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.

More details have emerged been leaked by the guards and who can blame them.

www.independent.ie/irish-news/details-emerge-of-final-moments-at-house-35019405.html

The children tried to fight him.

He wrote the long letter before he killed anyone and supposedly he said he wanted to kill himself and they couldn't live without him.

It's just so horrifying and it's hard to reconcile the violent scenes described with the facade of an ordinary family home.

Oh dear God! I wish I had not read that link.
What an utter bastard. I do wonder if Clodaghs family now regret their earlier statements. Unforgivable.

OMG, the poor little baby, I feel ill and just want to cry. I was hoping it had happened swiftly so that none of them realised what their dad and husband had done and also hoped that none of them suffered.

I feel Clodagh and the boys, have had another awful and final injustice done to them, by him being buried beside them and all the platitudes and forgiveness.

He'd made up his mind to kill himself and in a narcissistic fashion thought that his family wouldn't cope without him so they had to die too.

The arrogance of the man takes my breath away.

Good article in todays Belfast Telegraph ... www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/opinion/news-analysis/stop-making-excuses-for-alan-hawe-he-killed-three-sons-and-wife-with-hatchet-and-knives-35024458.html

The Belfast Telegraph article is heart wrenching.

So he clearly planned it !

I was thinking that maybe he attacked his wife in anger and when he realised that he had murdered her, he decided he could not face the consequences of that, and therefore decided to kill the little ones rather then leave them without parents. I am not saying there would be any excuse for that scenario either, but somehow it is a bit easier to grasp than pre-planning the mass murder of his family.

If, when all the investigating is done, it turns out that he was in possession of his mental faculties and was just a hideous controlling murdering bastard, I hope the media really get their teeth in and rip his precious reputation apart and drag it through the muck in public. It would be hard on the family and community but is in the best interests of women and their families for abusers to see that a spotlight will be shone on this crap.

A spotlight needs to be shone on the media reporting too. Shockingly poor, misogynist coverage.

I cannot even begin to imagine how Clodagh's family must feel, losing her and the three lovely boys in such a brutal, horrific way.
I do hope that the truth emerges. It is unfortunately too late for those four innocent people, but maybe it might save other lives.
I would not forgive him ever, that much I know. As I said though, I cannot even begin to imagine what Clodagh's mother and sister went through, and will be going through for the rest of their lives trying to come to terms with their horrendous loss.

Here's a thing. The Catholic church in Ireland had a historically poor record of identifying and stopping abusers within its own ranks. Given this experience and the duty of pastoral care that a priest has to his flock, one would have thought that they all get extensive training about spotting subtle signs of control and abuse?
This priest stood up at the funeral and said how much a stalwart of the church Alan was (which countless cases have shown proves nothing) and painted a rosy picture of the family he knew- Lego at Christmas etc. In fact if this was a family he visited on Christmas day and they were such frequent active churchgoers, he must have known them quite well for years, probably as well as anyone in his congregation.
So if Alan Hawe turns out to have been a manipulative controlling house devil who committed premeditated murder, then either he was the world's greatest actor bar none and his family were sufficiently trained/scared into playing their public act to perfection....or the church needs to take a long hard look at the will and ability of its priests to spot abuse.

Regardless of what the priest did or didn't know - No priest would standcon an altar at a funeral and do anything BUT sanitise the deceased and concentrate on happy moments.

Everybody might well know what went on, or suspect, or even have a funny feeling that they've never articulated, but that would never have been spoken about 'publicly' or to 'outsiders'.

'Whatever you say, say nothing' is alive and well

The details of the funeral disturb me.

The children's coffins 'flanked' by the coffins of their parents - making an equivalence between the mother and father, implying two normal, loving parents 'flanking' their children.

The fact that - according to the reports I've read - an object was brought up to the front by a family member for every member except Clodagh.

The priest's recollection of Alan standing, relaxed in the kitchen, watching his 'unspoilt, respectful' children (more praise for a brilliant dad).

