Cavan family annihilation by a "brilliant Dad"

Very sorry about what happened to you and your family Elendon.

On another MN thread on the murders are quotes from one Irish newspaper that has interviewed a domestic violence/family murderer expert, who talks about the case, and the importance of focusing on the real victims.

There were post-mortems of all the dead in the Cavan case.

What on earth makes you imagine there wasn't a post mortem done on all of them?

Of course there was. It was in the news. It's just done within 24 hrs of death.

So it's the "media"'s fault that everyone was falling over themselves to sing Alan Hawe's praises?

Nothing at all to do with a culture that accepts male violence against women as inevitable and understandable.

No, the media forced all those people to say all those things.

There are no people in Ballyjamesduff with any power.

Only the media has power.

They should not report accurately the views they hear

Presumably you invented all these strawmen to savage because your argument's crap OP. But just in case, let's break it down again:

• An analysis that doesn't acknowledge that the media has power and the bereaved family don't is woefully inadequate. If you think the family has power, tell us why, and if you don't, tell us why you felt the need to respond with 'there are no people in Ballyjamesduff with any power'.

• The media were not obliged to provide quotes without analysis of the wider phenomena of family annihilation, nor without asking why people feel the need to say things like this after such a massacre. The fact that many media organs did is nobody's fault but those who decide what is printed. You state, and I imagine we all agree, that this has a great deal to do with a culture that normalises violence against women. The media did not report on that, and they should have done. Put bluntly, reporting accurately on what happened needed to include that, and it mostly hasn't.

• There is a distinction between people who have just had half their family wiped out and people who haven't, so you need to stop attempting to blur the two. Nobody who has told you that your criticism of the bereaved mother is inappropriate has also said the same about other people in the village.

The mentality of expecting people to "not to make a scene" is how a lot of oppression happens- from the trivial to the tragic, a contributor to a lot of sexual assault and probably a factor in why a lot of women stay with abusive men. It needs busted.

Things we don't accept are making a scene, speaking ill of the dead, not accepting your 'burdens' with good grace
Spot on. If there is somebody in the community or family who had their doubts about the killer in the past or even proof that the he wasn't previously a 100% lovely man, do you think they will break ranks and say so? Or will they toe the party line of "yes so sad he just inexplicably went crazy one day".

I think the Irish/ church community as a whole should take a long hard look at themselves. This is like a throw back our darkest periods.

The way we are encouraged forgive the most evil acts like it is for our own sake. Don't acknowledge your feelings ,just skip straight to the ' set piece' lines, I forgive !!!
I see & hear it time & time again.
Perpetrators crimes are listed after their ' good deeds'.

Things we accept & forgive our pillars of society for include paedophia & murder.
Things we don't accept are making a scene, speaking ill of the dead, not accepting your 'burdens' with good grace.
Is our society still so worried about will the priest/people think. Doing things the 'right' way. Keeping dignified?

This bullshit needs to stop.
Alan probably felt empowered by that mentality.
Clodagh was trapped by it.

Prople need to wake up &
Take their voices back .

He murdered them after a family day out, which is another pattern.

A bit of googling shows that the most common month for family annihilation is August, as in this case (20% of cases as opposed to just over 8% if there was even dostribution). I suppose because the children are at home most of the time and therefore available to be killed at a time of the murderer's choosing, and before he has to relinquish some control over them when they go back to school.

I just wish the press would get their act together - sub editors write the headlines (not the actual individual journos) and they do so according to rules set out by the editorial policy of their paper. If I was a newspaper editor, the word "murder" would have to be used somewhere in the headline: "Family murdered by father", "Woman murdered in so-called 'honour killing'", "Woman and her daughter murdered by estranged partner"... Why can't society at large call this what it actually is?

There IS a middle way between blasting Alan from the pulpit and saying what a family man he was or that no questions should be asked.

A good priest would have been able to find that way.

He is their parish priest. He would have no grounds to refuse them. But he had every opportunity, and, indeed, a duty to advise them. And he does have a say in what goes on in his church.

Alan did commit suicide, and Pieta House is an incredible charity. If that's what the family wanted, then he had no grounds to refuse it.

Again, you're wanting him to act like some old school priest. That's the exact opposite of how they act these days. There's a fundamental misunderstanding here of how they work. Priests are no longer allowed to take positions of judgement, not even of mass murderers.

I can't believe I'm even having to explain that tbh.

Yes, the suicide charity collecting box was outrageous. And I don't care if that's what the family wanted. It's up to the priest to give advice and guidance. And ultimately to say what he wants to happen in his church.

So we now know that among the several notes Alan Hawes left, one said that his family would not be able to cope without him.

Classic sign of a narcissist controller.

So the priest says we mustn't seek answers or surmise while simultaneously placing a collection box for a religious suicide charity at the funeral? So not being totally neutral then.

And as for the comment about Alan standing watching his 'respectful and unspoiled sons' ... More praise for a brilliant dad, while apparently failing to comment on the fact that he murdered them??

Pretty sickening.

I do my know what he should have said. That's his job, not mine. All I know is that he should not have continued to obliterate the memory of a murdered woman and continue to paint her murderer of her children as a good family man, and they whole thing as some sort of terrible accident.

"unspoiled and respectful sons"??
Apart from

• mental illness/save them from the world killers (the only type considered here)

• self righteous killers (who blame wife)
• anomic killers (who view family as status symbols to be destroyed if perfection likely to collapse)

• the disappointed father. Typically "honour killings" but could include a man whose perfect respectful unspoiled minions show signs of rebelling against him.

I am fascinated as to what you all think he should have said, tbh.