From top: Daily Telegraph obituary reprinted in last week’s Sunday Independent; ‘Creep and imposter’ Randall McDonnell (left); Billy O’Hanluain.
Billy O’Hanluain writes:
I was sickened reading a fawning obituary to this absolute creep and impostor Randal McDonald.
They fail to mention that he was a predator and pederast with an insatiable lust for young boys.
He made a misery of my late teenage years and I carried for way too long the shame and guilt for what he did to me as though it had been my responsibility.
Twice he seriously abused me, even once video recording the abuse so he could press pause and marvel at the highlights of his wickedness.
I didn’t have the luxury of pressing pause on what was happening to me, nor was I later able to scrub the the tape of my life clean.
In my own delusional way, I put it all down to a wild adventure but I know now that was just a hopeless coping mechanism.
They say not speak ill of the dead but I’d gladly strike the first match at his cremation and spit paraffin on his embers Go rot in hell! [continued at links below]
Update:
Billy writes:
I have sent the piece to The Irish Independent and I hope they publish it as a form of redress to the scandalously inappropriate obituary this man received. I am not defined by what happened to me but it is a part, a very painful part, of what made me the man I am today
. I’ve got more fire in me than ever before and all the words I’ve read here today have blown such a warm gust into my sometimes tattered, sometimes uncertain sails but I am more sure of my course than ever.
Meanwhile…
This afternoon.
Senator David Norris pays tribute to Randal McDonnell on the floor of Seanad Éireann
Thanks Amy