Her Name Was Clodagh

[deeahgwitch]

I see Clodagh Hawe’s sister, Jacqueline Connolly has written a book Deadly Silence.
Clodagh Hawe and her 3 beautiful boys were brutally murdered by her husband, their father Alan jn 2016 in Cavan.
He then committed suicide.
Jacqueline and her mother Mary have fought hard for the truth about what happened to be known and how the “case” was handled (or mishandled) by the Gardai and the Church.
I commend her.
Hopefully Jacqueline and Mary, by their actions, will make it easier for the family of the next victims of murder suicide in Ireland - and sadly there will be more victims- to get the justice deserved for their loved ones.

That must’ve been super tough for the family to
go through and then recap - assuming the book is in relation to what happened. Great for raising awareness though, as I’m sure most of us live in the opinion that it’ll ’never happen to us’.

I saw an article about this accompanied by a photo of Clodagh and her boys and the fact that it was probably taken by him made me feel sick. I wish her sister and her family strength.

I read an article in the IrishTimes today. Such an incredibly brave woman to continue to give her sister and her nephews a voice.
What I read today has haunted me. She shared how when Clodagh was getting married, he wouldn’t let her and her sister go shopping for the bridesmaid dress unsupervised without him, so he went too. He came inbetween them. His suicide letter had “I” and “me” written an astonishing amount of times. He was a narcissist. She had been Googling how to parent alone at Christmas, so she must have been making plans to leave him.
Horrific

I just listened to Jacqueline’s interview with Pat Kenny https://podcasts.apple.com/ie/podcast/the-pat-kenny-show-highlights/id698050979?i=1000708118829. Jacqueline and her Mum have had so much tragedy in their lives and were let down completely by the Garda . They had to go public to get answers.

Thank you for posting this, as I would have missed it otherwise.
I am going to order the book.
i hope loads of people read this book and hear Clodagh and the boys’ story. I hope it is a bestseller and causes a storm.
Shocking how even in so called modern Ireland, a certain type of middle class man can do something atrocious and there will still be those who somehow make excuses (the mental illness narrative).
The courage it must’ve taken to write this book!

There have been other cases of men killing their families, and the media treating it as a 'private tragedy' rather than a crime.

I remember when farmer Martin McCarthy drowned his 3 year old daughter and killed himself in 2013, all the hand-wringing about 'that poor man' - I heard one radio presenter wondering what torment was going through the poor man's mind that he did such a thing..

What had been going through his mind was punishing his wife, writing her out of his will so she wouldn't inherit their home or any part of it, and making sure that arrangements were made for his animals to be taken care of.

There was hardly a word about the mother.. who had to fight to get her little girl's body removed from beside her murderer so she could be buried near her mother's home. And she also had to go as far as the High Court to try to get her share of the family property.

Thanks to the 'Her Name Was Clodagh' campaign, I haven't heard that kind of 'private tragedy/that poor man' narrative since then.

Her family are so brave to have turned their tragedies - this wasn't the only one - into something positive.

👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻

I'll buy the book and read it soon. I think I'm guilty of assuming that Alan Hawe killed Clodagh and their children as a result of schizophrenia, or something along those lines i.e. it wasn't something he had any control over. But of course, I didn't know the full story back then.

I heard Jacqueline being interviewed on the Brendan O'Connor show and she made a good point when she said that the Gardaí who attended the scene had no training in dealing with a crime like that. There was an attitude of, "Sure, he's dead now. What's the point in investigating it".

Yes, I always think of that case too.

I wonder if his cross dressing, addiction to pornography and looking at ‘indecent pictures of children’ had anything to do with this? The Manchester Evening News suggested that these behaviours are what caused his unravelling.

That story really upset me, I often think of her. I remember the news story at the time and the grandmother calling to the house when no one answered and when she saw that note her first thought was he must have done something awful. Yet the papers were talking about tragedy and the respectable man he was. I remember saying to Dh if that woman's first thought was that he hurt her daughter then this has been building for a long time, it's the last thing you'd think in a normal situation. Those poor beautiful children

There was a situation where apparently he was reported to the INTO (Teachers body) and he was dreading it. It was suspected that he was caught masturbating and he was about to be revealed. A lot of his porn addiction had happened on his work laptop during working hours.

He was dreading going back to school in September so decided to end it all the night before the first day of term. Coward. A nobody.

How on Earth did the poor staff in the school and parents cope with what must have been very traumatised children of the school in the aftermath. 🥲