Shane Dunphy
| Shane Dunphy | |
|---|---|
| Born | 18th January, 1973 Brighton |
| 🏫 Education | Waterford Institute of Technology and Maynooth University |
| 💼 Occupation | |
| 👩 Spouse(s) | Deirdre Wickham |
| 👶 Children | 2 |
Shane Dunphy (18th January, 1973) is a child protection expert, author, journalist, musician, broadcaster and teacher. He is married to Deirdre Wickham and has two children. He worked as a child and social care worker throughout Ireland for fifteen years, and still practices on a consultancy basis. He is currently Head of the Social Care Department at Waterford College of Further Education. Shane is best known for a series of books detailing cases he was involved in, both as a social care worker and journalist. These include The Wednesday’s Child Series, published in print and as ebooks, and the audiobook series Stories From the Margins, which is an Audible Original.
Biography
Early life
Dunphy was born in Brighton in 1973, but his family moved to Wexford when he was 18 months old. He attended Primary School with the Christian Brothers, and St Peter’s College for his Junior and Leaving Certificate. Writing was always a part of his life, and he published his first story as part of a collection of children’s writings when he was eleven years old. During his teens he channelled his creative energies into song-writing, first through folk rock band Local Contract, and then as a solo performer.
Disclosures of Abuse
In 2020, during an interview on Ryan Tubridy’s Radio Show, Dunphy spoke openly for the first time about his childhood experience of sexual and physical abuse at the hands of three different priests, abuse that began when he was four years old and continued until he was seven, resuming in Secondary School from the age of twelve to fourteen. Dunphy shared that he had suppressed these memories for most of his life, but that gradually over time the knowledge of his experiences had returned, and through therapy he had learned to reach an accommodation with it and now felt comfortable admitting the impact such trauma had on his life.
Education
Diploma in applied social studies
Bachelor’s degree in social care
Master’s Degree in Sociology
Qualifications achieved at Waterford Institute of Technology and National University of Ireland, Maynooth.
Child Protection Work
Dunphy began his career working on a voluntary basis in a day care unit for adults with intellectual disabilities before completing secondary school. While at college he was offered relief work in a residential care unit for teenagers as well as ongoing work in a psychiatric outpatients unit. Once qualified, Dunphy worked for several years in residential care before returning to college to improve his qualifications. During his career he has worked in residential care, the early years sector, as a community childcare worker, a community arts worker and a youth worker. Although he was employed for a short time by a local authority as a social worker for the Travelling Community, he has never claimed to be a social worker. “I respect what social workers do, and I continue to be friends with many of them, but I made the decision early in my career that I am a childcare worker, and I am proud of that,” he says. Dunphy continues to practice on a consultancy basis.
Journalism
While he is best known as an analysis writer on child protection issues, Dunphy’s journalism has covered an eclectic range of material, and he has worked for a broad cross section of newspapers. He is best known as an Op Ed writer for the Irish Independent, where he has penned articles on the Bertie Ahern government and cutting indictments of the public sector. He won much acclaim for a series of articles highlighting flaws in the childcare industry, particularly the early years sector. He covered the Madeleine McCann story in detail and was contacted during the investigation by a named informant who claimed to have information on the child’s whereabouts. Dunphy passed the details on to Interpol.
Shane has written a great deal about the Travelling community and its various problems and issues, culminating in an article on May 9, 2009 in which he suggested, after a riot involving Travellers in a Dublin suburb, that the Travelling Community should begin sorting out their problems from within, something that caused Paavee Point, the Irish Traveller lobbying group, to condemn his stance, suggesting that he was ‘perpetuating stereotypes’. This row culminated in the Irish Association of Social Workers issuing a public statement disowning him. Shane has commented that he found the entire thing more amusing than upsetting, as he was never a member of the IASW to begin with.
Dunphy wrote a series of investigative pieces for The Sunday World under the banner ‘Stories From the Peripheries’, covering issues such as people trafficking, child prostitution, elder abuse and the rights of people with disabilities. His time at the paper resulted in a friendship and enduring association with crime journalist Paul Williams. Shane has written columns for The Irish Sun on Sunday and contributes regularly to the Sunday Independent. Most recently Shane spent a year working as a columnist for The Journal.ie, covering topics as wide-ranging as the Michael Jackson documentaries, the James Bolger case, internet safety and home-schooling.
His journalism combines opinion and research, as well as his by now trademark brand of autobiographical comment.
Music
Dunphy is a multi-instrumentalist, performing live regularly – he has had a residency in The Sky and the Ground pub, in Wexford town, off and on for more than twenty years.
