The fringe women's group pivoting to focus on migration

You're listening to The Irish Times. An Irish women's group originally formed to oppose what it calls gender identity politics has pivoted to focus on migration. The women's coalition on immigration is run by a group called The Countess, named after Countess Markiewicz, The Irish Revolutionary, Suffragist and Politician. This leader is Dublin Barrister Leisha De Bruun. It's my observation really, the Ireland has transformed from the most Catholic country in the world to the most radical progressive country in the world. And in many ways, we've almost like segwayed from one through opposite to the next. Earlier this month, the group held an anti-immigration event attended by three elected politicians, including Offel E.T.D. Carol Nolan. Irish Times political correspondent Ellen Coin was there. Carol Nolan was actually the keynote speaker and in her speech she was without evidence trying to draw an explicit link between sexual violence and immigration in Ireland. The Dublin Rape Crisis Centre is among those concerned that the issue of sexual violence is being weaponized to fuel anti-immigrant sentiment. And though the group is small, does the presence of elected representatives at its most recent event suggest its views have political traction. This is in the news from the Irish Times, I'm Bernie Sarasin. Today, the controversial women's group and its new focus on immigration. Hi, Ellen. Welcome to the podcast. Thank you very much. Now, in December, a new lobby group was launched. The women's coalition on immigration. Now, before we discuss who is in this coalition and in particular, its leader, a barrister called Leisha De Bruin, tell me about it. What are its aims? So the women's coalition on immigration came from a campaign group called The Countess that some people might be familiar with. It's been around for about five or six years and it campaigned against what it called gender identity politics. What other people might call transgender rights and that was kind of its singular focus. It's kind of leader, if you want to call her that, is a barrister called Leisha De Bruin. And she was also involved in the campaign against the failed family and care referendum. But as you mentioned, in December, the group pivoted towards anti-immigration campaigning and they've been active now for a few months presenting what they would like to be a kind of cross-party coalition. I don't think that's actually going to materialise in reality for them. But their kind of core argument is that they are trying to link without any evidence a rise in reports of sexual violence in Ireland with a rise in immigration. As we know, there has been a sharp rise in immigration to this country over the last few years, it is actually something that we've seen in political circles, finifold and finigale and chinvane even have adopted what we might describe as harder stances on immigration in recognition of the fact that I suppose public criticism or skepticism of immigration has grown. But what this group is trying to do is one step further. We have no data in Ireland that breaks down crime by ethnicity or nationality. So they are trying to link some very high-profile cases that people might be aware of that we can't talk about in detail because they're before the courts, but incidents that may have allegedly involved a perpetrator who is a migrant to a rise in sexual violence generally. And who is Lee Chidobroun? So as I mentioned, she's a barrister. She started out as a kind of campaigner against gender identity politics or transgender rights. She is someone who I suppose she's a leader of a group that, you know, my opinion of covering them, they're eager for recognition, they're eager for coverage. I went to one of their events earlier this month and there was kind of this effusive welcome for the Irish times and a huge thank you for us kind of being there. But at the same time, Leisha and the group are very critical of what they would describe as the mainstream media, which they think are suppressing their ideas, not really listening to them, which is also I suppose, a complaint that they would have made for years about their perspective on transgender issues as well. Now you mentioned an event. What did that look like? Who is there? So it was in Boswell's hotel. A lot of people would be familiar with that. It's a hotel across from Lensert House. It's often used for campaigning and press events. It's literally and figuratively political adjacent. Yes. So, you know, it would be familiar to a lot of journalists. So I went to this press conference that the coalition was holding. It was in a tiny, overheated room and I'd say there was about two dozen people there, including the media and the panel itself. Oh, okay. So it didn't attract a big crowd. And I suppose one of the critiques of these anti-immigration movements is that they can curate what might feel like big constituencies for themselves online and platforms like X, does that actually translate into support in real life? I suppose what was notable about this and what kind of persuaded us to cover was the fact that you actually had some established politicians there. So you had the independent TD, Carol Nolan, people might be familiar with Carol Nolan. She left Sinn Fein over a difference of opinion on abortion policy. Sinn Fein didn't afford its deputies a free vote on that issue when the Eighth Amendment came up. There was also a presence from independent Ireland there. Their TD Ken O'Flynn was there and so was their Councillor Linda DeCorsi and all three of those elected representatives spoke. Carol Nolan was actually the keynote speaker and in her speech she was again without evidence trying to draw an explicit link between sexual violence and immigration in Ireland. And she cited this 2023 report from UCD and SERP that was pointing out that there are anxieties of sexual exploitation of children in care in this country. But she was drawing