CALM CAMPAIGNER

LESS than 30 per cent of the rape victims attending the Dublin Rape Crisis Centre actually make their ordeals known to the police. Allowing for difficulties in assembling the Book of Evidence, fewer still will get passed by the DPP; a smaller number will get to court.

A tiny percentage of rapists are found guilty of their crimes - possibly, according to Olive Braiden, director of the Rape Crisis Centre, as little as 6 to 7 per cent. "According to Kate Shanahan's book, which was based on national research, only 10 per cent of reported rape cases go to court."

Quoting from Scully and Marolla, a report written in 1993, Braiden points out "that of the convicted rapists they interviewed, most felt that rape was a rewarding, low risk act because of the known low conviction rate." Even more invisible than the rape victim is the rape victim driven to a slow suicide of shame. "But of course suicide is far more prevalent among adult victims of systematic child sexual abuse. At the Rape Crisis Centre most of the men we counsel are victims of child sexual abuse."

According to her, there is very little sympathy in Ireland for women who are raped - because, says Braiden "underlining every rape is the fact that many men - and women - believe the victim was in, some way responsible.

"For instance, if she is raped while out alone at night, people ask why didn't she take a taxi home? Why was she out walking at night? Why didn't she take a taxi instead of a bus? Every woman who is raped, regardless of her age, automatically becomes, in the eyes of some people, an Eve figure.

"There are all these myths about women's behaviour and participation in the crime. It's horrible, it's unfair, but it is what happens in Ireland.

Braiden is a calm woman, confident and comfortable in her own life. She may fill a campaigning role but she is far from shrill. The experiences of the past 13 years at the centre have certainly opened the eyes of a friendly, even romantic if practical mother of five, but they have not shocked her. "I was always aware of injustice, even when I was a child and I used to ask the nuns, and my own mother why the children of the Travellers - they were called tinkers in those days - didn't go to school, or what they did in the rain when the camps they lived in became flooded. Why they didn't have nice clothes? Why they didn't make their First Communions?"

There was never an answer. "All I was told was that it was none of my business, it didn't concern me and most of all, I was told that they were used to it."

As a wife and mother, Braiden lived abroad for 15 years, setting up home in London, Spain, Belgium, Paris, Thailand and later the Bahamas. "Because of Sean's job, we travelled widely. I noticed many things, especially the way in which children are celebrated in countries like Italy and Spain. But in Ireland, for all the talk we have here about loving children, children are expected to be seen and not heard. I don't find that attitude particularly loving. Naturally I don't expect to sit back and let children wreck the place, but I do think it's important to let children know they are people."

As we witness ever more shocking disclosures about Irish society, it is difficult to decide whether our disgust should be balanced with applauding the new openness. "We have a culture of secrecy - this is not a culture of openness. Fear and shame have always been part of life here. In a sexually repressed society, people are going to be obsessed with sex. Men are embarrassed by it, women are ashamed of it."

Currently working on a report examining sexual and other crimes of violence committed against women and children Braiden says her years in the Rape Crisis Centre have taught her that many women have no faith in the legal system, "but I do believe in the law and I believe that everyone should have faith in the legal system but when you see what is happening, it is not easy.

According to her, women feel there will be no justice in the outcome of many rape cases while the victim is merely a witness without her own legal representation. "While a woman has no legal representation in court, she will feel alone, passive and accused, without a voice. As anyone who has attended a rape trial will be aware, the only way the alleged rapist can be found not guilty is by proving that the woman is a liar or of dubious character."

Braiden was born Olive Egan in Sligo in 1942. "I grew up in Ballymote, about 15 miles outside Sligo town. There were five children, we were comfortably off. We had a hardware shop which my mother ran: my father was a builder."

She became used to small town life, and, their own busy household. There were always people about. "Some of the workmen from the yard and the assistants from the shop had their midday meal with us. My sister was married while I was still at national school, so it was as if there were two families." Her main interest appears to have been asking questions, questions that were difficult to answer.

SHE remembers her parents as liberal people: "If the word feminist had been fashionable when I was a child, it would have been the one to describe my parents. My father wanted us to be independent and able to do things for ourselves, like driving."

Braiden's mother, an only girl in a family of brothers, was very aware of the importance of independence. She died last Christmas, and Braiden describes her as "quite a lonely person. She was quiet, reserved, almost remote and as her mother had died when she was seven, had been raised in her grandfather's house by her aunts. I think she was very involved with us as a mother, but I'm not sure she was as close to us as I am to my daughters."

Anne Jane Egan had many sorrows in her life. Aside from losing her mother at an early age, she lost three babies. One of Olive Braiden's earliest memories is of a little white coffin with a baby in it laid out in the sitting room. "I must have been about two years old and I remember all the neighbours coming in, an image of a constant stream of people." An older child, Kathleen, Braiden's third sister, died at 16. "Despite these tragedies, I remember it as a happy childhood. The highlight of our summers was our annual holiday at the seaside town of Strandhill. We also went every Sunday. I always remember the strong smell of seaweed coming from the baths. It's a smell I love; it's very evocative for me.

On finishing school, the young Olive Egan decided to do social science at Trinity. "At that time, because of the ban on Catholics, you still had to get permission from the Archbishop, so I wrote to Charles McQuaid. I was told the social science degree at UCD was perfectly adequate for my needs."

At college, she soon found the social life was more enjoyable than the academic one. "I got a summer job with Aer Lingus as a ground hostess at the end of first year, and went back the following summer as well. By then I had met Sean, who worked at the airport. We decided to get married so I didn't finish my degree. Fortunately, I was able to return to studying at a later date."

