This is a story about a story. It is much more than that, however, because it is about the value of local journalism. Despite the slow death of newsprint and the hollowing-out of newsrooms across Britain and Ireland, it also illustrates why we must find a way to ensure the survival of local editorial teams.
In outline, it’s simple: in March this year, a middle-aged man walked into the office of the Impartial Reporter, the Enniskillen-based paper that serves the people of Fermanagh and other border counties in Northern Ireland.
He asked the receptionist if he could speak to a female reporter because of the sensitivity of what he was about to say.
The man then told the reporter, Jessica Campbell, about a dark secret he had kept for more than 30 years. As a 12-year-old child he had been abused when using public toilets in the town centre. In the following months, he was subject to a series of sexual assaults by a group of men.
He told how he subsequently attempted suicide several times, suffered from mental health problems and turned to drink and drugs. In 2016, he said he summoned the courage to make a statement to the police. He was able to identify some of the men but a year-long investigation came to nothing due, apparently, to “a lack of evidence”.
The man, who requested anonymity, told Campbell he had decided to approach the paper partly because he needed closure and partly because, having conquered his addictions, he now felt strong enough to speak out and, in so doing, could possibly help other abused people.
Although there had been rumours down the years of a paedophile ring in Fermanagh, this was the first evidence with enough checkable detail for the paper to feel confident about publishing the story.
The reaction astonished the Impartial’s staff. The paper was deluged with phone calls, emails and letters in which people revealed that they, too, had been victims of abuse. The story snowballed.
It was the start of what has become an Homeric undertaking by the deputy editor, Rodney Edwards, who has investigated more than 50 allegations of historic sexual abuse across the county. Over the past six months, many of the Impartial Reporter’s front pages have been devoted to disturbing exposures of long-held secrets.
Two of the abusers are no longer alive. Twelve women told Edwards they were abused by their primary school principal, John McElholm, who died in 1985.
Several men and women said they were abused by a bus driver, David Sullivan, who was also a youth club worker. His body was found dumped in a bog in 2001, some 17 months after he had gone missing. He had been murdered and his killer has never been caught. Edwards reported that police were aware of two allegations against him prior to his disappearance.
Some unnamed alleged abusers, including a retired businessman, a priest and members of an Orange Order lodge, are alive.
All the cases are now the subject of a major investigation by the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI). Detective Chief Supt Paula Hilman says: “Investigations into historical child sexual abuse in County Fermanagh are actively ongoing.”
But the PSNI has come in for considerable criticism since the paper began to publish its revelations. In July, people staged a protest outside the police station in Enniskillen calling for justice for sex abuse victims. A month later, at a large rally in the town centre, there was praise for the Impartial’s work, which was said to have underlined why local newspapers are essential to their community.
During my visit last week to the Impartial’s office, Edwards, who was hailed by name at the rally, laid out scores of pages, containing thousands of words which he has written about the issue.
It was, by any standard, impressive – serious, unsensational journalism about a sensitive subject. “There has been an overwhelmingly positive response to what we’ve reported,” he said. “I think it proves that the only real resource a newspaper needs is the trust of its readers.”
His work has received coverage across Ireland and he is making a documentary about it for BBC Ulster, due to be aired next month. At 32, he has spent 11 years with the Impartial, having originally stepped into the newsroom, aged 16, for a stint of work experience.
After leaving school, he decided to make his way as a freelance reporter rather than go to university and spent a couple of years cutting his journalistic teeth in the news-heavy environment of Belfast.
Edwards is aware that his disclosures have exposed inaction by the police, a failure to give proper weight to victims’ complaints, and he has also stepped on some political toes. It has generated a smattering of hostile social media criticism, which the PSNI took seriously enough to warn him to take care. He and his wife check under their cars each day.
More worrying, he argues, has been police pressure to disclose his sources. In resisting the demands to reveal the identities of victims who wished to remain anonymous, he has been trenchantly supported by Simon Westrop, head of legal at the publishing company which owns the paper, Newsquest.
Edwards has relied on Westrop to ensure that his stories have been legally sound. None have attracted writs, nor even threats of writs. It is an undoubted advantage for a weekly to be able to consult an experienced media lawyer.
Westrop, in acknowledging that Edwards “has struck a nerve” by “effectively questioning the established social order in Northern Ireland”, sees great benefits in reporters across the group being able to call him for advice.
Back in Enniskillen, one other significant factor should not be overlooked. The Impartial Reporter is on the main street. Unlike so many newspaper offices, it has not been displaced from its key position at the heart of the community it serves. Did that make it easier for that man to drop in and tell his ghastly story?
In summing up what has happened over the past six months, I find it impossible to disagree with the Impartial’s editor, Mark Conway: “This story, and its subsequent developments, are a tribute to the power of local journalism.”
Quite so. There cannot be a better reason to celebrate the existence of a newspaper than its championing of journalism’s central tenets: to expose crime, to inform and to hold power to account.