In December 2009, a UTV Insight Special programme alleged that Liam Adams had sexually abused his own daughter, Áine Tyrell, for a decade.
In response to these allagations, his brother Gerry urged Liam to turn himself in to the police. Gerry also alleged that his deceased father, Gerry Adams, Sr., had subjected family members to emotional, physical and sexual abuse. The Police Service of Northern Ireland issued a European Arrest Warrant for Liam Adams’ arrest.
Later in December 2009, Liam Adams presented himself at a Garda Síochána police station in Sligo. They were not able to arrest him as they did not have the necessary European Arrest Warrant. Adams did not wish to hand himself into police in Northern Ireland, citing unfairness.
On 3 March 2010, the High Court in Dublin endorsed the European Arrest Warrant, which was issued in Liam Adams name by the Serious Organised Crime Agency. The following day, Adams handed himself over to the authorities in the Republic.
Adams opposed his extradition, and at a brief hearing on 21 July, Adams applied for legal aid to help fight it.
On 3 October 2011, an Irish High Court judge in Dublin declined Liam Adams' objections to the extradition request and said he would issue an order for Adams to surrender to the authorities in Northern Ireland. On 18 October 2011, after losing his appeal against extradition, Adams was remanded in custody for 15 days to a Dublin prison. He was handed over to officers from the PSNI at the border on the night of 2nd November, and brought to Laganside Magistrates Court on the morning of the 3rd November, where he was remanded in custody for a week.
There were two trials, the first collapsed in April 2013 for legal reasons, but the second time round a conviction was made.
In October 2013 Liam Adams was found guilty of ten offences, including rape and gross indecency committed against his daughter between 1977 and 1983 when she was four to nine.
On 27 November 2013, Adams was jailed for 16 years with a further two years probation. He died in prison 25 February 2019.
Little did the 13-year-old girl know the huge battle that lay ahead of her as she scribbled down the words on a page ripped from a school jotter. "Mummy this is why I am like this, because my daddy made me sleep with him." she wrote.
It was Christmas 1986 and there had just been another row between Sally Adams and her eldest daughter Aine. The mother was struggling with the child's constant rebelliousness.
Even though she had split up with her husband, who had beaten her during their marriage, she never suspected what else he'd been guilty of.
Liam Adams had sexually abused Aine from when she was four years old until she was 10. She was raped for the first time when Sally was in hospital giving birth to her son Conor.
From the moment Aine told her, the mother and daughter did everything right. This wasn't a case of a family trying to sweep something horrible under the carpet. Despite coming from a strong republican tradition in west Belfast, they went straight to the police.
But the RUC, Social Services, and Aine's uncle Gerry - the most powerful Sinn Fein and IRA figure in the country - would all totally fail the two women in different ways.
Aine and Sally reported the child sexual abuse to police at Grosvenor Road RUC station in January 1987. Shortly afterwards they reluctantly withdrew their complaint, as some officers seemed more interested in trying to get them to pass on information on Republicans than in investigating the abuse.
The women would later tell Belfast Crown Court that they were effectively abandoned by the Police and Social Services - who were also informed of the abuse - and left with no one in authority to trust.
They told Aine's Uncle Gerry. In March 1987 he took them to Buncrana, Co Donegal, to confront Liam, who was living there with his new partner and their baby daughter. In a surreal experience, they sat down to tea and Mikado biscuits. Gerry Adams has always insisted that he believed Aine. She later claimed that while he was initially sympathetic in Buncrana, his attitude changed when Liam denied the allegations and that he remarked "it's like trying to prove who stole the apples from a cart".
Sinn Fein had a vibrant women's department at the time. Gerry Adams clearly didn't seek their advice on how to handle the situation. The girl and her mother returned home physically and emotionally exhausted. "When Gerry dropped us back to west Belfast by car, he knew that his niece was deeply distressed." Aine said.
"He also knew my mother would have to deal with my pain while trying to bring up four children on her own. Yet we received no support from Gerry."
"He didn't even send me a birthday or a Christmas card. The only present I ever received from him was a signed copy of his autobiography Before The Dawn in 1996."
She was horrified when she opened the book in which the Sinn Fein president thanked or referred positively to "Our Liam" 11 times.
Aine tried as best she could to get on with her life. But she became deeply concerned when she heard her father was working in youth projects in west Belfast.
