A Guarded Life

In February 1985, a story made headlines in the Irish national press. An unnamed policewoman was being threatened with dismissal from An Garda Sioch?na, for having given birth to a baby outside wedlock. Majella Moynihan was 22 years old. Pressured to give up her baby for adoption, she would go on to navigate a Garda culture steeped in misogyny and prejudice until finally leaving the force 15 years on. In her memoir, Majella tells her story, from an institutional childhood after she lost her mother as a baby, to realising her vocation of becoming a guard, to the devastating ramifications of being charged with breaching the force’s disciplinary rules – for having premarital sex with another guard, becoming pregnant, and having a child.