THE family of a woman who has written a bestselling memoir about her childhood of torture and rape will hold a press conference in Dublin on Tuesday to deny many of the claims made in the book.

Although Mainstream Publishers yesterday said it was standing by the autobiography — Kathy’s Story — which has sold 350,000 copies in Ireland and Britain, the author’s family says it should be shelved under fiction.

Kathy O’Beirne, 50, from Dublin, has written a moving book, subtitled A Childhood Hell in the Magdalen Laundries, about the physical abuse she says she suffered at the hands of her father and Catholic religious orders, including 14 years of forced labour in a Magdalen laundry. But her family are publicly to denounce the allegations as false, while three women have come forward to describe living with O’Beirne in a girls’ hostel rather than a Magdalen laundry.

At the start of the book, O’Beirne claims she was violently beaten and abused by her father, Oliver. Three of her brothers have denied this, and say their father was a good, loving man who worked hard to provide for his family.

Her older brother John O’Beirne, 51, said he is “absolutely sure that allegations in the book about sadistic abuse by my father are false”. He recalls visiting Kathy in St Anne’s, a children’s home in Kilmacud, and St Loman’s in Dublin, a mental institution for troubled children. He says his sisters visited Kathy in Mountjoy when she was imprisoned for petty theft. John O’Beirne says the chronology of events in Kathy’s Story is a “jigsaw puzzle and nothing fits”.

One of Kathy’s younger brothers, Eamon O’Beirne, said: “The allegations against my father contained in Kathy’s book are totally false.”

O’Beirne claims she gave birth to one child as a result of rape by a male visitor to the Magdalen laundry, with the child later dying in the care of an unidentified religious order. Eamon, 48, contradicts this. “To my knowledge, she never had a child. And I also know my father did not abuse or torture me. Never, as portrayed in this book, did these things ever happen in our house,” he said. “She can write as many books as she likes and make as much money as she likes, but she can’t implicate others.”

Angered at the smear on his father’s reputation and the family name, he predicted that “loads of my brothers and sisters will now speak up”.

But Bill Campbell, managing director of Mainstream, said yesterday that the Scottish publishing house would stand by its story. “We have made every effort and are satisfied that the story is true,” he said. Campbell interviewed Kathy in Dublin and had “other people go over the chronology in great detail” before signing a deal.

Campbell said that they made contact with the Dublin archdiocese inviting comments before publication of the book, but to date Mainstream had “received no substantive response”. Asked whether he has seen documentary proof that Kathy had a child or was in a Magdalen laundry, Campbell refused to answer.

He suggested that recent moves to question Kathy’s Story formed part of a “vendetta” by Florence Horsman Hogan of Let Our Voices Emerge (Love), a group that campaigns for those who have suffered false allegations of abuse.

Horsman Hogan has been campaigning for more than a year to have the book investigated. “Kathy O’Beirne’s family, a religious congregation and the psychiatric services were subjected to horrific allegations of child abuse, yet Mainstream ignored our appeals, and that of her family, to remove this book from sale pending verification,” Horsman Hogan said.

During the 1970s, Sherrard House hostel in Dublin was a voluntary shelter for homeless girls. Although never mentioned in Kathy’s Story, three former residents have said O’Beirne spent three years there with them.

Angela, 48, from Blanchardstown, said she remembered Kathy being there in her mid-to late teens. “Kathy never had any children, never spoke of having any children, never once spoke of being in a Magdalen laundry,” she said. “This story is complete madness.”

Two other residents of Sherrard House agree. Celine Dempsey, 47, from Dublin remembers staying with Kathy for four years in the girls’ hostel. During that time, she maintains that “Kathy never spoke of being in a Magdalen laundry, never spoke of having a baby or of ever being raped”.

Another woman, Mary Lavin, remembers that Kathy came to Sherrard House from St Loman’s mental home. She recalls that Kathy used to ask the girls about their life stories and would write them down. “She had loads of papers,” Lavin said.

Dempsey believes that O’Beirne has taken other people’s stories, “put them together and embellished them a lot”.

Kathy is standing firm, however. While refusing to take calls from the The Sunday Times last week, she defended the veracity of her claims in an interview on RTE Radio, insisting that she has proof of everything.

O’Beirne has indicated that the Magdalen laundry in which she was allegedly abused was run by the Sisters of Our Lady of Charity. She could yet face legal action from the order, which has hired lawyers and written to the Department of Justice asking for an investigation. The department has passed the matter to the gardai.

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