The announcement made asking mourners to donated to a religious suicide charity, and a collection box opened for it during the requiem mass.

The fact that they were all buried together.

Good article in Bel Tel by Suzanne Breen. She's a first class journalist.

I agree entirely Power, it is just obscene. It just goes to show that elements of the media and the church are still operating in the dark ages.

Thankfully people like Linnea Dunne, Gary Gannon, Don Hennessy and Paul Gilligan were honest enough to tell it like it is.

Her name was Clodagh.

I was talking to my parents about this last night. They were outraged at the slant on Alan Hawe as a good man who snapped.

*There is nobody more vulnerable than a child tucked up in bed in their pyjamas. Yet this father - this loving father as he is described - viewed this tableau of innocence and was unperturbed. He looked at those wee boys, heard their cries, and saw their terrified and uncomprehending faces, and kept on killing them.

It is this act - and not how accomplished an athlete Alan Hawe was or how many times he collected money after Mass - that should define him.*

Exactly.

My thought was that it is extremely unusual for most households to have a hatchet. Did he go out and buy one especially? Which would indicate the level of premeditation.

Hideous.

I know I am guilty of also wondering if it was the result of some sort of psychosis, which I realise is buying into the 'man does horrific thing but we need to search for reasons to explain' mindset.

Poor woman. Poor children. I can't even contemplate it.

Mycatsabastard

Beryl, I suppose it will all come out in the end. In the meantime it is just so devastating to even contemplate what happened to Clodagh and the boys. The only thing to cling on to is that their suffering is over now.

I keep thinking of the terror Clodagh and her three boys must have felt before they died, and the horrible death they had. How unbearable must that be for her family to think of, and try to live with.

There are no words to describe him, none bad enough, in my opinion.

Mitzy people I have spoken to believe he was a good man who snapped 'God help him.'

A relative of Clodagh's has started speaking out against the mass murderer and said he wasn't a saint.

www.irishmirror.ie/news/irish-news/remember-clodagh-not-him-relative-8776750

I think as people who knew him start remembering things about him they'll probably recall incidences that they dismissed but in hindsight could show glimpses of another side of him than what's been portrayed by the media.

From the Mirror link (Honeyrider):

In his homily at the service, Father Felim Kelly said: "How such goodness could be destroyed? How such happiness could be invaded?

"How? Why? It is not for us to seek answers or to surmise about behaviour.

"We are all trying to cope with a tragedy beyond our understanding."

It fucking well is for us to seek answers and to surmise and it is so not 'beyond our understanding'.

This really angers me.
The blithe refusal to look evil in the eye, call it what it is, and the encouragement of the sort of platitudes that build a wall around victims of domestic violence is something that community leaders in Ireland need to get down and apologise for on bended knee.

Forgiveness is held up as the single most important virtue, transcending all others. Forgiveness certainly has its place. Behind it lies humility and a few other virtues.

But in order to forgive you have to know and understand what it is that you are forgiving. The priest should be excoriated for basically telling people to shut up and there is nothing to see here, and clouding the question of what people are being asked to forgive here means there will be more victims.

Refusal to accept reality is an evil in itself.

Math I love the way you put words on what seems so obvious..

Especially, in order to forgive you have to know and understand what it is that you are forgiving.

Forgiving is (paradoxically) sometimes the easy option, though.
"I forgive you"....so that'll smooth over everything then won't it. Except that it also allows the perpetrator to avoid thinking about what they did, the impact they've actually had and how to not do it again

While it is too late for Clodagh and her boys, a bit more contemplation and thought about the impact, a bit more consideration of the effect on her parents, her friends, her children's friends might, might slow down the next guy who thinks like this.

I know I shouldn't speculate. As I know it's completely unsubstantiated, but I was reading the articles and looking at the pictures and I just thought 'I bet he was having an affair'.

Not that it matters now, and as I say, is probably completely wrong!