The jailing of Claire Knowles

Posted by Jim on December 12, 2015

By 1916 Societies

Today, just two weeks before Christmas, a law-abiding mother, daughter,
sister, grandmother and friend to many, one Claire Knowles, was
committed to prison by Judge Sean O’Donnabhain in Cork Circuit Court.

Her crime seems to be that she was in ‘flagrant breach of a Court Order’
and it seems she was also guilty of being ‘brazen’, even though to
observers she tried to defend herself in a most calm, polite and assured
way.

Claire is what is known as a lay litigant. She represents herself, and
has done so for several years at this stage in both the Circuit Court
and the High Court, to answer the claim that is being brought against
her. Of course, like so many tens of thousands of people in Ireland, the
claim is to do with a mortgage issue; in Claire’s case the mortgage
being on her family home.

Claire has always worked hard. The financial history of how she got to
the position of defending her family home in Court is not so unique and
therefore is not central to events today. What is now far more relevant
and serious is the reasoning and logic used by the Judge when sending
Claire to prison this evening.

There is a concept in law known as a ‘Void Order’. It is recognised in
Common Law jurisdictions. At its most basic it means there is no Order
of a Court if the Court is found to have acted outside its jurisdiction
in the Granting of the said Order. Claire has gained much rock solid
evidence that an Order, as handed down by the Circuit Court in Cork that
granted possession to ICS Building Society of her family home on 20th
January 2014, is a Void Order on multiple provable grounds.

Indeed Claire was in the High Court just yesterday, 7th December, and
won the right to have an appeal heard of this Circuit Court Order
sometime in the New Year, with the view to getting it officially
declared Void. Claire it seems was ‘brazen’ for even mentioning this
information today to Judge O’Donnabhain. He completely ignored the fact
that she has an appeal yet to be heard in the High Court and informed
her that the High Court did not have jurisdiction while he in fact did.

Claire was evicted on the 22nd September of this year from her home. She
was encircled and intimidatingly frog-marched out by many Security men
who acted under the instructions of Cork County Sheriff Sinead McNamara.
Claire re-occupied her home thereafter. It seems this act of occupying
her home is what the Bank has now used to successfully get Claire sent
to prison, even though the Order used by them to gain Possession – and
now imprisonment – was and remains void.

Many witnesses heard Claire Knowles state today in open Court, before
she was jailed, the many ways in which her Order was void. All that she
stated is provable and not only that, it was all submitted by way of
affidavit to the Courts and to the Plaintiffs. She also has both a High
Court Judge and the Master of the High Court granting her leave to
appeal that initial Order. Claire went to court today in the now false
belief that she could not go to gaol as the High Court have vindicated
her right to appeal.

Yet Claire sleeps in Limerick prison tonight. A gun was put to her head
today by the Judge. She was instructed that unless she took the Order
seriously and arranged to hand over the keys to her home he was
committing her to prison. Could this be viewed as an abuse of process to
intimidate?

Claire would not be coerced in such a way and said she would not give
consent and re-iterated that the initial Order was void and wondered how
could she be in contempt of an order that did not exist? She was jailed.
This is Justice in Ireland in 2015. If you catch the Banks and their
agents out you get an endless array of overpaid Barristers and
Solicitors thrown at you in order to break you. Claire Knowles will not
be broken.

It seems the bank and agents for the Bank may have been on very
questionable grounds for evicting a woman from her home on a void order.
The pressing question is where does their liability now stand for
subsequently getting her jailed on a void order? The Tomás Mac Curtain
Society, with the 1916 Societies overall, stand full square with Claire
and demand her immediate release.