A BBC programme provoked controversy across Ireland by accusing the IRA of trying to force a woman to keep quiet about being raped by one of its members.

The Spotlight programme, made by BBC Northern Ireland and screened on 14 October, resulted in severe political embarrassment for Sinn Féin, especially for its president, Gerry Adams.

But the programme itself is now under fire. It is claimed that the makers failed to take account of the fact that the woman, Maria (aka Maíria) Cahill, was a leading member of a dissident republican organisation with an anti-Sinn Féin agenda.

It is further claimed that she remained a Sinn Féin supporter for many years after the alleged rape and only sought to go public with her sexual abuse allegations after she had turned against the organisation for political reasons.

Critics suggest that Spotlight's presenter and producer were too willing to accept Cahill's story and did not point to countervailing evidence.

That is not to say that she was not raped. Nor does it negate her view that the IRA handled her complaint clumsily and insensitively.

But in Northern Ireland, where almost every aspect of life has a political context, it does mean that vital information was denied to viewers.

This lack of balance resulted in the Cahill story being accepted at face value across Ireland, where Adams and his party were forced on to the back foot as they tried to defend and explain the IRA's actions.

Cahill claimed she spoke to Adams about the matter, thereby implicating him in some sort of cover-up. He has strenuously denied the quote she attributed to him.

Cahill's central claim is that, at the age of 16 in 1997, she was sexually abused by an IRA member. After these claims emerged in public, she was then subjected to a series of "interrogations" by the IRA that amounted to a "kangaroo court" and included a face-to-face meeting with her alleged abuser.

She was persuaded, she said, not to go to the police (then the RUC) but many years later did make a formal complaint to the new Northern Ireland police force, the PSNI.

The alleged rapist denied the allegations. He and four other people were charged but all were acquitted when Cahill decided not to give evidence.

Cahill was born into a staunch republican family. Her great-uncle was Joe Cahill, who helped in the 1969 formation of the Provisional IRA.

Some four years after she was interviewed by the IRA about her allegations she canvassed for Sinn Féin in the assembly elections in November 2003 and also wrote for the party's newspaper, An Phoblacht, in July 2004.

But Cahill split from Sinn Féin in 2007 at a time when the party agreed to recognise the PSNI, and the Irish edition of the Mail on Sunday revealed two days ago that she then joined the Republican Network for Unity (RNU), a dissident group formed specifically in opposition to Sinn Féin's support for the PSNI.

She rose high enough in the organisation to be listed as the Belfast secretary of the RNU's governing council, and was seen on a picket line in November 2009 demonstrating against Sinn Féin meeting the PSNI.

I asked BBC Northern Ireland a series of questions as to why Spotlight had failed to report on Cahill's membership of an anti-Sinn Féin organisation, which was surely relevant.

None of my specific questions were answered. Instead, the BBC issued a lengthy statement saying that it stood by "a significant piece" of investigative journalism, which was "in the public interest."

It conceded that Spotlight did not seek to establish the truth of Cahill's rape allegations, but investigated her "treatment by the republican movement and in particular her account of how, as a very young woman who said she had been abused, she had been made to meet her alleged perpetrator."

It did address the fact she continued to work with Sinn Féin for some time after the alleged abuse and she was asked if, in speaking out, it was her intention to damage the party, which she denied.

The BBC said Cahill "contests the allegation that she is a dissident" and that her membership of the RNU was "extremely brief". (Cahill has stated separately that she was "national secretary of RNU for a period of a few hours in 2010").

The BBC concluded: "Spotlight spent a great deal of time researching and corroborating Ms Cahill's story. As we stated in the programme, we carried out a series of interviews with her, in which she gave a consistent account."

But the feeling lingers that the programme was flawed by being overly one-sided. Cahill's political stance should have been explored more fully.

Sources: BBC/Irish Independent/Irish Central/Irish Times/Irish Mail on Sunday (not online)/Belfast Telegraph/Dissident Media Watch/Private information