TWO documentary makers from Donegal have secured the film rights to a book on child sex abuse in a remote corner of the county.
Neasa Ni Chianain and David Rane are planning to make a fictionalised version of the book ‘Breaking the Silence’, written by retired detective Martin Ridge, which details his investigations and the successful convictions of three paedophiles who were at large in the west Donegal Gaeltacht.
Both documentary-makers were behind a controversial film that portrayed Irish Language poet Cathal O’Searcaigh as a sex tourist in Nepal.
Speaking this week, Ms Ni Chianain admitted that their earlier work on the award-winning ‘Fairytale of Kathmandu’ – screened by RTE in 2008 – had influenced the couple’s career path since.
In the documentary, Donegal poet O’Searcaigh was filmed in the Nepalese capital in the company of impoverished teenage and young adult males whom he was assisting financially. He admitted having sex with them but denied he was a sex tourist.
“Before ‘Fairytale’ I had been working on quirky portrait documentaries where social issues were in the background but our experience making ‘Fairytale’ has very much refocused us,” Ms Ni Chianain said.
She continued: “The whole ‘Fairytale’ experience and aftermath put us in contact with people working in the field of abuse and it opened up my understanding of the domino effect of abuse on society in so many ways.”
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