The awful incident in Cavan

[hollyisalovelyname]

My thoughts are with the relatives and friends of those who died.
Just awful.
May they find some consolation somewhere.

What was the eldest's text message?

And IwantaMoose, do you have a link to that piece in the Independent you mentioned? I'd like to read it and maybe pass on.

Agree with some excellent posts on this thread.

"From evil comes good".

www.irishmirror.ie/news/irish-news/crime/live-updates-funerals-tragic-hawe-8731956

Did I read his last text was "From evil comes good", I am open to correction on that though.

Mummypages on fb wrote a good article I read last night, similar to the article linked above by TKRedLemonade. The hashtag #hernamewasClodagh is now being used on social media, I think it is awful how all the coverage has been on the husband, I have heard so much about him, his handball, the community and nothing about Clodagh. It was similar a few weeks ago with that tragedy in Limerick when the man drove himself and his unrestrained toddler at high speed into a truck, while articles on what a salt of the earth man who loved to fish he was and nothing in the child or his poor mother

Pretty sobering statistic from Women's Aid

'Since Women’s Aid started to keep record in 1996, 1 in every 2 female homicide victims in Ireland has been murdered by a current or former intimate partner'

From the Irish Mirror article:

A friend said: “He left his reason for the people he loved.”

That irks me. 'Love' is hardly an appropriate word here. He didn't love his family, sorry. He brutally murdered them.

Women do often get erased in these horrible incidents. The American tourist killed in a knife attack in London recently was identified primarily in most of the British and some American news outlets as the "wife of a professor." It was only because she lived not too far from me in Florida, where there was a lot of local coverage, that I learned that she had had a long and distinguished career as a SEN specialist. But "retired schoolteacher" is obviously so much less important than her husband being a professor.

I think it's very important to raise these issues, and I am pleased to see that some people are rightly focusing on Clodagh and her children.

Mycats and thanks.

That's a very strange text message for a child to send. Where is that being reported? And how do they know?

It reminds me of that awful house fire when it was reported the 13yr old girl died with her Rosary beads.... that wasn't true.

A terrible event. Dreadful, dreadful reporting as many have said , almost gushing tones about this murderous man. Completely unjust for the poor poor mother and sons.

Mycats- your post touched me. You are truly courageous.

7Days I just checked where I read it, it was The Daily Mirror, RSVP are reporting it too. If you put in "From evil comes good" into Google they come up first, which is awful, I can't seem to link it from my phone

This seems to have been an exceptionally violent incident. The horrific, gory way the family were killed exacerbated because of their role in the community with both parents being teachers, the horror will ripple outwards and touch so many people even beyond their immediate relations ( can you imagine a primary school child hearing why their teacher isn't coming back). Who knows what was going on in that man's head, or within the family during the school holidays (it was probably no coincidence that the killings were carried out just as the new term was about to begin). But it looks like the action of a very, very angry person, more so than a distressed, unhappy person. But whether it was an extreme version of domestic violence or the result of some sort of mental illness is it ever possible to understand when all the people involved are dead?

I've just come across this thread and am so glad that someone else has said what I have been thinking.
I have complete sympathy for the extended families on both wife and husband's sides...it is horrific for them. There is a sense that it is indecent to speculate as to what happened or what caused him to do this.
I hate rubber necking or people using the drama of other people's distress.

BUT

This is a man who stabbed his wife, Clodagh, to death, in her own home, while her children were upstairs.

The focus on what "triggered" or "caused" this "wonderful" man to snap sickens me TBH. There have been so many reports where she is erased; her horror as this happened, her last moments of fear for herself and her children.

It's unlikely to have come out of the blue for her.....what had she been dealing with behind closed doors up till now.

IF, if he had been struggling with mental illness....that is awful. Poor man.
But in our country, there is immense sympathy for men who struggle....very little for women. We're supposed to just get on with it, to survive and put the children first.

Thank god for a bit of sense to balance out the man-focus in the general media.

Tulip it was yesterday's print version I red it in, just had ac quick look online and it doesn't seem to be on the site. There is a link on the first page of this thread by TonyDanza to an article by Paul Gilligan from St. Pats, it's from 2013 but I think it's the same one...recycled journalism as usual by the Indo.

