Cavan family annihilation by a "brilliant Dad"

[DoinItFine]

Is anyone else reading all about what an amazing guy Alan Hawe was with mounting disbelief and fury?

He stabbed his wife and three sons to death in a frenzied attack and then hung himself.

But poor him, he must have bern awful tortured. And he went to mass all the time.

Great Dad

You know when you read awful threads about abuse on MN and then out it comes "he's a great Dad", and you think "what does a man have to do to losr that label?"

Well apparently you can murder your 3 kids and still keep the Great Dad title.

I just find it rather dispiriting that when we have a male mass murderer and extensive media reportage centring him, erasing his murdered wife and portraying him as some kind of wonderful and/or tragically flawed human being, we still have several posts slagging off the behaviour of a female victim of his crimes. There are a great many people whose actions need to be on trial long before the woman who lost her daughter and three grandchildren in one of the most horrific ways imaginable.

No one has "slagged off" relatives of the victims off his heinous crime. We have expressed shock at their decision to bury the primary victims with their murderer.

when we have a male mass murderer and extensive media reportage centring him, erasing his murdered wife and portraying him as some kind of wonderful and/or tragically flawed human being, we still have several posts slagging off the behaviour of a female victim of his crimes.

When two of the secondary female victims of the crime are the loudest voices in that erasure of her and lionsation of him, that is somewhat inevitable.

You can't really criticise the media response and ignore that they are reporting what the "family" wants reported.

Given patterns with family annihilators, the starting assumption should be that he was abusive and hid it, and questions asked relating to that (eg family finances, any evidence that clodagh was isolated, availability of local services for abuse victims)

When people use the insanity defence and get found not guilty by reason of insanity they don't just then get to go free because "oh you were mad and couldn't help it but off you pop now you poor lamb"

Ehh... I never said that happens to people found not guilty by reason of insanity. Nor would I expect it. If people are a danger to others due to mental health problems then they should be kept somewhere like a secure hospital.

But my point is it is not a crime if the person committing the act was insane at the time of it happening.

I don't know if he was mentally healthy - but neither do you

I don't know if he was insane - but neither do you

We don't know.

But my point is it is not a crime if the person committing the act was insane at the time of it happening.

I really don't agree with this. The murder of Clodagh and her sons was a horrific crime, regardless of the mental health of the perpetrator.

It's only inevitable if people think themselves entitled to pronounce on the behaviour of victims OP. As this thread illustrates, plenty of us are able to understand why that's not appropriate. And you can absolutely criticise the media response: are you suggesting, for example, that Clodagh's mother asked to be referred to as the MIL? Because if you are, we're going to need some evidence for that.

It would appear we'll have to agree to disagree about the slagging off.

We should certainly get rid of the bizarre idea that all murders were done by blameless mad people unless we can prove otherwise.

We shouldn't judge either way until we know the facts. Why is it necessary that you make a judgment so quickly after the event. I never presumed he had a mental illness I just said we don't know.

I can understand the point about the media coverage but I can't understand the need for random people to start casting judgments on people like Clodagh's mother.

Of course it's a crime no matter the mental state of the perpetrator.

I also think that the reflexive response to suggest that mental illness may be the cause in cases of extreme male violence is yet another way we try to hide the patterns of male violence in our society.

I think Dozer's approach would be far better.

are you suggesting, for example, that Clodagh's mother asked to be referred to as the MIL?

Um, nope.

But it would be pretty weird to criticise the media for reporting what a great guy he was on Wednesday, note the slight change in tone by Thursday, and fail to acknowledge the family's statements by Friday that seemed to support the initial media response.

You can't discuss the media response to this crime without reference to the family's significant input to that response.

You could argue that the media is using the family to justify their own coverage, but that still leaves us with a family publicly supporting their relative's murderer.

I also think that the reflexive response to suggest that mental illness may be the cause in cases of extreme male violence is yet another way we try to hide the patterns of male violence in our society

Abso-fucking-lutely.

I read all about this last week in Ireland. All these interviews with local residents saying what a great man he was and things to the effect that you couldn't blame him for what he did, he must have had problems. I remember feeling angry. If it had been the mother I'm sure people would not have had a good word to say about her.

I disagree Mrsbadger, women who kill their children are treated with just as many excuses. There was a case where a mother killed her two kids and then herself, all the media coverage was overly sympathetic, blaming everybody but her for her actions. Then her family was on television, again, blaming everybody but her and there was no challenge to that. She was the victim. We're a culture that will do anything to excuse and justify the perpetrator especially if they're considered 'respectable'. To hell with the actual victims, they don't count in that mentality. Whether they're male, female, adults, children.... It's the perpetrators that come first. Bizarre and wrong.

Mental illness is no excuse for evil. Millions of people who are mentally ill do not commit brutal murders. Only those who are evil do. Sorry if that's an archaic concept to some.

But what Alan Hawes did was evil; we can speculate on his mental health until the cows come home, but it will still be evil.

And I would give the news reporters a bit of slack. Yes there has been a male-centric narrative ('the mother-in-law' being a case in point) but primarily reporters work on the facts at hand, and the quotes at hand, which they have faithfully quoted in this case. Believe me they will have quoted everything available in this high-profile story.

