Maureen Kearney from Castlebar was brutally attacked in her house outside Paris for whistleblowing on a secret French nuclear agreement with China. Her attacker told her this was her second warning, and there won’t be a third. [thread]

This is quite a big story in French media. A book was written on her, and there’s even a movie in the works starring Isabelle Huppert. I spoke to Maureen over the weekend and asked her why her story isn’t well known in Ireland. She can’t explain it.

Before moving to France in 1983, Maureen worked for the Council for the Status of Women (now @nwci). She got a job teaching English to executives at the French state nuclear power company Areva. She married, had two children and became active in her trade union CFDT.

At the time of her attack in 2012, she was a prominent trade unionist, Secretary General of CFDT Areva European Works Council, representing 45,000 employees at Areva. She had regular meetings with CEOs and ministers.

In a meeting with the French European Affairs minister Bernard Cazeneuve, she was made aware of a deal concerning Areva, EDF (the state-owned electrical grid) and a Chinese nuclear company that would risk thousands of jobs in France, and was asked to make enquiries.

Proof of a secret deal was sent to her anonymously, where EDF were selling technology (that legally belonged to Areva) to a Chinese consortium, without the permission of politicians. She started alerting people. Areva CEO denied signing the deal. Maureen began receiving threats.

As she was brushing her teeth in the morning, a masked intruder covered her head, tied her to a chair, gagged her, scratched the letter A into her stomach with a knife and raped her with the knife handle.

Her cleaning lady found her 6 hours later in a state of shock. Her husband and the ambulance were called. The only thing her attacker told her was there would be no more warnings. She was offered protection by France’s top anti-terror unit, the GIGN.

A month after her attack, police claimed there was no DNA evidence of an intruder. They focused on inconsistencies in Maureen’s retelling of events and then accused her of fabricating the story, which she denied. She was arrested and questioned.

In police custody, she found herself alone when an unknown man came and told her that she should say she invented everything, or else her and her family would suffer. She made a false admission to staging the attack in order to protect her family.

A week later she retracted this admission, but the prosecution continued this line of attack, claiming that she tied herself up. She was subjected to humiliation and mistreatment by the judiciary, and was charged in 2014.

In his conclusion at her trial in 2017, the judge noted twice that Maureen ‘wasn’t wearing underwear’ under her woolen tights on the day of her attack, and used this as supporting evidence of her guilt. She was convicted, received a 5 month suspended sentence and fined €5000.

Later, she learned that her lawyer was also representing EDF in another case. She changed lawyers and appealed the decision. In 2018, she was cleared of any wrongdoing. It came out that no DNA tests were ever done. Her attackers have never been found.

Throughout the whole ordeal, Maureen enjoyed the full support of her union, who paid her legal fees. She credits her family and friends with helping her get through. She now volunteers at a montessori and works with a women's abuse charity.

She brought her case to the Irish Embassy in France but they didn’t want to know. They told her they had no right to interfere in French affairs. They apologised after she was acquitted, but that’s easy she says.

As for the Irish media, I can only find one article from The Sun about her conviction. https://www.thesun.ie/news/1234992/an-irish-former-union-official-convicted-in-france-of-making-a-false-report-of-sexual-assault-but-insists-she-was-savagely-attacked/