Jim Allister has written to the Head of Specialist Factual Programmes at Channel 4 asking him to withdraw plans to screen a documentary presented by Gerry Adams focusing on the teaching of Christ following serious allegations about Adams’s conduct relating to his bother, Liam.

The text of Mr Allister’s letter is below:

Dear Mr Lee,

Re The Bible: A History

I refer to your reply dated 18th December to a letter from TUV party chairman Ivor McConnell rising concerns about your plans to screen a programme dealing with Christ presented by Gerry Adams.

I would contend that the reasons articulated in Mr McConnell’s initial letter are cause enough to disqualify him from presenting such a documentary. To say that the matters he raised will not be raised in the programme on the grounds that is “not a programme about Northern Ireland” does not sit well with your admission that Adams was invited to front the documentary because of his “experiences as a central figure during the conflict and peace process in Northern Ireland”.

However, since Mr McConnell wrote to you another issue has arisen which, I believe, should be reason enough to disqualify Adams from presenting this programme.

Last week Ulster Television broadcast a documentary which highlighted alleged sexual abuse carried out by Mr Adams’s brother Liam on his daughter, Aine Tyrell.

Aine Tyrell made it clear that she did not believe Gerry Adams had done all he could to see that his brother answered for these alleged crimes. Indeed, since the programme aired, Gerry Adams’s account of what happened in the years since he first learned of the allegations has changed on an almost daily basis.

The allegation against Liam was first made in 1987. In the UTV documentary Adams claimed that he had had “no contact” with his brother for 15 years after that. By Sunday, however, this story had changed with Adams telling RTE that he saw him “occasionally”.

Could this be because that morning’s Sunday Tribune carried a photo of Gerry Adams and Joe Cahill at the wedding of his brother?

In the edition of the Irish News published on Monday 21st  December a Sinn Fein spokesperson was quoted as saying:
“Liam Adams was a member of Sinn Fein for a short time during the 1990s…. When Gerry found out he was a member he expelled him and that was around 1999”.

This does not square with the fact that a booklet by Liam Adams’s– Our children, drugs, alcohol and solvents – was promoted in An Phoblacht, Sinn Fein’s own newspaper, in January 1997. In an article headed “Raising awareness” the author is described as “a voluntary youth worker”.

The contention that Adams knew nothing about his bother working with children is made all the more incredible when one considers that he gave an interview to the Irish Independent in 1998 – a year after his booklet was advertised in Sinn Fein’s in house magazine - talking about, of all things, child abuse.

And how on earth could Liam Adams have been working in Clonard Youth Center without Gerry Adams’s knowledge for any amount of time? Remember – this would have been the same time when Adams was working hand in glove with Alex Reid at the Monastery developing Republican strategy. Yet Liam worked there from 1998 to 2003.

A Sinn Fein/IRA spokesperson told the Irish News that Gerry Adams had informed authorities at Clonard about the abuse allegation but did not say when he did this and a spokesperson for the Center has told the BBC that “there is no record whatsoever regarding concerns about Mr Liam Adams during his time of employment at Clonard Youth Centre. If we had been aware of allegations that have recently come to light, he would not have been employed at the centre.”

If Adams raised these concerns with Clonard why is there no record of them?

And what of Gerry Adams’s comments to Republicans in North Belfast in late January 1995 – highlighted by Gerry Moriarty in today’s Irish Times – that people should not approach the RUC about the issues of child abuse and drugs. “The RUC”, he said, “are not acceptable and, indeed, are using these issues for their own militaristic ends”.

Gerry Adams has over the years been shown to be a serial liar on important issues such as his claim that he was in jail when Jean McConville was murdered as well as on trivial issues such as claiming to have sung songs in jail which had not even been written at the time.

As such what are we to believe of Adams's claims? Is it true that Adams tried to warn others about the danger his brother represented to children?

Furthermore recent revelations about his father's abusive past at this time seems dangerously close to an attempt to divert focus from Ms Aine Tyrell.

Given this situation I suggest that you should pull this documentary.

Yours sincerely,

James H Allister, TUV Leader