a parallel between that report and some of the UK child sex abuse grooming gangs which were found to have a majority of perpetrators who were of certain ethnic backgrounds. And in the UK it had been found that fears of being accused of racism had maybe suppressed some officials from raising concerns. However, I checked with UCD and SERP and in their report they never collected any data about the ethnicity, the nationality of perpetrators. So neither the authors of the report nor Carol Nolan herself could possibly know if these anxieties of sexual exploitation of children in care have anything to do with migration or immigration. Now the group goes under the umbrella of the counters you've been following the counters activities for the last five or six years. Why has it pivoted from the trans issue to do you think to immigration? They would kind of, the argument that they would put forward is that these are issues that affect women and affect women's safety. I know people would take a different view. If you were to be a cynic you might say that the fact of the matter is, you know the issue of gender identity politics, while it can be a very fierce debate, it's not actually a mainstream one or a popular one with the public generally. Whereas we have seen over the course of the last year the position of the public on immigration has shifted. So maybe it's just for that reason. But I suppose what I found really interesting about the event was, as I've said a number of times now, we have no data in Ireland that can possibly link immigration to crime. And this group is actually asking for those figures to be collated and released. But you do have another, I suppose, significant immigration critical presence in the doll in the form of Ainto. Now Ainto apparently had been invited to this event, but the party later confirmed to me that it has no connection to the women's coalition on immigration. And my understanding is that while Ainto would be in favor of the government releasing crime statistics broken down by ethnicity, nationality or migration status, in the absence of having those figures, the party is not prepared to try to link the two things, to try to link migration to crime in any way. Two things that people should remember as well is that as part of our reporting, we did ask the Dublin Rape Crisis Centre, which is one of the largest frontline sexual violence organizations in the country. And they told me that they are concerned about attempts to try to weaponize sexual violence across Europe and the US by trying to link it to migration. They said that according to their own data, they cannot see any link that shows that immigration is a central driving force behind the harm that the survivors that it helps experiences. And we also know that when reports of sexual violence go up, it does not necessarily mean that the prevalence of sexual violence has gone up. Sexual violence is very complicated. It's a serious crime that has been suppressed for decades because people don't come forward in a report for reasons that we all understand. And this is kind of a view that is consistently held by on Gardeshiakona, organizations like the Rape Crisis Centre. So it's quite a crude statistic to take anecdotal reports that you see in the news or to look at the fact that immigration has gone up at the same time that sexual violence is and try to draw a link there where none might not exist. We simply don't know because we don't have the figures. All that this group has in terms of evidence, if you could even call it that, is they've pointed to other countries which have seen that their migrant population is overrepresented in their crime statistics, so that might be countries like Germany, Sweden, Finland. However, those statistics can be quite complicated. Some studies have found that those other studies can vary depending on what metrics they use to measure. There's also the caveat that migrant populations tend to be younger men and younger men are overrepresented in crime statistics anyway. If your migrant population is largely young and male, maybe that could contribute to it. And also, a lot of studies would also have caveats that say that the results can change and the margin between the crime rates of native populations and migrant populations can differ when you take socioeconomic factors and integration into account. And the fact of the matter is, at the end of the day, we have zero statistics which show the crime rates of migrants in Ireland because it's information that is simply not collected. What is collected is prevalence of sexual violence since 2022, I believe, or 2023. The CSO did carry out a national prevalence study of sexual violence. And that found that in the overwhelming majority of cases, a perpetrator of sexual violence was someone who was known to the victim. In many cases, it was something that happened within an intimate relationship with a current or former partner that that person knew. And that is also consistent with the figures that we would see eventually going to court the figures that are reported. So for the rise in sexual violence cases to be driven by migration, it would have to be a completely upending of every trend that we know about sexual violence for decades and decades in this country. And I would imagine that it would be something that an organisation like the Dublin Red Crisis Centre, which is basing its view on data, not opinions, would have been able to see. Did you put those points to the countess to Leish de Bruyne? I did consistently, and the point that they keep coming back with is well, get the data and make the data available. And, you know, kind of debunk what we're saying, but even when I was making the points that we know that sexual violence tends to be perpetrated by somebody known to the victim, which is a well established fact, all I was kind of getting back from the countess was, oh well, you know, that's a claim that's impossible to disprove. It's actually a claim that's