the Oireachtas makes something a crime, people believe that they have a licence to punish those who they believe are committing it and there were young men who grew up in a society which feared and hated homosexuality. They took the law into their own hands and all too often, people allowed the law to do its bashing for them."
So said An Taoiseach Leo Varadkar last month as he apologised on behalf of the state to the people convicted of homosexuality prior to its decriminalisation 35 years ago. The brutal 1982 killing of Declan Flynn in Fairview Park and the absence of a sentence for the five men found guilty became a major catalyst for the gay rights movement in Ireland. On the Today programme, Miriam O'Callaghan was joined by Declan's brother Chris and his nephew Niall Behan to talk about the case, the murder and their beloved brother.
Chris was the eldest of the 9 children and Declan was second in line. He recalled the type of person his brother was.
"He, unfortunately, got the short end of the stick of life because he had a very bad speech impediment and he was left-handed. They tried to beat that out of him in school… I think the speech impediment led to him being bullied in a few places, not just in school but afterwards… He was a gentle person, he was shy in company but he had a tremendous heart. My second youngest in the family was Down Syndrome, my brother Gregory, and they had a special relationship… They really got on very well together and he looked after Greg in a special way."
Chris recalled the day he found out that his brother had been murdered. Declan had failed to come home the night before and the family was worried. After ringing the Gardaí and the hospitals, Chris and his sister Miriam, Niall's mum, went to the morgue in Blanchardstown to rule out the possibility that his brother was dead, but nothing could have prepared him for the reality.
"Declan was on a slab, his face practically unrecognisable. He had been very badly beaten and I went into total shock. (I) went out, told Miriam and then I had to… face going home and telling my parents the reality of it and to this day every minute of that is in the back of my consciousness. You never forget it. Apart from the fact that you've lost a close relative, the shocking part of it was that some people had so little respect for him, his life, his body, that they did this to him… Lack of respect for the individual who was unassuming, who was gentle, who was shy, who was a valuable human being and yet he was killed like that in such a brutal fashion."
Niall learned the tragic truth about his uncle when he was in his early teens as the family found and still find it extremely difficult to talk about Declan's death. Miriam asked him to describe the chain of events of that night in 1982.
"They essentially chased him out of the park and they brutally killed him as a gang… I can't get over the injustice of it all… What I really can't get my head around is what followed on… The first injustice was clearly his death… What followed on from that was an injustice from the state, which not only is absolutely appalling in its own right but combine with that a grieving family, I really think that perhaps it just magnifies the hurt and the pain so much more."
Click here to listen to Today with Miriam O’Callaghan