It would only be weird if you're missing the point entirely OP. When it comes down to it, the media report this how they choose to and they have the option to refer to the victims how they like. They are not obliged to take any kind of cue from what people who knew the deceased are saying: that is a choice being made entirely by a primarily male controlled media. They, rather than the female secondary victims are the ones with the power and the ones who form opinions.

With this in mind, you not only can criticise the media response without feeling it's relevant that they're reporting it as the family wishes, but you're actually remiss if you don't. Because you're completely ignoring who has the power, and that's why your posts on this matter are remiss. It's hardly just about quotes either tulip: nobody is forcing those who are in charge of what is printed to refer to Clodagh's mother as the MIL, or to write about what a nice guy he was without placing this in the proper context of family massacres. The blame there is entirely with the media, and not remotely with anyone who has been quoted.

or to write about what a nice guy he was without placing this in the proper context of family massacres.

Not sure what you mean about 'placing this in the proper context of family massacres'.

But I disagree. The blame is not entirely with the media. They are reproducing quotes of what people have said. The majority of who have said what a great guy he was etc.

I would like to have seen a bit more of 'I'm appalled' as well as 'I'm shocked'.

I agree with Hyacinth.

Frankly, I find the vilifying of Clodagh's mother in this thread more repugnant than the "but he was such a nice man" statements from his neighbours. People say a lot of things without thought or reflection when a microphone is shoved in their face, particularly when they haven't had time to process a traumatic event.

The media reporting is another issue altogether and deserves every criticism it's been getting.

Poor woman. Poor children.

Quiet, withdrawn wives of charming extravert men are frequently victims of domestic violence - it is almost a symptom.

My heart aches for them - for the hideous deaths they suffered, and for the sad, frightened, constricted lives that they must have led.

I hope he rots in hell for the pain he has caused.

I do not blame Clodagh's mother. It was why I initially avoided any comment on the joint burial. I don't understand her choices, but I don't blame her.

My empathy is with Clodagh. I am thinking about what she went through in the last minutes of her life. She is a victim of the most extreme form of domestic violence. And, at least in a symbolic sense, she won't be free from her perpetrator even in 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.

In the very first reports I read about this massacre, the police were extravagantly noncommittal about who was responsible - something along the lines of "It would appear that one person in the house killed the other people in the house and then killed themselves." They made it clear that they were certain that no one from outside the family was involved, but they were adamant that they reeaaaaaly couldn't make any definitive statements about which member of the household was the killer and that there was much work to be done before that question could be answered. Yeah guys what a riddler!!!!!! Who could have done something like this, eh?? The 5 year old, perhaps?!

It made my blood boil when I read it; and now that I know that when those statements were being made to the press, the police KNEW that THE WOMAN AND CHILDREN WERE STABBED TO DEATH and THE MAN HAD WRITTEN SOME NOTES AND WAS FOUND HANGED, and yet STILL insisted on scratching their heads and talking about keeping an open mind, I am fucking incandescent.

I share your anger, user. The bland, non-committal statements set the tone. The guards were almost being disingenuous.

Yes absolutely Tulips, they were being massively disingenuous.

They made it known that
a) There were 5 people in the house: a man aged 41, a woman, and their three sons, aged 13, 11 and 6;
b) All 5 of those people were dead;
c) It was a murder-suicide, not a tragic accident;
d) No one else was involved

And then they made a big show of how they didn't yet know what had happened. So of course people are going to think "Well, it wasn't the 6 year old and it wasn't the 11 year old; there's a very very remote chance that it might've been the 13 year old but in cases like this it's almost always the father/husband who's the murderer. But they're saying they really really don't know what happened in this instance, so maybe...?" In pointedly failing to even hint at what they already knew - that Clodagh had been stabbed - they tacitly invited people to speculate that she had been the perpetrator rather than the victim.
I just find it repulsive.

Oh ffs - it's standard operating procedure for every police force everywhere. You don't make definitive statements about suspicious death - especially multiple deaths - until forensic details come in and the pathologist has made a report.

The gardai did NOT make it known from the start that it was a murder suicide, nor did they state that it wasn't an accident. All they said at first was that they were investigating the discovery of bodies, described them as a family and gave their ages, and said they were not looking for anyone else in relation to the deaths.

Absolutely standard statement, and it would have been exactly the same statement had it looked like an accident when they walked in.

When the forensic team arrived and made an initial report, the gardai became more specific and they confirmed they were treating it as a murder suicide. But no more details would be forthcoming until the pathologist report was in (and maybe not even then). Again, totally standard. The gardai hadn't even released their names at this point - all that became public due to journalists interrogating locals.

It's not disingenuous at all. The gardai weren't "scratching their heads pretending they didn't know what happened", but were just following normal operating procedure of giving hardly any details to avoid prejudicing an ongoing investigation. Don't create unnecessary bogeymen

Agree with the above ^

It's bollocks to say it's some institutionalised sexism, that they were protecting Alan. Jesus wept!