Cavan family annihilation by a "brilliant Dad"

I hate that people think that mental illness is an excuse for murdering your entire family. There are plenty of people with mental health problems who manage to not go on killing sprees, and I would like to point out that there is a very, very large difference between women who crack under pnd and smother their babies and someone who violently stabs their entire family to death, has the presence of mind to write 2 fucking notes and then chooses to kill themselves in a far more humane way.

My grandfather had what was then called paranoid schizophrenia. When he tried to kill his whole family it was his illness's way of letting out the fact that he hated women, saw them as inferior and believed that as head of the household he had the right to kill them all. Yes he may have been mad at the time, but he was also evil to the core - he was exceedingly good at being charming too so no-one really believed my mother until the police were involved.

It certainly would be a crime of the dad was mentally healthy but we don't know if he had a mental illness that could have led to him being found not guilty by reason of insanity

We just don't know either way. I'm not saying he's evil or innocent - I'm saying we don't know.

But again, you're putting the mother on trial. Now it's that she turned a blind eye???

I'm not down with that.

I'm also not down with the priest who is comforting the family being "a dodgy fucker".

Let's keep the blame to Alan.

This type of reporting happens again and again. Yes to what pp said about it not happening in a vacuum. It is appalling.

I can't help but feel that when we are repeatedly given the 'male' perspective, that patriarchal shaping of our culture will continue. Female journalists, editors and owners of media institutions seems to be the only way that there will be a change in this narrative.

Mm, well potential family annihilators can surely take great comfort from this case.

Put on a good front, Get involved in your community and everyone will forgive the most violent and deliberate crimes.
You'll even be regarded as a victim too. Bonus.

The mother is not up for judgement in my opinion. She's lost too much.

I also understand that she was in that house a great deal, she did regular childminding for them. She clearly mustn't have seen anything too disturbing given how blindsided she appears to be and her loyalty towards Alan even in death.

So it's possible that he was a master at hiding his other face, even from his MIL who was around all the time.

In that scenario, I can see how the poor woman would be thinking in terms of "brain storm" or one of those archaic terms.

As it is, the poor woman must be lying awake wondering what she missed, how she missed it, and what is she going to do now with them all dead. I believe she lost a son to suicide a few years ago too.

I have nothing but sympathy for her, as her sentence is lifelong. That sympathy isn't dependant on where Alan is buried.

Because I think "not judging" is indistinguishable from approval in most circumstances.

Then you think wrong, I'm afraid. You are conflating two quite different things, and it's particularly problematic that you do this as you (correctly) take issue with others who have no more knowledge of anyone's mental state than you do speculating about the father's sanity or otherwise.

Clodagh's mother is the victim of a hideous crime. Outrage is better directed at the people who were not and yet still think it's ok to centre the murderer and erase the woman who was slaughtered.

*Because I think "not judging" is indistinguishable from approval in most circumstances.
*

Feel free to judge once you know the full facts - wait until then, otherwise you are judging in ignorance

We don't know the full facts - therefore we don't sit at home casting judgment on people. We know minimal facts.

We don't know Clodagh's mother's reasoning or how we might react ourselves to such an event. I went through a traumatic event - but nothing close to as traumatic as this. I forgave someone and was judged negatively for that. I was very annoyed at people deciding they knew better about how I should react when they had never had such an experience themselves.

We don't know if the father had a mental illness or if he was mentally heathy. We can't judge so.

Why are you conflating justification of the mother's decisions with not judging her about them when she's just been through horrific trauma? Not judging includes not making positive judgement either: people who are not judging her are by definition not offering approval of her decisions either.

One can refrain from judging people who've just had half their family massacred whilst also not baselessly speculating about the murderer's mental state. Let's do both.

Seriously OP??? I am really struggling to retain my sympathy for her mother. Who are you to judge someone going through such a shockingly traumatic experience!

We don't know if the father wasn't suffering from some untreated mental illness. It's absolutely dreadful what happened but if it turned out he acted under a cloud of mental illness then I don't think he should be described as 'evil'. There's a reason people suffering with mental illness who murder people are found not guilty by reason of insanity. There was a case I recall in Ireland where a mother drowned her two small children. She'd been suffering with mental health problems and tried unsuccessfully to get help. The tone of the media coverage was understanding - not condemning her as evil
www.irishtimes.com/news/mother-and-daughters-die-in-wexford-drowning-1.432831

I won't be rushing to judgment without knowing the full facts.

Agree with PP that questions need to be asked about why the (very likely) abuse by this man was unnoticed; and (relating to this) issues like the availability of services in the area for women and DC being abused.

It is really disturbing that her family are arranging for clodagh and the DC to be buried with their murderer. Terrible.

I keep thinking about QEI. When faced with [Catholic priest] assholes who wanted to kill her, whose belief system reckoned that they wouldn't go to hell for murder (the main inhibitor of the era). So, she reckoned, she had to impose a pre-death punishment that was going to weed out at least a few of the candidates, on grounds of squeamishness.

Erm, possibly a not entirely appropriate way to describe the policies of someone who had innocent people tortured to death because they tried to assert a right to freedom of religion (she killed plenty of lay RCs simply for not acknowledging and participating in the state church too). Also, the death penalty doesn't really act as a deterrent. Societies that have it don't have higher rates of violent crime, and even the likes of the US utilise some pretty brutal methods. And you were much more likely to be murdered or subject to a violent crime in medieval Europe than you are now. I don't think hanging, drawing and quartering is going to be particularly of assistance to us here, especially not as so many of these mass murderers also kill themselves while they're at it.

Clodagh looked like my Aunty Meg I can understand the shock if everyone thought he was a good guy, I don't think they are excusing it. I think some men feel intense pressure that if they can't provide a good future for their family, everyone is better off dead. I bet this had something to do with it even though they were both employed in moderately good jobs.

An ex-abuser of mine, upon my small rant about some "othering" I had to suffer (some aspect I don't want to share, sorry guys) said: "well, people just don't feel comfortable..."

But he didn't finish the sentence. In his tiny non-brain, there was no more to the sentence.

The rest of the sentence should have been "...and that sucks and it's wrong."

Bonus points for an additional sentence: "And here's what were going to do..."

That's what these articles do. They do the bare minimum of reporting: stop at the gore, glorify the status quo (women and chdren are property to be disposed of as a.n.man sees fit), and then Do Not Finish The Sentence. They do not then go on to say "feck, if people can really think somebody who did this was upstanding, what does that say about society?!?"

But they should. Fuck alleged impartiality. They can and choose to take sides on "benefit cheats", racism, commies, etc. if they can't turn their bully pulpit to killers of more than 50% of the population, well, I just don't know what to say.

The Linnea Dunne article:

"......patriarchal worldview that refuses to label domestic violence for what it is; that insists on publishing praise for a man who has just brutally murdered his wife and three children; that almost entirely omits the one woman from the story."