Women Defence Forces members told they should ‘be knitting and having babies’, tribunal hears

A Naval officer said women members should be “knitting and having babies”, the Defence Forces Tribunal has heard.

The Defence Forces Tribunal, presided over by Judge Ann Power, is charged with investigating how the organisation handled complaints of sexual harassment and bullying, as well as the culture surrounding these complaints.

It was established in response to concerns raised by a 2021 RTÉ Radio documentary, Women of Honour.

Honor Murphy is a prominent figure in the Women of Honour advocacy group, made up of women who are former members of the Defence Forces. The group publicly exposed alleged systemic issues of sexual harassment, assault, bullying and discrimination within the military.

Murphy made history as one of the first women petty officers in the Irish Naval Service. She joined the Naval Service in 1998 and left in February 2021 after 22 years.

Giving testimony before the tribunal on Tuesday, she described incidents involving two petty officers, also called noncommissioned officers (NCO), and a stalking ordeal she said she was subjected to by another Petty Officer.

After having difficulty with reaching the trigger due to the size of a gun during an exercise, Murphy said the officer shouted at her in front of 10 other Naval Service members and told her: “I knew women shouldn’t be here; they should be on the quay wall knitting and having babies.”

Murphy was one of two women serving on the LÉ Eithne patrol vessel at the time, along with approximately 80 men on the general roster on the ship.

She said the same Petty Officer told the two women they could not go out on boats together because “we’d get distracted looking at the dolphins or chatting”.

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When an urgent order came in to go out on a small boat, and the two women cadets were on duty, the Petty Officer said they would be punished upon their return to the LÉ Eithne, only for another officer to intervene and stop the incident.

“It didn’t go down well with the NCO in question,” she told the tribunal. “He told us we’d started a war and we would be got.”

She subsequently described a threatening incident involving the Petty Officer.

He told her he had been questioned over a murder in Dublin, where the ship had been docked at the time, before suggesting he was involved.

Murphy said: “He said they’ll never know how close they came to finding the killer ... every few minutes he said to me ‘you’ll read about me in the papers yet, Murph’.”

“It absolutely terrified me and still does,” she added.

Tribunal senior counsel Niall Beirne asked Murphy if she had made a formal complaint about the incident.

She said she did not because she was “terrified of this man”.

In 2001, Murphy said she had been the victim of stalking.

“I started getting texts from a number I didn’t recognise. Things like ‘you look nice today’ continued for months; sometimes I’d be bombarded with texts. At some stages, when I turned my light out at night, it would be something like ‘good night, I see you’re going to bed’.

“I presumed it was someone working with me, because I would also receive texts at work.”

She confided in a number of friends, including a male Petty Officer.

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He told her to go to Lieut Cdr Colm McGinley, now retired, who in turn said she needed to report the incident to An Garda Síochána.

McGinley, now retired, also appeared before the tribunal, and said he had no recollection of the conversation with Murphy.

She said she suspects it was the friend she confided in, the male Petty Officer, who was behind the stalking.

After she told him she would be reporting the incident to gardaí, she received a Sim card through her letterbox and the texts stopped.

“He said he was in love with me and wanted to be with me. It was a week or so before I went to guards.”

She did not recall being asked anything further about the stalking incident by the Naval Service.

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Murphy also recalled another incident in 2019 after she returned from maternity leave. She was asked to speak with a woman cadet who made a complaint after she was locked into her cabin by two male colleagues wearing only towels.

After no action was taken, the woman left the Naval Service.

Murphy left the Naval Service in 2021 after she was instructed that she had no other option but to go back to sea after serving in roles including recruitment. She explained that she wanted to continue in the Naval Service, but did not feel she could go back to sea as she had two young children, aged two and four, at home.

Sitting again after 2pm, Judge Power reiterated her decision to deny full legal representation to applicant groups going before the tribunal, including the Women of Honour.

“I have found the applicant group does not require the grant of full legal representation that it seeks,” she said, adding that the limited representation already approved is sufficient.

She also rejected a request for documentation relating to all witnesses to be shared.

Senior counsel Mark Harty, instructed by Malcolmson Law Solicitors and representing the Women of Honour group, made the request, arguing his clients could help to “assess witnesses” to aid with the tribunal.

“The tribunal does not intend to provide your firm with documentation for other witnesses for whom your firm does not act,” she said.