Chapter 1: What warning does the episode provide before diving into the content?
A warning before we begin. This series contains reference to sexual abuse. It was the most extraordinary broadcast I think I've ever heard. Well, a scandal, rumour, or take it what way you will, was dug up from somewhere or other. I was not here, so I could not refute it. For a week, Radio Dublin had disappeared from my dial.
I was in Spain, and anyone wishing to close the station couldn't have picked a better opportunity. Outside of a handful of people, no one really knew what was going on. The allegations, of course, are the type of allegations which people cannot disprove. But on Sunday, the 16th of April, 1978, the station was back when Eamon Cook returned from holidays and took to the airwaves.
They can deny them, certainly. They can deny them, like myself, until I am blue in the face. But, as everyone out there will say, well, there's no smoke without a little bit of fire. I pointed my transistor at the Dublin mountains and pressed play and record. In my wildest dreams, I could never have anticipated what I heard next. Yes, they were the allegations laid down against me personally.
The children were allowed into this radio station here and were indecently molested. That was the actual allegation. Live on air, Eamon Cook had just announced he'd been accused of molesting children. All I could do, of course, was deny it and ask for proof. I expected that was the end of Radio Dublin. What happened next surprised me even more. I'm Peter Mulrhyne from RTE Documentary on One.
This is Pirate Predator. Episode 3 Mutiny To understand exactly what Eamon Cook was up to with that broadcast and what was at stake, we need to go back a little over three months before Cook's infamous broadcast to the start of 1978. Okay, 15 minutes after the hour of 11 o'clock, and don't forget about 12 at night, we will be bringing in the new year, Radio Dublin on 253.
That's, of course, the 1st of January, 1978. In the late 70s, pirate radio in Dublin had completely taken over the airwaves. Think TikTok crossed with Instagram, served up with a wedge of Spotify. Pirate radio was all that and more. And of course, the Lord Mayor himself of Dublin will be speaking to you, our Radio Dublin listeners. Right now, more music.
The station was now broadcasting 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Everything in Eamon Cook's life now revolved around Radio Dublin. But truth be told, as long as no one swore on air, he had little interest in what was broadcast. He left all that to a remarkably talented bunch of disc jockeys.
I was slightly older than all the other DJs. I was 26.
This is James Dillon, at the time a DJ in Radio Dublin.
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Chapter 2: What significant event occurred on April 16, 1978, involving Eamon Cook?
Most of the DJs back then created an on-air name and never used their full name in case the station was raided. Today, DJ John Paul has asked us not to reveal his full name.
I did not like Eamon Cook because I didn't trust him. There was just something about him. I just could not put my finger on it.
Back in early 1978, in Radio Dublin, DJ John Paul's job was to schedule the other disc jockeys and basically keep the station on air. He was definitely a control freak. Eamon controlled everything. If you gave Eamon an idea, as long as he could take that idea and say it was his, he would be happy. But if you tried to change anything, he would react very differently.
Eamon Cook, by now nicknamed The Captain... acted every bit of that title.
He was just interested in having that radio station running 24-7. I mean, the guy was crazy. He was going up and down poles.
In the middle of winter, he would get pneumonia, he would get very bad colds, very bad flus, and he would be ill quite a lot, especially when he was trying to organise his aerials on the roofs and stuff like that. Well, Radio Dublin are again looking for staff, this time to man one of Ireland's busiest telephone lines.
Because Radio Dublin was so popular, the other thing that the station needed was people to answer the phones and take requests. So if you've got nothing to do one evening per week, well, perhaps you'd like to help us then by becoming a Radio Dublin telephonist one day a week. Because in them days, we didn't have computers or anything like that. It all had to be done by handwriting.
And so the girls would bring in the requests to us and we would, of course, read them out on the radio.
Votes are going out for Joseph Butler. And this one is coming from all your friends. And a nice selection of music here on 253. Hope you're enjoying yourselves right now.
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Chapter 3: How did Eamon Cook establish control over Radio Dublin?
You could have one of the DJs on air. The telephonists are on the phone. And if you happened to go in or your friend happened to go in, he'd say, I have to show you something upstairs. They weren't aware. They knew we were there, but they weren't aware what was actually happening.
By now, Siobhan was going on 11 years old. Still visiting Radio Dublin and still being abused by Eamon Cook.
And I remember thinking, because my grandmother had died and we believed that, you know, when people die and they go to heaven and they watch it.
She was beginning to realise how wrong everything was.
And I remember feeling, my granny's looking down from heaven now and she says, this doesn't feel right and I wouldn't like this for my granny to be looking at me in heaven. So that was a really pivotal point for me to know I don't want this.
Cook must have felt Siobhan coming of age and pushing back because he came up with another method to keep children like Siobhan and Anne coming back into his bedroom.
He did try to blackmail with photographs. So he had taken pictures of children in their underwear and he had threatened to put those pictures on his car, you know, under the window wipers and park his car outside some children's houses. that their parents could see the pictures if they didn't go back in.
And you'd be terrified if you saw his car parked somewhere, because in our minds we were saying, would there be any pictures on the windscreen? But it was a threat.
Like Siobhan, Anne remembers those threats too, as a 10 and 11-year-old.
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Chapter 4: What were the dynamics between Eamon Cook and the DJs at Radio Dublin?
As luck would have it, an opportunity presented itself. Radio Dublin was hosting a huge giveaway holiday and the prize was a trip to Spain.
An offer came along of a holiday in a competition and the winner of the competition was a 15-year-old girl. who seemingly Eamon Cook knew before the competition was run.
Eamon Cook did know the 15-year-old girl. She was a Radio Dublin telephonist, already a victim of Cook's when he engineered this holiday to Spain, joined by another couple he knew. Cook was now 41 years old and probably appeared to strangers as the young girl's father. But when Cook went on that holiday, any doubt in James' head disappeared.
He knew what he had to do, and he only had a week in which to do it.
It got him out of the radio station. So I called a group meeting of all the DJs. I told them what I believed. I told them I had a tape. There were rumours going around that there was something wrong.
Station manager, DJ John Paul. James told me that this week would be the end of Radio Dublin as far as he was concerned. He told me that there were allegations of some kind of sexual abuse with young girls. James decided to set up a new radio station.
I'm putting my hand up and saying I'm going. If anybody wants to come with me, it's up to you guys. It turned out that every single person that was in the room decided to leave.
The meeting sent a shockwave through the station. But in the days before mobile phones, Cook had no way of knowing what was happening in his absence. At the same time, James decided the audio tape they had recorded had to get to Siobhan's mother and it would be delivered by a trusted intermediary.
We figured, talk to the local priest. So one of the guys who worked in the station volunteered to bring the tape to the priest and told him we are leaving the station and that... We believed that Eamon Cook had touched Siobhan.
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