very possible to prove because we have the data there. There was one incident actually at the press conference that I found kind of illuminating that didn't make it into my final article. I think it was "cosh" for space, but basically this press event was presented as concerns for women's safety. That's why these women are gathering and that's why they're. That's being the argument when they talk about trans, hasn't it? Yes, exactly. You're concerned about women's safety. At the end of the event, there was a brief question and answer session where a man who was one of these group supporters who had kind of come to support the event made an unfounded claim that the Irish media, including daily newspapers, like the Irish Times, are actively suppressing cases where migrants are committing sexual violence, and instead reporting on the cases where Irish men are the perpetrators. And he made a really offensive remark about how we were covering cases of rape victims who were on contraceptives and drugs anyway. So I did go back and I put that to the Countess group and ask them if they would like to comment and they didn't. Right. So what did you make of that? Well, this is just my opinion, I guess, but I suppose as someone who has spent over 10 or 11 years working in journalism and covering issues relating to sexual violence and women's rights. I've never really come across a campaign group that presents itself as being feminist in in its aims and objectives that would not immediately distance itself from as a woman what I find to be a frankly disgusting comment. Like a victim blaming comment that implies that if a woman has taken contraceptives, she is somehow less deserving of media coverage of her rape case is something that any real feminist would instinctively want to distance themselves from. And I think that even to give this coalition grace and to take them at their word that they are people who are very concerned about women's safety, they should equally be concerned about the fact that their anti-immigration movement attracts even one person that calls that few, that's a comment that I think any woman would want to distance herself from. But that was something that we just didn't we didn't get a response back from the Countess when we put that point to them. Coming up, how are sexual violence statistics collated in Ireland? This group is particularly focused on sexual offences, isn't it? How do we collate crime statistics around sexual offences actually? I know, like you see a court case and it's the man's name, his age, where maybe his last address, maybe what he did for a living, but no ethnic reporting. No, and I suppose the first thing to say is that if people do want to have a debate about whether or not the government should release sexual offences data by migration, nationality, migration status, nationality or ethnicity, then that is a separate debate that's kind of like what what A&T we're trying to have, but without actually leaping to the point of drawing that link without actually having any evidence. It's an interesting question because as I said, everybody knows that when you see figures from on Guaritasiacona that says that there was ex-reports of rape or ex-reports of domestic abuse, everyone assumes it to be an understatement because we know that for reasons we all understand those crimes are under reported. Actually in a different life when I was a much younger journalist, I was involved in a successful newspaper campaign to push the government to have what we called a second savvy report. So basically in 2002 the government had done its first ever prevalence study. So that's where you do an in-depth survey of the population and say have you experienced sexual violence as an adult, as a child and you actually get a far more accurate picture of the scale of sexual violence out there. The government let this lapse for years and years and years and we had to push and push the Department of Justice to eventually commit to carrying out a second survey that happened this decade and the CSO has now committed to repeating that survey every 10 years. So eventually we will have a more accurate picture of the scale of sexual violence in this country but we don't at the moment. So we do have to rely on reports from the likes of women's age and the double rape crisis centre that might tell us that their calls are going up. Again with the caveat that calls going up as perversives, it sounds sometimes might be a good thing because it means that people who weren't asking for help before are now and we know that over the course of the last 10 to 15 years there has been a massive amount of time and attention focused on public awareness campaigns that are there to entice people to come forward. And so an understanding as well that the intimate sexual abuse is a crime and you know that may not have been understood a couple of years ago. So that also affects the calls presumably. Yes and there is something as well which is probably relevant to this case and which I did also put to the Countess group which is that we've had a stigma in this country for a long time where cases that are known as stranger rape cases were sometimes treated more seriously and there was actually research last year from the University of Goalway that found that cases where the perpetrator of rape or sexual violence was a stranger tended to attract the highest sentences which led to a concern that may be so-called stranger rape cases are seen as more serious than the far more common cases where rape can happen within a relationship or within a family group or where the perpetrator knows the victim. And I did point out that if you do have very very serious cases where a person maybe a migrant is alleged to have carried out sexual violence because of a lot of issues with our national media to be honest those cases attract far more coverage and attention. So if the Countess group is relying on these anecdotal reports and these cases that come up now and