Tonight.
Parson’s Court, Newcastle, villagem County Dublin.
A vigil at the house where three children – Conor, 9, Darragh, 7, and three-year-old Carla McGinley – were found dead last Friday. A woman in her 40s has been arrested on suspicion of their murders and is being detained at Clondalkin Garda Station.
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a terrible thing
Terrible tragedy. I hope the mother is in their thoughts as well. She must have been suffering terribly to do something so unimaginable.
Excuse me? That is an act of utter evil. Mental health is neither a reason nor an excuse. The same sympathy would not (nor should it) be afforded to a man who did the same.
Perhaps not anymore, however the coverage of Alan Hawe as a ‘doting father with depression’ after his murder-suicide would suggest this wasn’t always the case.
And she was a nurse working
Horrific. I just hope that poor man can find a direction in his life after this.
+1
I truly can’t imagine the pain he must be in. It’s unthinkable.
All I can say is I could never get over it
Appalling. Tough reading and thinking about this pain and suffering for everyone. What can anyone say about something so terrible?
Last night the leaders waffled and spoofed and bickered until they ran out of time and couldn’t talk about health. Mental health needs to be taken as seriously as any cancer diagnosis and at the moment, it’s not. Because of underfunding, it’s destroying lives.
https://www.broadsheet.ie/2016/09/02/her-name-was-clodagh-she-mattered/
is your point, due it’s a woman’s mental health in question that it’s being ignored in the media as opposed to in your link where it’s a man’s ?
I’m finding it hard to be generous to the woman in this case, mental health problems or no. It was a monstrous act, and I know in all likelihood – as so many of these tragedies are – driven by mental health problems and the massive gaps in our health system, but I’m finding it very difficult to remember that when I think of those poor children. This is unfair of me, I know, when we don’t know the details of what happened or why.
that’s a human reaction Milly especially when you have kids yourself and every instinct is to protect them, I don’t want to speculate but I’d imagine things would have to be very dark to think this is a better option for three children you have clearly cared for and reared until this point. Again I realise this is an assumption on my part.
I feel the same about this woman as I do about Alan Hawe. She was brought to hospital, not to prison or a garda station which says something as to her mental state. Whether Hawe would have been hospitalised or not is a moot point.
@Daisy — She was brought to hospital because she overdosed and arrested as soon as she came to.
Sorry Jan, that wasn’t meant to be a reply to your comment.
But I suspect you are correct.
don’t be sorry Miss Millie, even if it was I wouldn’t be put out, it’s a horrible thing to get your head around,
My observation is that many (including Daisy) on that thread (about Clodagh Hawe and her family) refused to even consider that Alan Hawe may have been mentally ill (this even continued after the inquest when experts explained how he was mentally ill).
Yet there seems to be much less debate here concerning whether this person is mentally ill. I don’t know why the difference in approach between this woman and Alan Hawe.
For what it’s worth, of course they were both mentally ill. It is impossible to do such awful things with a sound mind. Just another reason why mental healthcare must be drastically better resourced.
RIP Conor, Darragh, Carla.
Murder is murder.
You can’t just presume mental illness because it was ‘an awful thing’. There are people who kill children and are not mentally ill.
An assessment of the mental state of the perpetrator would be necessary if this current case went to court. Wait for facts I say.
Tragic event.
Indeed. Wait for facts. A benefit of the doubt not given to Alan Hawe – who did vile, evil and tragic things, but who was, as it turned out, mentally ill.
maybe the difference in approach is because child bearing and birth can completely skew hormones and mental health and trigger extreme depression, that’s understood and recognized,
I’m not saying this validates the difference just maybe explains the why
There’s also a difference in slitting your children’s throats, cutting the windpipe to silence them and putting a pillow over them. Hawe was deliberately violent towards his family but obviously neither is in any way acceptable.
@Daisy. It’s still murder. According to multiple reports, the Newcastle children were sedated first, then suffocated. If so, it does sound like a very calculated killing. I am on the less-sympathetic side here to the perpetrator because of the gravity of the crime. I worry that if we allow mental illness to excuse these acts without thorough assessment and a scale of severity, we will lose more innocent children in this tragic way as people give up on their lives.
I find it hard to believe that depression alone could cause a mother to murder her children. Unless she was psychotic and hearing voices, she couldn’t execute such a plan. God knows what was going on. RIP to three innocent children and condolences to the family.
@Spaghetti Hoop Yes, murder is murder and I hope this woman recieves a long prison sentence for it. The “not guilty by reason of insanity” verdict has to go. Replace it with “guilty, but insane” so somebody who is deemed mentally ill at the time of their crimes can get medical treatment and then serve out the rest of their sentence in prison.
@Daisy. Indeed m’dear. This conversation with you is not a disagreement with you. These family murders are getting too frequent. I have a lot of respect with Clodagh Hawe’s family in highlighting the criminality of what happened to them. And we need more research done in investigating the dark places people go to and the potential for ordinary loving people to fantasise about murder = more mental health studies / funding needed of course. Let’s hope the authorities deal with this sensitively and professionally.
No idea how this man will ever be able to find peace again, the strength he will need is beyond my compréhension.
Rest in peace.
How do we know it’s the mother? The report just says “a woman in her 40s”. Could be anyone