Dunphy plays mostly stringed instruments, favouring the mandocello and tenor banjo, but he is proficient on the guitar, autoharp, mandolin and ukulele. He often plays harmonica, which he plays using a neck harness. Shane admits to being ‘functional’ on the piano and is a competent drummer. His choice of music is eclectic, moving from acoustic folk of Irish, English, Scottish and American origin to blues to jazz and even classical. His regular musical partner, Kevin MacDermott, a native of County Cavan and a virtuoso three row accordion player, percussionist and story-teller, tends to provide the instrumental pieces while Dunphy focusses on songs. Shane also collaborates with Wexford uileann piper Brendan Wickham.
Dunphy sings with a mid-range tenor voice. He credits Woody Guthrie, Bryan Bowers, Bert Jansch and Andy Irvine as influences. Music features strongly in Dunphy’s books – he regularly writes about playing music for the children he works with, or attending sessions. Music is also prominent in his media work – his choices of instrumental mood pieces, often from unusual or little known sources like Anne Briggs or Sean Tyrrell – have garnered comment. In 2014 he composed and performed the musical soundtrack to TV3’s ‘The Island’, a programme exploring Ireland’s coastline. Shane in 2019, began recording a new series of True Crime Audiobooks, entitled Stories From the Margins, which he narrates and in which he also performs original songs and music.
Media Work
Dunphy is a regular on television and radio in Ireland, mostly commenting on child protection issues, but often simply on the stories of the day. He has been a guest on the hugely influential ‘Late Late Show’ four times, although never with the current incumbent, Ryan Tubridy despite being a regular contributor to Tubridy’s Radio 1 programme.
He had a regular slot on the short lived ‘Daily Show’ with Daithi O Shea and Claire Byrne. On TV3 he has had many appearances on Ireland AM, on Vincent Browne Tonight and on the Midday Show. He was one of the main contributors to TV3’s landmark, award-winning series Lawless Ireland, a series which continues to be aired to high ratings several years after it was made. In 2011 he made ‘My Mother’s Dying Secret’ for the Would You Believe series, a deeply personal documentary about his mother, Noël Dunphy’s life before her marriage to Dunphy’s father.
Dunphy’s radio work has garnered much praise. He has had a long-standing relationship with Newstalk, filling in for Brenda Power on the Your Talk Show on several occasions, and making regular appearances on Sean Moncrieff’s programme and George Hook’s show. In 2009 Shane Dunphy and his regular collaborator Orla Rapple made the moving documentary series ‘Stories from the Margins’ (a title he would return to), which was broadcast on Newstalk.
On RTE Dunphy was a familiar voice on Gerry Ryan’s show before that presenter’s untimely death – Ryan was a tireless promoter of Dunphy’s books. On RTE Radio 1 Dunphy has made regular contributions to Mary Wilson’s Drivetime slot, and has, in recent years, become a producer for the Documentary on 1, making programmes also for the short programme series The Curious Ear. Dunphy’s documentary work is sociologically based. ‘Yola – Lost for Words’, produced with Orla Rapple, dealt with a lost community and ‘The Sinking of the St Patrick’, made with his wife, Deirdre Wickham, told the story of the bombing of a passenger ferry during WWII. Dunphy also made ‘Breaded or Battered: The Wexford Rissole’, a short documentary on a kind of potato cake peculiar to Wexford, his hometown. In 2013 he made ‘Tusk: Hunting for Ireland’s Wild Boar’, a programme about the reintroduction of Wild Boar into the Irish landscape, and in 2014 he produced ‘Fantastic Beasts and The People Who Love Them’, a programme exploring the world of cryptozoology (the hunt for mythological beasts). ‘Tusk – Hunting for Ireland’s Wild Boar’ was nominated for a New York Radio award, and ‘Fantastic Beasts and the People Who Love Them’ was featured as a question on the Irish Leaving Certificate exam in 2018.
From June 2009 to May 2010 Dunphy presented The Morning Mix, a daily chat show on Wexford’s South East Radio. The show performed well in Ireland’s JNLR (listener figures) ratings.
Academia
Shane has written much academic work and continues to teach in the field of Child Protection and Social care. He has written articles for the Irish Journal of Applied Social Studies, and in recent years a series of pieces on childcare theory for Childcare.ie, the Irish Early years magazine. His Masters degree is in sociology, but he has done research in applied social psychology also. Dunphy has taught in WIT and St Patrick’s College, Carlow. He has guest lectured in UCC, Queen’s University, Belfast and Sligo IT. He currently teaches at Waterford College of Further Education, where he is head of the Social Care Department.
