Áilín Quinlan: Women like Nikita are the true trail-blazers for future Ireland

Isn’t it strange the way things happen?

I switched off Flack. Fast. I’d browsed Netflix looking to power down after a tiring day and decided to try Flack. A British series, starring Anna Paquin as a ruthless PR woman, it looked promising, and usually, the British-made stuff is excellent.

The thing is, that while he doesn’t actually appear on screen in Flack, Conor McGregor gets quite a few mentions - the MMA fighter is referred to as one of the high-profile celebrity clients of another publicist because he wants the firm’s help in writing and promoting a children’s book.

Bang. That was it for me and Flack.

I was furious with Netflix.

And then, as things happen, I read an interview with Nikita Hand a few days later in advance of the launch of her book, Not The Perfect Victim. Hand still attends therapy. She still gets panic attacks. And she still has nightmares.

I’d stopped watching Flack a couple of days before I read that interview last Saturday. And I was relieved I had.

I don’t care if, as I read, the series is supposed to be a satirical nod to how real-life public relations firms have to manage the demands of celebrities and the sort of campaigns they have to run.

I’m sure it is, but once I realised McGregor was being referenced more than once, I hit the off button.

Even though Flack was made before November, 2024, when the civil court found him liable for the sexual assault of Nikita Hand, Netflix could surely have found something else to screen.

To my mind, Nikita Hand belongs to a very special group of women in this country. The women who stop the rest of us in our tracks and fundamentally change the way we see things.

It takes unimaginable bravery and determination because often such women are initially dismissed, derided, denigrated. Overt and covert misogyny in this country, as I’ve said before, is alive and thriving.

Take Natasha O’Brien, who was attacked by Cathal Crotty in Limerick in 2022 after she asked him to stop shouting homophobic abuse.

Remember his triumphant quip? “Two to put her down, two to put her out.” Crotty initially received a suspended sentence, but following intense public outrage, nationwide protests in massive support for O’Brien, and the appeal by the DPP, he was later re-sentenced to two years in prison.

His release in early August, after serving one year and seven months of that sentence, promoted, guess what, a new wave of online abuse and victim-blaming directed at O’Brien by Ireland’s gallant army of invisible keyboard warriors.

Thus proving, of course, O’Brien’s observation about how survivors who speak out publicly about violence against women are subjected to misogyny and victim-blaming.

Then there’s Professor Katriona O’Sullivan, the psychologist, award-winning academic, writer, and inspirational public speaker, whose bestselling first book, Poor, was a memoir of growing up in extreme poverty in a home shaped by heroin addiction.

Let’s not forget the amazing Nell McCafferty, journalist, playwright, civil rights activist, feminist, and absolute and utter trailblazer, who passed away two years ago. I was only a small child when McCafferty travelled to Belfast in 1971 with other members of the Irish Women’s Liberation Movement to protest the prohibition of the importation and sale of contraceptives in this country, but even I, well under the age of 10, heard about the Contraceptive Train.

On to Catherine Corless. The historian from Galway who uncovered the terrible truth behind the Tuam Mother and Baby Home. Her painstaking research exposed the undocumented deaths and the mass burial of nearly 800 babies, forcing a state apology as well as a statutory commission of investigation, not to mention a fundamental revisiting of Ireland’s past.

Mary Robinson, Ireland’s first female president, breaking through incredible barriers and going on to become the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.

There are many, many more such women. But my space is limited and something else needs to be said.

Michael O’Leary. The day comes for every joker when a quip goes too far. I’ve always been a fan. His vision. His left-brain thinking. His pragmatism. His wittiness. His staunch refusal to countenance officialese or any other kind of baloney.

And however annoying it is, I have found myself unwillingly admiring his often-exasperating schemes to squeeze more money out of Ryanair passengers.

All the same. Come the day. Come the hour. Describing other, pricier, airlines as ‘high-fare rapists’ was O’Leary’s hour.

Whether he just didn’t get it, or simply isn’t used to apologising, I don’t know.

It took a long time, too long, for him to recognise the depth of his offence and issue the apology.

Possibly because he’s used to getting away with shocking people.

But standing out on an airport runway dressed as St Patrick is a different kind of shocking from using the word rapist to describe airlines who charge more than Ryanair.

I’d like to know who penetrated that crusty exterior and convinced him that using this word in that context was offensive to victims and survivors of rape.

However, I figure that if he says it won’t happen again, it will not happen again.

I’d say this man has rarely if ever made the same mistake twice.

A quiet but generous donation to the Dublin Rape Crisis Centre would go a long way towards underscoring the sincerity of your apology, Michael. If, of course, you haven’t already done it.