She repeatedly raised this during a series of meetings with Gerry Adams from 2003 until 2005. He said her paedophile father wanted to work with children because it was his way of making up for how he'd sexually abused her. She tried to find out in which west Belfast youth clubs her father worked, so she could warn them of the dangers he posed to youngsters.
Although he knew exactly where his brother was working, the Sinn Fein president didn't tell his niece, who continually expressed fears that children in the heart of his constituency were at risk.
She said that at one stage she was so desperate she thought of handing out leaflets on the streets saying 'Liam Adams is a Paedophile'.
Her father was employed for five years in Clonard Youth Centre until 2003. The following year he began working for the Blackie Centre in Beechmount.
On three occasions between 2004 and 2006, his photograph appeared in the Andersonstown News promoting youth groups and surrounded by young children.
As well as running computer classes, homework clubs and counselling sessions, he took young people for weekends away in Newcastle, Warrenpoint, Fermanagh and Monaghan.
Gerry Adams later told the court that he informed Clonard Youth Centre about his brother's sexual abuse, but it insisted there was "no record whatsoever" of that. Questioned whom he had told, he named a dead priest.
He claimed he had persuaded his brother to leave the Blackie Centre. But the court heard Liam had stopped working there after developing a frozen shoulder and not because of anything his brother had said.
It would eventually come out that for the first six weeks of Liam's Clonard employment he had actually lived in his brother's home.
Aine's uncle, Bob Corrigan, told a reporter that the Sinn Fein president had failed in his responsibilities as both a public representative and as an uncle. "I don't say that lightly. I'm a former republican prisoner who spent 10 years in Long Kesh." he said.
In 2006 Aine went to the PSNI and asked for the case against her father to be reopened. The following year he was arrested and questioned.
In 2008 he failed to turn up at a court in Northern Ireland to face sexual abuse charges. He fled to the Republic, saying he would not receive a fair trial.
Frustrated at how slowly the case was progressing, Aine waived her anonymity and went public in a UTV documentary in 2009. The case dragged on until 2011 when Liam Adams lost his extradition battle.
His first trial opened in Belfast Crown Court in April 2013. Gerry Adams was called as a prosecution witness.
It emerged that during a walk in the rain in Dundalk in 2000, Liam had confessed to his brother that he had raped Aine. But Gerry Adams failed to report this vital information to police for nine years. He never mentioned it when questioned by detectives about the abuse in 2007. It was only in 2009 - when UTV's Insight programme was being made - that he told police about the confession.
The court heard that the Sinn Féin president [Gerry Adams] had managed to report Aine's mother for having a "dirty home" and "poor hygiene" with her children - they had picked up nits at school.
The first trial collapsed because of legal issues, and the jury was discharged. A new trial began in autumn 2013. Gerry Adams was not called as a witness this time.
On the first day Aine was due to give evidence, she suffered chest pains and was taken to hospital. But she refused to abandon the case.
When she gave graphic evidence about how her father had raped her, Liam Adams closed his eyes. She described the horror of being forced to perform a sex act on him. "I couldn't breathe. I was roasting. I could smell the drink off him. I felt like he had power over me." she said.
In her answers, he was never "my Daddy" but always "Liam Adams", showing the emotional detachment forced on her many years earlier. Liam Adams' decision to give evidence was surprising and likely sealed his fate with the jury of nine men and three women. He was his own worst enemy, with a tone and demeanour which came across as bullying.
He showed no emotion when the jury found him guilty on all 10 counts of rape and sexual abuse. His second wife Bronagh started to cry.
Aine too shed tears as she was hugged by relatives.
After the trial, Gerry Adams was asked in October 2013 why he did not report his brother sooner. "The police were aware over 20 years ago and there is a lot of disinformation being flung about." he said. "But let me say this, this has been and continues to be a huge ordeal for my family - we're a very large family - especially for Áine, but for all members of my family."
"And I think people need to be given the space to come to terms with all of that. And if it was your family, you would want the same respect and space and privacy on these matters."
Aine did not speak directly to the media, but in a statement read out by a police officer said she didn't see the verdict as a victory or celebration. "It has taken its toll and caused heartache and anguish." she said. "I can now begin my life at 40 and finally lay to rest the memory of the girl who was abused."