IAN ARMSTRONG BELIEVES Michael Shine’s sexual crimes against young boys went unchecked for decades because he was revered in the northeast of the country.
The now-60-year-old is still pushing for justice, more than four decades after being allegedly sexually abused by the disgraced doctor.
“Everyone stood up for him,” he told The Journal in an in-depth interview.
“He was an idol in the town and he was really good. The next best surgeons were in Belfast, during the bombings. He was revered and, unfortunately, too revered.”
Ian severed tendons in his hand after a workplace accident at a local hotel where he was training as a chef and was rushed to hospital on 5 November 1982.
Shine operated on him late that night and into the early hours of the following morning. The surgery was successful and his hand healed well. Ian had several follow-up appointments between late 1982 and into 1983. He has recorded details of these appointments in his own personal diary.
“One of the times, I can still see the door going in and around to the room where it happened, it was just bad, bad. He examined me all over, but spent time down below. I can’t get rid of that memory.
“I didn’t know why I had to undress and why I had to be alone with him, foaming at the mouth, and his big eyes.”
He alleges that Shine spent so much time touching his private parts that he worried that maybe he had testicular cancer.
While he was attending Shine in relation to a hand injury, he claims he was still forced to undress and expose his full body to the disgraced doctor.
He made a statement to gardaí, but the DPP did not pursue charges against Shine in relation to his case.
“I’m still angry at the system,” he said as part of a group calling for a public inquiry into the doctor.
Ian said that he later wrote to a friend of a family member who was a doctor working with Shine in the late 1980s at Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital, Drogheda.
The doctor responded with a handwritten letter in 2009.
In this letter, the doctor said that he “never observed anything untoward or received any complaint from patients or staff” and he “genuinely believed that he was a conscientious doctor”.
The letter continued: “I apologise to you on behalf of the medical system, which I was a part of, for letting you down.
“I saw him as an attentive and caring physician, which earned him the trust and respect of patients and staff that he did not deserve.”
He believes that after years of pushing for answers, victims waiving their anonymity is the only way to force the government to act.
“Real voices, real stories are the difference.”
He claims that the main agency that needs to be examined through a public inquiry is the North Eastern Health Board, now subsumed into the HSE.
He also believes that the HSE should award medical cards to all victims of Shine as a “goodwill gesture”.
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Shine’s name has long been associated with legal battles about the many allegations against him. He was first accused of abuse by a whistleblower in 1995 and charged with indecent assault in 1996. His legal tactics delayed any trial relating to those charges from starting until 2003. He was then acquitted.
Two more trials, in 2017 and 2019, saw him found guilty of assaults against nine boys. More charges led to another protracted legal saga, culminating in the Court of Appeal ruling that “cumulative factors” – including Shine’s age and health, and a ‘misstep’ by the Director of Public Prosecutions – meant the case was in a “wholly exceptional category where it would be unjust to put the appellant on trial”.
Even after being convicted of sexual offences in 2017 and 2019, there was more legal plays used by Shine. He was granted bail in 2017 pending an appeal of that initial conviction. His legal team argued for a delay to the start of his next trial which was granted to allow for a fade factor after publicity from the first trial. Instead of starting in June 2018, the trial was pushed back to January 2019.
In February 2020, he was found guilty of assaulting seven boys who were in his care between 1971 and 1992. He ran out of legal road and was taken to Midlands Prison to start his four-year sentence.
His appeal against his initial conviction and 20-month sentence was then dismissed on 3 July 2019. He withdrew a separate appeal against his 2019 sentence in 2021.
He served three years’ in Midlands Prison and was released in 2022. He now resides in Dublin 4.
Today, a leading law firm has announced it has been retained by a victims’ group to seek a State inquiry into the alleged scale of the abuse – and if authorities could have stopped it earlier.
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