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	Finding the Rights Path Sunday Business Post February 17, 2008 http://www.sbpost.ie/post/pages/p/story.aspx-qqqt=NEWS+FEATURES-qqqs=news-qqqid=30503-qqqx=1.asp Amnesty's new executive director in Ireland aims to put human rights back on the agenda, writes Martha Kearns. Colm O'Gorman's office is stark. A lonely plant, sent by a friend that morning, sits atop a single filing cabinet beside a small figure of a person crouching with their head in their hands. His computer had been set up just hours before we met, but his email inbox was already filling up with tasks to start him off in his new role as executive director of the Irish section of Amnesty International. O'Gorman's path to the job was high-profile and rocky at times. He initially came to public attention as the first victim of paedophile priest Fr Sean Fortune to come forward. He subsequently initiated a lawsuit against the Bishop of Ferns. The 42-year-old set up the One in Four charity, which supports those who have suffered sexual abuse, and he has become a respected commentator on the clerical abuse scandal. However, eyebrows were raised when, in 2006, he announced he would be standing for the Progressive Democrats in last year's general election. Despite being appointed to the Seanad by the Taoiseach months before polling day, he was not elected to the Dail, as his party put in a calamitous performance. Speaking to The Sunday Business Post on the first day of his new job - a day when Cardinal Desmond Connell withdrew his legal bid to stop files being given to a commission investigating clerical sexual abuse in the Dublin diocese - O'Gorman said he knew choosing to nail his colours to the PD mast shocked a lot of people. "I know my choice of party ultimately caused a lot of people to scratch their heads. I think that says a lot about how the party allowed itself to be portrayed, and portrayed itself, over a number of years. It says more about that, than what the party is about and what it stands for." He said he wanted to join a party where he would not have to compromise his beliefs. "I didn't want to just go through the motions. I didn't want to join a party which would have made it easier for me to get elected. I needed to be confident, if I got elected, that I would actually be able to do something meaningful and purposeful," said O'Gorman. He added that it would be unfair to "comment from the sidelines" on the future of the PDs while it was "struggling and in a challenging place". While he does regret the outcome, he does not regret running for office. "I had spent two or three years resisting the idea of getting involved in politics, but I genuinely believe that, if Irish politics is to change, we need people coming from different areas of life and work to get directly involved in Irish politics. I'm sorry it didn't work out from that point of view." It was just after the election defeat, when he returned to the helm of One in Four, that he was made aware of the Amnesty job. There had been other offers "but when this came across the horizon, I did notice a reaction in myself immediately in away that hadn't happened before". But it wasn't an easy decision and he found it hard to leave One in Four, which he set up in London in 1999, and its sister group, set up in Ireland five years ago. "I don't know if I have even fully let it go. It's been a couple of interesting weeks with everything that's been going through the courts with the Cardinal Connell issue. But I believe there comes a time to move on, particularly when someone has founded an organisation. I wouldn't want to have been there, still in a senior position, in 20 years' time. I don't think that would have worked for me or the organisation. It was time." However, he will always keep in touch with the issues most important to One in Four and said he was delighted Connell had abandoned the "ill-advised" action which, he said, had damaged the reputation of the Church and Connell. "But I suppose what it highlighted for me was that some things don't change. And that there is a desire within institutions - and I'm not just singling out the Church in this - to claw back to a position of power and unquestioned authority." He also feels strongly about the failures surrounding child protection laws. "Every time a major scandal surfaces, we talk about how awful it is and how we must do something about this. But it's taken us a very long time to put the kind of structures in place, especially in constitutional law, that we need to properly protect children." He said if a report produced by the joint Oireachtas committee on child protection had been implemented in full, we would be at the forefront of child protection. "But the concern is that it won't be and we will end up with some hotchpotch thing until the next scandal comes along," he said, adding that the issues that exercised him in One in Four would prepare him for his new role. "It is a natural extension from the work I have been doing over the past ten years to the work I will be doing with Amnesty. It is all about working to ensure our inherent human dignity is recognised and, as a result of that, the rights we should be afforded by being human." O'Gorman's first experience of Amnesty was when he was in first year in secondary school and a teacher made him aware of its prisoner-of-war campaign. "The first time I heard the concepts of social justice or human rights put into any framework was through Amnesty, so I had an affinity for the organisation going back about 30 years." He got his first real taste for the workings of the group the week before last, which he spent at its international secretariat in London at induction meetings for the organisation's ten newly-appointed directors from around the world. Last Monday was his first day in his new office and he admits he was excited as he travelled the hour and 20 minutes from his home in Wexford - just a stone's throw from the beach - to Amnesty's office on Westmoreland Street with its 42 staff. "I'm really excited and I am delighted to finally get started. I'm someone who keeps busy and gets on with it. It was funny this morning to open up a calendar with nothing in it and an e-mail box that was completely empty - however, it's filling up nicely, even by this stage of the day. I'm looking forward to getting stuck in. A lot is going to happen over the next year." His first task is getting to know the organisation and its priorities before deciding on the direction he wants to take the group over the five-year term of his contract. "I'm just very excited. The possibility of working with an organisation with such a broad focus to its work was what really captured me. To be working on everything from campaigning on issues of rendition flights, mental health and human rights in Ireland to working internationally on the use of torture, Guantanamo, Sudan, Chad, Darfur, violence against women - that's phenomenally exciting." This year is also the 60th anniversary of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UNDHR) which has become Amnesty's raison d'etre. "It's a good time to reconnect with the basics of the UNDHR. For me, one of the big challenges is how we communicate what we are about as an organisation. We need to communicate the fact that human rights matter. If we can grasp that, I think we move the whole cause forward significantly." He said it's very easy for people to get caught up with managing their lives, with the "pressures of this new prosperous and indebted society", and to forget the broader picture. "But it was up to us [the people of the country] to make sure we inform politicians about the things we care about. I'm somebody who is never willing to sit back and point the finger and say 'You're not doing enough'. "I'm much more interested in asking 'What are we doing?' and 'Can we do better?' That's what the spirit of Amnesty is about, so it feels like a very happy meeting to find myself in this role."
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