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Feud between warring authors set to hot up
By Fiona Audley
 A
controversial book penned by an Irish journalist claims to show a fellow
author’s autobiographical tome to be full of false allegations,
although she continues to stand by her story.
Irish Daily Mail on Sunday journalist Hermann Kelly highlights the compensation
culture he believes is fuelling false allegations made against the Catholic
Church in Ireland and Britain, in his book Kathy’s Real Story.
His contentious tale is being released in Britain next month and is likely
to court controversy with claims that best-selling author Kathy O’Beirne,
who in Don’t Ever Tell claims to be a child victim of sexual, mental
and physical abuse, is lying.
Mr Kelly, 39, said: “I read Kathy’s book when it was released
in 2006 and continually found myself thinking ‘how could so many
bad things happen to one person in one lifetime’ — I felt
if you were a betting man you would not put money it.
“When I later interviewed Kathy, which I have done a number of times
now, I started to uncover discrepancies between her story and what she
had said previously.”
The book, which was released in Ireland last November, promises to systematically
refute the plethora of allegations made in Ms O’Beirne’s novel,
including being raped as a child and giving birth in a Magdalene Laundry
at just 14 years old.
But the journalist insists: “Kathy and her publishers have no evidence
to show that her claims in that book are true, yet I have plenty of documents
and witness statements to back up my claims and show that what this woman
has really been up to is far worse than what she says in her book.”
He added: “I have also included many other cases in Ireland and
Britain where false accusations and huge miscarriages of justice have
come to light, as there are quite a number of them.”
Tensions between the warring writers are already infamously strained and
physically erupted last November when a live television debate ended in
a physical scuffle between the two on Irish channel TV3’s Ireland
AM.
But Dublin-born Ms O’Beirne, whose misery literature was snapped
up by 350,000 readers in just a year, refuses to continue in the battle
of the books.
Her Edinburgh-based publishers, Mainstream Publishing, told The Irish
Post: “We at Mainstream and Kathy have been clear from the start
in our decision to make no statement with regards to Mr Kelly’s
book as we do not feel it warrants one.
“Kathy has now taken more than one lie detector test, which have
showed her to be telling the truth and we stand by her book as the truth.”
Kathy’s Real Story: A Culture Of False Allegations Exposed, by
Hermann Kelly, is published by Prefect Press. It costs £9.99 and
will be available from Gardners Books at www.gardners.com
from Monday, March 3. For more information or to order a copy contact
info@prefectpress.com. |