Author
Shane writes narrative non-fiction under his own name (Shane Dunphy) and crime fiction under the name S.A. Dunphy.
His non-fiction books combine autobiographical detail with procedural case work, following the complexities of child protection work as it is done on a day-to-day basis.
His fiction is terse, character driven, and has been praised for its originality and refusal to conform to one genre, although Shane describes it as ‘broadly crime fiction’.
Published works
The Wednesday’s Child Series (non-fiction) Wednesday’s Child (2006)
Crying in the Dark (also published as Last Ditch House) (2007)
Hush Little Baby (2008)
The Boy in the Cupboard (2008)
Will Mummy be Coming Back for Me (2009)
Little Boy Lost (2010)
The Girl Who Couldn’t Smile (2012)
The Girl From Yesterday (2014)
The Boy They Tried to Hide (2016)
Stories From the Margins (non-fiction) Bleak Alley (2019)
The Bad Place (September 2020)
Ceremony For the Dead (14 January 2021)
Ghost writing (non-fiction)
Shane has also ghost-written a book with a survivor of familial sexual abuse.
Running From the Shadows (Stephanie Hickey with Shane Dunphy) (2019)
The Dunnigan Series (Crime Fiction) After She Vanished (2017)
When She Was Gone (2018)
If She Returned (2019)
Why She Ran (2020)
Recurring characters in the books are
The Wednesday’s Child Series and Stories From the Margins
Karl Devereux, a former criminal who is a friend of Dunphy's and helps out on cases in every book except Wednesday's Child and The Girl Who Couldn't Smile
Melanie Moorhouse, a social worker who appears in 'Wednesday's Child' and 'The Boy in the Cupboard'
Hugh Whitty, a manager of a residential children’s home and later head of a Human Rights Organisation, who appears in The Boy in the Cupboard and No Ceremony for the Dead
Ben Tyrrell, the manager of Dunleavy Trust, a child protection group for whom Shane worked in all titles from Crying in the Dark up to Will Mummy be Coming Back for Me
Tristan Fowler, manager of a centre for adults with learning disabilities, featured in Little Boy Lost and The Girl Who Couldn't Smile
Lonnie Whitmore, a dwarf, colleague and friend of Shane's in Little Boy Lost and The Girl Who Couldn't Smile, and who appears as a ghost/figment of Shane’s imagination in The Girl from Yesterday
George Taylor, the principal of St Smoling's School, where Shane teaches night classes in The Girl from Yesterday and The Boy They Tried to Hide
Jason Fitzhenry, a police detective and friend of Shane’s who appears in the three books in the Stories From the Margins Series
The Dunnigan Series
David Dunnigan, a criminologist who divides his time between lecturing in Maynooth University and consulting for the National Bureau of Criminal Investigation
Miley Timoney, a young man who lives with Down Syndrome and is David Dunnigan’s closest friend
Gina Carlton, David Dunnigan’s twin sister
Beth Carlton, David Dunnigan’s niece, who is abducted while out shopping with him when she is four years old, and who he spends 18 years searching for
Father Bill Creedon, an unorthodox Roman Catholic priest who runs a homeless shelter on Dublin’s quays and who becomes a mentor for Dunnigan.
Diane Robinson, a former Irish Army Ranger, and Dunnigan’s on-again/off-again partner.
Chief Inspector Frank Tormey, Dunnigan’s boss in the NBCI, and something of a father figure.
Ernest Frobisher, a multi-billionaire who is involved in various criminal enterprises and who is responsible for Beth’s abduction.
Dr Phillipe Ressler, a sociopathic psychiatrist who is Frobisher’s chief enforcer.
Dunphy as a character in the books
The author himself is the central character in both the Wednesday’s Child series and Stories From the Margins. Dunphy does not try to depict himself as a hero. In some instances, he makes mistakes, comes off as rude or narrow-minded, and many cases do not end well, sometimes directly because of his intervention. His personality is portrayed as emotional, impulsive, self-contained and occasionally arrogant. While his dedication to the children and families he serves is total, this often puts him at loggerheads with other professionals, and he is inclined to disregard advice and the opinions of others. Through the books we learn that he is a caffeine addict, smoked (he gives it up in The Girl Who Couldn’t Smile), enjoys music, but particularly folk and blues, reads a lot, but favours crime novels, can cook very well, has dogs (in the final three books in the Wednesday’s Child series he has a greyhound called Millie, and in Stories From the Margins two terrier mixes, George and Lulu) and has moved around a lot, living in various locations for short periods of time.