Her first year of married life was spent in England. The Braidens rented a house over an old style lock up bicycle shop in a village near the airport. The bike shop was owned by a Mr Cheetham. He was very polite, and very formal. "It was always `Mrs Braiden' and `Mr Cheetham', I was very lonely and very conscious of being Irish. I felt I had to adjust my vocabulary. Little things like asking for `a spool of thread' had to be translated into `a reel of cotton'."

Her first child, Aisling, was born in London and within five years, Braiden had four children under five. "After the year in England, Sean's job as Aer Lingus manager for Spain and Portugal took us to Spain where two of the boys, Conor and Killian, were born. Then we moved on to Brussels where I had another son, Aodhagain." Of all the places she has lived, her favourite time was two and a half years spent in Paris.

Returning to Ireland in the early 1970s, to a house in Donabate, she thought after three sons she would like another daughter. "There had been a four year gap: I knew I would just love to have another little girl." In the first month of the pregnancy, Braiden contracted German measles without knowing she was pregnant.

"I didn't know the full impact of the seriousness of the rubella for the foetus. Then, through a series of fortnightly tests I realised the full risk for the baby. I had to decide about going through with the pregnancy. It was very distressing. My friends were not supportive. They just did not to know.

Coming to terms with the reality that her baby would be deaf, or blind, or possibly deaf and blind, or - as one doctor pointed out - "you may be lucky, the child might only have a hole in the heart, you'll cope with it," was extremely traumatic.

"It was so worrying. I believe in the power of prayer. I have always been a great prayer. I depended on prayer to help me make a decision. I lived with total confusion until I decided to go through with it.

"I didn't want to have an abortion because I didn't know how I would be able to mentally deal with it afterwards. But then there was also the horror of having a child who might have to spend all of his or her life in an institution. I woke up one morning with the clear decision to go ahead with this pregnancy.

It was the first major crisis of a happy, almost protected life. "Sean had said that he would stand by whatever I decided to do, but even so the decision was mine. When her daughter, Sinead, was born almost 22 years ago, she was profoundly deaf. Sinead had a normal childhood - the family spent two summers at the John Tracy Clinic in Los Angeles where they learned as a family how to teach Sinead to lip read and speak.

When Sinead was three another of Sean's postings - this time seconded to Guinness Peat - took the family to Bangkok for two and a half years. There, Sinead went to a local kindergarten and was the only European child.

Some years after returning to Ireland, the stress of daily travel between Donabate to Sinead's school, St Mary's in Cabra, made the Braidens decide to move to Cabra. Sinead is currently completing her first year studying psychology and social science at the University of Rochester in New York State. "She wants to be Ireland's first deaf social worker."

Sinead's attitude to her deafness is both philosophical and pragmatic. In response to yet another of Braiden's endless cautions about safety at night, Sinead when home from university at Christmas during the height of the violence and various abductions here, said to her mother: "In deaf culture, women are independent and not afraid of their shadow like hearing women.

According to Braiden, Sinead at 22 looks more like a 15 year old, and is remarkably independent, "self possessed and just, a very happy person".

During her stay in Thailand, Olive Braiden returned to full time work, as a school principal. Gradually, she became aware of the extent of the sex orientated society which had been created mainly by the demands of European tourists interested in sex with underage girls. "I felt it stomach churning to see these gross looking European men with their hired child companions." The girls themselves appeared to enjoy the luxury of staying in a hotel and having money.

Brothels were the lynch pin of the sex tourist industry. "These men were so arrogant, unashamed. I always made the point of giving them a dirty look. The local children accepted their involvement in these activities because it was sold to their families as a legitimate way of earning a living."

While many of the European wives spent their days playing bridge and swimming, Braideen by working was seeing most of Bangkok's real life. When she returned to Ireland, she began working in languages centres in Dublin. In 1983, she read a newspaper report about the trial of a deaf woman who had been raped and whose case was abandoned because of her speech handicap and the difficulty for a jury of dealing with an interpreter. It was this which brought her to the Rape Crisis Centre as a volunteer.

Aside from the injustice, she asked herself "was this life of unfairness what was facing Sinead?" On phoning the Rape Crisis Centre, she spoke to founder member, Anne O'Donnell, who suggested that she contact Barbara Egan and help with fund raising. At that time, the centre was run as a collective. "I trained as a crisis counsellor," says Braiden, "and joined the staff in, 1984."

That year marked the beginning of revelations in Ireland concerning the previous hidden history of child sexual abuse. "We were forced to look at employing professional therapists. Our work expanded to such an extent we had to move to a new premises and we changed to a management structure because a collective of volunteer counsellors could not carry the workload." Braiden became director of the Rape Crisis Centre in 1990.

Less than half the centre's annual running costs, including the employment of a full time staff of 20, are met by the Department of Health. The Centre must raise the rest itself.

In 1994, Braiden as an apolitical public person was approached by Fianna Fail to contest the European elections. "Knowing the importance of the European Parliament in implementing social change, I accepted the nomination." However, she had underestimated the extent to which her known apolitical status would affect the support her campaign could expect from within the party. "I did think I would get elected but I didn't. I enjoyed the experience, it was a useful if expensive lesson."

REFERRING to Caroline Fennell's 1993 report on rape and law, Braiden speaks about Fennell's findings on the need for a female perspective on the law of rape, stating what women feel it is to be raped and in what circumstances women are considered to be credible.

"Fennell stresses the need for a female perspective because the Irish legal construction is based on male assumptions which determines the credibility of the rape victim. Women are told when, how, if and to what extent they are violated. All of this must change."