Man butchers his family
Society tries every other fucking explanation, bar the "What a murderous man" theory
Fuck's sake

Totally agree

Man butchers his family
Society tries every other fucking explanation, bar the "What a murderous man" theory
Fuck's sake

I just want to thank you all, like MsHaveNaiceHam, for expressing what I suspected as soon as I heard of this. So tired of the nauseating platitudes.

www.her.ie/news/gardai-examining-cavan-murder-suicide-find-a-cryptic-message-on-13-year-olds-phone/309574 This seems more to the point.

Mycats

It's always the same with these murder suicides; the wife and children are simply by-products to the media. It's hideous.

There was a similar case in Australia a few months back. A "wonderful" family man type drove himself and his two small boys off a cliff. I think his wife wanted to divorce him. After the event the wife and family refused to condemn him and there was a lot of making excuses for him in the press.

I am so glad the Linnea Dunne blog is gaining attention.

www.theguardian.com/media/greenslade/2016/sep/01/how-a-murdered-woman-became-invisible-in-the-coverage-of-her-death.

www.stpatricks.ie/articles/%E2%80%9Cprotecting-little-innocents%E2%80%9D-irish-examiner-18032013-analysis-paul-gilligan-ceo-st-patrick
Paul Gilligan article:
"When the killing of a child is committed by a parent, we tend to focus on this parent’s mental health and emotional state. What we need to explore is the parent’s attitudes and beliefs about their child and how these attitudes might have influenced their actions.

There is no merit in vilifying the parents who commit these acts who do require our compassion and understanding. But to prevent these types of deaths from occurring in the future we need an honest conversation about the attitudes that underpin them.

Those who carry out such acts are usually greatly distressed, but alongside this distress they must carry a common belief that their children cannot or should not live without them, or that if they cannot have their children nobody else will have them.

Underpinning most forms of child abuse is a belief that a child is a possession of an adult, of a parent or of the State, a possession for whom decisions should be made and who can be treated as adults wish to treat them. This belief has been at the centre of most of the failings by Irish society of children since the founding of the State and has underpinned most of the child abuse scandals emerging over the last number of years.

It is inaccurate and deeply stigmatising to attribute such acts to mental health difficulties alone...

...There is a need to tackle, at a societal level, our attitudes and beliefs about children...

...We need to start this process within the education system, but we also need to engage in public education and awareness-raising campaigns encouraging honest debate about how we view and treat children. We need to stop attributing familicide to mental health factors alone and recognise it as child murder unacceptable no matter who perpetrates it. We need to create a society that truly values children, that treats them as citizens with rights and capacities, a society that does not tolerate any form of child abuse."

Amen to all of that.

And then let's substitute 'WOMEN' for 'children' and tackle that problem. Because it is a huge problem and the results are very clear.

That's a great article math

So so sad for this woman, her children and their extended family. We never truly know what goes on behind closed doors. God only knows what these people have been through.

Sometimes the facade, keeping up appearances and worrying what people think at all costs is paramount in Irish society. We are sometimes blinded to what's really going on. The shame of marriage break up, mental illness or financial troubles, there is so much stigma attached to these things it's not to be underestimated.

www.irishexaminer.com/ireland/cavan-murder-suicide-its-common-for-abusive-partners-to-threaten-death-419019.html

I was so please to read the Linnea Dunne piece yesterday, it articulated everything I've beenr anting to my dh about for the last few days. This is doemstic violence at it's worst.
While I realise that some people with very severe mental illness do commit murder when they can no longer distinguish right from wrong and can't really be held accountable, I think it's a huge mistake to immediately jump to this conclusion.
There is very little discussion/debate after these kinds of cases. I know it's important not to upset family members, but i think it's even more important that we try and understand why these crimes happen.
I was so sickened to hear all the stories about what a wonderful man he was, playing handball and GAA ffs!
Have we learned nothing about what goes on behind closed doors, & what supposed pillars of the community are capable of?
Mycats I am so very sorry for everything you've gone through. We hear reports of terrible crimes but don't have any idea what the families have to endure for decades afterwards.

Great artical mathanxiety I have never understood why, as a society, we are on the one hand so horrified by "stranger" murders of women and children but so accepting of them if said woman/child "belongs" to the killer(s).