He is a regular contributor to the Irish Independent and Irish Examiner newspapers, and for several years was a weekly column in the Wexford Echo. He has been the Childcare Expert for the Irish Sun newspaper, has written investigative and opinion columns for the Sunday Tribune and the Sunday World. He presented the Morning Mix Show on South East Radio from 2009 until 2010 and is a respected commentator on child-protection issues across the national and international media. Most recently he worked as a columnist for The Journal, a popular online newspaper, writing on child protection and parenting.
He continues to comment on a variety of issues across the media, both in Ireland and the UK. He has made documentaries for both RTE television and radio, including ‘My Mother’s Dying Secret’ for RTE 1’s Would You Believe series, and ‘Yola: Lost For Words’ and ‘The Sinking of the St Patrick’ for Radio One’s Documentary on One. His documentary ‘Tusk – Hunting for Ireland’s Wild Boar’ was nominated for a New York Radio award, and ‘Fantastic Beasts and the People Who Love Them’ was featured as a question on the Irish Leaving Certificate exam in 2018.
References/Notes and references
https://shanedunphyauthor.org/biography/ For the introduction
https://www.independent.ie/opinion/my-journey-has-been-quite-dark-at-times-but-ive-come-out-the-other-end-author-shane-dunphy-39774218.html Emily Hourican Interview- Early Life
https://shanedunphyauthor.org/shanes-first-book-i-hate-mustard/ Early Writing
https://www.irishexaminer.com/lifestyle/arid-30992410.html Social Care practice https://www.thejournal.ie/readme/opinion-the-death-of-jamie-bulger-still-haunts-me-4472462-Feb2019/
https://www.independent.ie/irish-news/modern-family/shane-dunphy-the-five-main-things-people-say-about-child-abuse-and-why-they-shouldnt-35266249.html writing for The Independent
https://www.irishexaminer.com/opinion/yourview/arid-10033110.html writing for The Irish Examiner
https://www.thesun.ie/news/5119209/a-brutal-irish-gang-lord-held-a-knife-to-my-throat-as-i-tried-to-rescue-groomed-teen-from-his-clutches/ writing for The Irish Sun
https://www.independent.ie/irish-news/tragedy-never-far-away-in-history-of-nomadic-outsiders-29702945.html Irish Travellers
https://www.thejournal.ie/readme/shane-dunphy-photos-of-children-social-media-4692421-Jun2019/ For The Journal
https://shanedunphyauthor.org/shanes-music/ Music https://shanedunphyauthor.org/biography/
https://www.rte.ie/tv/programmes/latelate/ For The Late Late Show
https://presspack.rte.ie/2011/05/22/would-you-believe-11/ My mother's secret https://www.independent.ie/opinion/comment/shane-dunphy-a-secret-tale-my-mums-life-as-a-nun-30355000.html:
https://www.newstalk.com//podcasts/highlights-from-the-pat-kenny-show/former-child-protection-officer-shane-dunphy for Newstalk
https://www.rte.ie/radio1/doconone/2010/1118/646553-radio-documentary-yola-language-wexford/ Yola: Lost for Words
https://www.rte.ie/radio1/doconone/2011/1017/646882-radio-documentary-saint-patrick-ferry-rosslare-fishguard-ww2-german/The Sinking of the St Patrick:
https://www.rte.ie/radio1/doconone/2013/0801/647487-documentary-tusk-hunting-irelands-wild-boar-shane-dunphy/ Tusk: Hunting for Ireland’s Wild Boar
https://www.rte.ie/radio1/doconone/2014/1003/649785-mystery-animal-cryptozoology-connemara-unidentified-dobharchu/ Fantastic Beasts and the People Who Love Them
https://www.independent.ie/regionals/enniscorthyguardian/news/new-dunphy-book-due-out-27230806.html South East Radio
https://www.maynoothuniversity.ie/people/laurence-cox#5 Academia https://mmbcreative.com/clients/shane-dunphy/
http://www.thebookbag.co.uk/reviews/Wednesday%27s_Child_by_Shane_Dunphy Book Reviews https://www.irishexaminer.com/lifestyle/arid-20455432.html
https://mmcheryl.wordpress.com/tag/shane-dunphy/ Shane as a character https://www.irishexaminer.com/lifestyle/arid-20390825.html
https://www.rsvplive.ie/news/tv-film/rtes-ryan-tubridy-listeners-left-22980256
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