London calling

Armagh-born Caroline Carberry KC is one of Britain’s leading criminal barristers. Mary Hallissey badgers the witness

With striking red curls beneath a barrister’s wig, the commanding voice of Armagh-born Caroline Carberry KC rings out across court five in London’s Old Bailey.

She is a blazing Celt, flaming at the heart of the British establishment, both defending and prosecuting in cases that are serious, complex, and often quite unusual.

“I’m very proud to be Irish in London. I have a real sense of Irish identity, and it means everything to me to pass that on to my London-born children,” she told the Gazette.

Carberry has emerged as a go-to counsel for high-profile and legally ground-breaking cases. In 2017, she successfully prosecuted Britain’s first case involving the intentional infliction of grievous bodily harm through the transmission of the HIV virus. This was a lengthy trial involving multiple victims of a campaign to infect as many men as possible.

In 2019, in another landmark case, Carberry secured the first conviction in Britain for the crime of female genital mutilation, an offence that had been on the statute books since 1985. The victim was a three-year-old child.

This year, she was the lead prosecutor in the startling ‘eunuch-maker’ case, which saw ten men convicted of acts of extreme bodily modifications. The mastermind, Marius Gustavson, who mutilated multiple men and streamed the backstreet surgeries online for paying customers to view, was jailed for life with a minimum term of 22 years.

In each of these cases, in addition to leading the prosecution, Carberry was brought in during the early stages of the investigations to advise on charges and how to build the cases.

When I met her in London in September, she had recently been instructed in another sensitive and high-profile case, the death of ten-year-old Sara Sharif. Carberry will be representing one of the three people accused of her murder.

In recognition of what has been a big 12 months, she was awarded the Legal 500 Bar Awards 2024 ‘Crime and Extradition Silk of the Year’ on 26 September.

North and South

Caroline Carberry grew up just a handful of fields from the border, in rural Armagh. “Monaghan was our biggest closest town. All my schooling was in the North, but we looked to the South, really. It was one of those border households where there was always a sterling purse and a punt purse,” she said.

From a nationalist tradition, Caroline is the eldest of a family of four. Deeply rooted in south Armagh, her parents grew up on adjacent farms, and Caroline has a wide extended family in Derrynoose and neighbouring townlands.

Caroline’s mother was very bright, the first in her family to attend grammar school. Her mother then trained and worked as a teacher in London, where she was followed by Caroline’s dad.

“They were very much part of that diaspora who lived through the ‘no blacks, no Irish’ times in London, but they speak of it so fondly – living in a close-knit community and going to dance-halls in Kilburn and Cricklewood,” Caroline said.

Her parents moved home three months before Caroline was born. “Although the Troubles had started by then, they had that pull to have their children in Ireland.”

As a child, she loved school and reading and, despite the escalating Troubles, had a very happy and secure childhood.

“The Troubles become the background to normal life, so as a child you didn’t pay that much attention to it.” Checkpoints were a daily occurrence. “I remember as a very young child being struck by how young the soldiers were.”

Fresh British troops were deployed in weekly helicopter drops in the large field in front of the family home.

Something about England

As part of the J-1 generation, Caroline spent several student summers in the States, working as a waitress and a chambermaid. “And then I didn’t come back!”

After her degree, an offer to read for the Bar in London was on the table, which she deferred for a year.

“To be honest, I’d no interest in coming to London,” she reflected. It felt quite intimidating and huge. I needed that year to work out what I wanted to do. You’re very aware if you go down a professional route, it’s quite difficult to reverse.

“Coming to live in London was going to be very expensive but, by that stage, my closest friend from my degree had gone on ahead to Bar school, and so she had travelled that path.”

It wasn’t a particularly good time to be Irish in London, Caroline recalls – there was an IRA bombing campaign in the City in the mid-1990s – however, her pupillage gave her a wide and very useful grounding. But she didn’t much like London when she first arrived.

“You were very conscious that you sounded different, that you were a Celt, and of how endemic class was – and still is – in this country.

“Over time, as things changed and as I became more confident that I was I going to stay, and that I was going to fit in, I lost that uncertainty about whether I had a place here. Now, it doesn’t matter to me in the least. I think it’s a really good time to be Irish in London, and an Irish lawyer in London.”

Should I stay or should I go?

Settling in to stay long-term was a process, from Bar school, to pupillage, to getting started on cases, to specialising in serious crime.

“It’s so hard to get started, and eventually you just realise, you’re here to stay. You build a network of friends and colleagues, and the work is getting better. “London has changed for the better and is still a global city, despite the damage Brexit has done,” she said.

But she worries that opportunities are fewer for young people, and that Britain has become more inward-looking.