again I was kind of asking if they had adjusted their theory to account for the fact that they might hear more about a case involving a migrant than we would about the far more common cases of sexual violence. Again they were just coming back and saying we just want the data published by ethnicity or background. Now as you say the Countess was a single issue lobby group if you like and it's been going for about six years I'd looked at its website very professional. You'll see a photo of Countess Markovich, the Irish Revolutionary Nationalist politician, suffragist. She died nearly a hundred years ago. What's the link? Why? So the main inspiration if you could call it that for the group using the iconography or identity of Countess Markovich is that Leisha De Bruin, the house that she lives in was a house that Countess Markovich lived in for a decade before 1916. again, if you were a cynic, you could say that that's more a real estate legacy than necessarily a feminist one. But the group has very much been projecting its politics, you know, the issues that it thinks are important for women in 21st century, Ireland onto a 20th century feminist. And I suppose that might be a controversial idea for some people, particularly on the transgenitor issue, because I know that this is a very divisive issue and people have very strong feelings on one side or another. But basically that is the inspiration why the group has adopted her name, but there's no other kind of like familiar link or anything like that there. Single issue lobby groups pop all the time. You've seen any number of them, I'm sure, in your time as political correspondent, is the Countess and the Women's Coalition likely to get broader support now that it's tapped into a much broader issue? I mean, I really don't think so because one of the reasons that more hardline anti-immigration views have failed to materialise into anti-political breakthroughs is that they can be quite fractured and quite isolated. I think that would, you know, with my political hat on, what would be telling for me as a sign of, you know, maybe an ominous sign for this Women's Coalition is the fact that my understanding is a party like AIN2 doesn't want anything to do with it. So maybe you'll attract the Carol Nolan's and the independent Ireland's of the doll, but AIN2 is a party that has tried to position itself as it's where it's now not mine. The common sense view on immigration. And I suppose the fact that mainstream parties like the two coalition partners, Fina Foll and Finnegaild, that they have adopted what they talk about this kind of rules based common sense view on immigration as well, which showed that they're trying to, they're trying to case you to what they see as some concerns or some skepticism among the public towards immigration. But I think if you're an anti-immigration campaign group and you can't, you want to attract cross party support and you can get AIN2 on board, that's a pretty bad sign. Well, as you say, from what you saw at the press conference, it seems to be very small. What next for it do you think? Well, I suppose, you know, all this week there's been a lot of kind of complaining coming from the group about the piece that I did. The usual stuff, you know, mainstream media and what are you trying to hide and how history won't judge me kindly from my alleged feminism for doing a hit piece on a group of courageous women. We'll see about that. But I suppose the, there's a lot of immigration groups out there that are spending a lot of time online, you know, online terrains like X would be comfortable for groups like the Countess or the Coalition, because you can find what seems like a very loud constituency there. But I suppose this is a democracy and everyone is allowed to lobby and advocate for whatever position they want. Of course, there is scope there for it to grow its public support. I think that there is a cohort of the public who are concerned about immigration, who are concerned about a link between immigration and crime. But I suppose that those cohorts might be communicating those anxieties to their local TDs anyway. I don't think it necessarily has to go through a campaign group. And one thing that I should mention as well is there was a lot of complaining at the event about how groups like the Coalition get labeled Far Right by in a kind of unfair way, nearly as a kind of like instinct by the media. I should say that the same event did hear a speech from Una McGurk, another barrister who espoused the great replacement theory, which is widely understood to be a Far Right conspiracy theory. And the fact of the matter is that if there are ordinary voters for Sinn Fein, Fienafold or Finegale who have concerns about immigration, who have concerns about what they feel is a link between immigration and crime, when you start talking about that Far Right stuff, that scares ordinary voters away. So it's very hard to make a gain in the center ground when those are the views that you yourself are espousing. So of course they could be wrong, but I don't think it's a coalition that's going to be a major force in Irish politics any time soon. Thanks very much Ellen. No problem. That's it for today. If you enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. There's a new episode every week day. I'm Brnie Sarasin. This episode was produced by Aiden Finnegan. In the news, we'll be back tomorrow. Want the most interesting news of the morning? But short on time, early edition is a new daily podcast from the Irish Times, bringing you our best stories in less than 10 minutes. Here exclusive reports before anyone else. Those are the people that the Tribunal now wants to contact. How is someone able to deploy five drones and operate them? It confirmed for the first time that the investigation was a homicide inquiry. All of this in the time it takes to have your breakfast in the morning. Search for early edition from the Irish Times on your podcast app or go to IrishTimes.com.