“Quite a lot of cases we do have a European dimension – a suspect may come from the EU or may have absconded there. There is more limited information sharing between British agencies and their EU counterparts, which makes dealing with organised crime more challenging and complicated.

“In terms of collaboration and evidence-gathering, there are now barriers in place. It’s very difficult to understand how that is a benefit in a civilised society, when we’re all trying to ensure that the right people are brought to justice.”

Caroline’s three teenage children – each with Irish names – have always held Irish passports but now, as post-Brexit Londoners, she is grateful for the benefits that will bring to them.

Career opportunities

Though she has no regrets about studying pure law, Caroline might choose differently if she had her time again.

“I would have stuck to an English degree and just read my way through and then done the law conversion course.

“That path also gives you time to think about whether the law is for you. Lots of people who do law degrees go on to do different things. It’s an interesting degree, but it’s one of the harder ones in terms of hours. I do remember being very jealous of others ‘lying around reading fiction’.”

Caroline’s Bar school fees were funded from the North, and she feels herself highly fortunate. Nowadays, new entrants aren’t so lucky, and this makes it very difficult in terms of recruiting and retaining talent at the Bar in London.

“The statistics are quite alarming. The biggest challenge is sustaining the criminal Bar. What we do is provide an essential public service. The people I work with are dedicated, committed, skilled, and talented at prosecuting and defending the most serious cases.

“But you wouldn’t believe the attrition rate: we have lost 47% of practitioners in the eight-to-12-years postcall level. That’s the late 20s and early 30s. It’s a real cause for concern. We get the brightest people here for pupillage, and they do stay for a time, and they really want to make it work. And then many realise that they can’t make a living.

“The Bar has come a very long way in becoming more diverse. Men and women enter the Bar in equal measure. But it is the women who drop off more.

“We have made strides in ethnic diversity – there is more to be done – but if, socio-economically, the only people who can stay have the backing of wealthy parents or other access to money, then we’re going to backtrack very fast indeed.

“There needs to be more investment, but there’s no money. The whole criminal justice system – from police officers to prisons – has been woefully funded by successive governments over two decades now, so it’s not just a recent problem, we’re just at the lowest ebb.”

Play to win

Caroline was drawn to the variety of work at the Bar and to not being office-bound.

“What appeals to me is the human interest. It’s the interaction with people and their stories. No case is the same. It might have the same charges, but it’s an entirely different cast of players – defendants, witnesses, issues. That is intellectually stimulating. Criminal cases are a bit like a puzzle, working it all out and putting the narrative together in a way that’s easily understood.

“I do sometimes despair of human nature. But, in every case, no matter how distressing, there’s always good in it too – witnesses who jumped in and did something heroic, or diligent police officers and crime scene investigators who uncover an essential piece of evidence.”

Caroline sees some very dark things, but she has strategies for managing the pressures of work.

“I do lose sleep over cases. These are big decisions with far-reaching consequences. You need to be resilient, and you need stamina. The trial process is very physical and very demanding. At the end of the day, you’re exhausted. But you have to compartmentalise; I think I must be mentally quite robust.”

Justice tonight

Caroline accepts that we are living in very challenging times, but says there are dedicated and committed people working hard to uphold the rule of law.

She points to female genital mutilation protection orders, which can be put in place where it’s perceived that a girl is at risk of being taken abroad to be mutilated.

“The benefit of getting an FGM conviction is that it does act as a deterrent, particularly when the sentences are deterring sentences. But until FGM is addressed in communities overseas where it is still practised, it’s always going to be a problem here in Britain and Ireland.

“Human nature doesn’t change – people are always going to do awful things to each other, but it’s how we deal with it as a civilised society that matters.

“I’ll never forget that FGM case but, as always with every single case I do, it’s a team effort. Working with an excellent junior counsel and instructing solicitor, dedicated police officers going above and beyond, and fantastic expert witnesses all coming together to ensure that the case is presented well and to ensure that the trial is fair, which is so important.

“When you’re prosecuting, it’s not a conviction at any cost; it’s a fair conviction that you’re striving for, making sure that the process is fair, and your role is impartial.

“And when you’re defending, regardless of the crime or the public outrage at it, it is your role to fearlessly test the evidence.

“While I am concerned about the future, there remain skilled judges, barristers, solicitors, and dedicated court, probation, and prison staff who all tirelessly work together to keep the criminal justice system afloat. I work with brilliant people every day.

“On the whole, our system works well in ensuring that justice is achieved. And what we do as criminal barristers remains a vital public service, which needs to be protected. “It will always be a privilege to do this job,” Caroline concludes.

Mary Hallissey is a journalist with the Law Society Gazette