Chapter 3: Fostering Brendan

Tony Muggivan

At this time, one of my wife’s brothers, Dermot O’Sullivan, was told by his employer that he had a job for Brendan in Shannon. The name of the factory was Fabricated Products. Dermot had worked there for years. I asked Dermot to come to Carlow Court with us and testify that Brendan had a chance of good employment and training. I had already told our barrister about the promised job. Our solicitor, Billy Loughnane, had already been given the letters we had collected. There was a letter from Joe Carney, stating his belief that Brendan would be better off in my custody. There was also a letter from one of Brendan’s former teachers, James Collins, who described Brendan’s school experiences and gave a history of some of his early distress. He also said that Brendan would be better off in my custody and the custody of my family. There was a letter from Fr McNamara and the consent letter signed by Brendan’s father, which the priest had obtained. The following is what Jim Collins, Brendan’s last teacher, had to say

about him:

Brendan O’Donnell was a pupil [at Mountshannon] from 1-4-85 to 30-06-87. For approximately two years, that is April 85 to March 87, his behaviour gave no cause for concern in the school. He presented no discipline problems to me or any of the staff. He took part in all school activities with interest — most especially in hurling where he showed some talent.

In fact, in June 1987 he helped the school win our section in the primary schools hurling championship by scoring two goals in the final. At school he also played football and took part in cross-country running. To the best of my recollection, he holds a bronze medal for the team competition in the Clare Schools Championship.

The one area where he differed from most pupils was that he seemed rather suspicious of everybody at school and I would say he found it difficult to place his trust in other people.

From about April 1987, until he left us the following June, he certainly gave us much cause for concern. He appeared to be suffering from anxiety or depression. He was often crying for no apparent reason. He suffered from pains in his stomach, which, since medical people could not find anything wrong with him, would seem to have been psychological in nature. In any event he began not turning up in school and disappeared from home for periods.

His attendance at school improved somewhat when, by arrangement with his father, he returned to school on a regular basis until his confirmation was over. After that, while regular

attendance ceased, he came when hurling was involved...

... Initially, he told me that the reason he couldn’t stop crying was that his father was not bringing the family on a visit to England around Easter 1987 to see his younger brother. Brendan always gave the impression of being attached to him. I suspect, however, that this alone was not the cause of his upset.

It is my opinion that Brendan felt a very deep sense of loss when his mother died, and the void left by her death has never been filled. I feel Brendan needs professional help but I feel equally importantly that he needs the comfort of a loving and caring family environment to help him recover something from a shattered childhood. What he certainly does not need is incarceration

in an institution.

Jim Collins’s letter contains the main reasons given to the court in support of foster care with me rather than returning to Trinity House.

I travelled to Carlow, which is almost on the other side of Ireland from where we live. My wife and Fr McNamara were with me. Brendan travelled with his cousin, Josephine O’Brien, and her husband, Tony O’Brien. He was too frightened to travel in my car as he was afraid it would be recognised by the guards.

We had not been bothered by the guards since it had become known that there was a court date, but Brendan continued to be afraid of them. Moreover, I did not want him in the same car with the priest. The Killaloe superintendent, Con McCarthy, also came to court.

The court session lasted about one hour. Our barrister talked to the judge and told him about the letters. Then, I gave my account of what I knew, and Dermot told the court about the job in Shannon.

The judge granted the request for foster care, put Brendan on probation instead of sending him back to Trinity House, and ordered him to appear in court in Nenagh, County Tipperary, at the Michaelmas session in September 1989.

When we came out to the yard after court, I had a talk with Superintendent McCarthy. I told him what I had heard about the abuse at Trinity House and Clonmel. He promised to send an officer to my house to start an investigation.

I was pleased with the outcome of the court but I was disappointed that the judge didn’t give an order for counselling or any kind of mental health care. I was hoping that Joe Carney would be appointed to counsel Brendan and that, if necessary, he would be hospitalised for a while.

We all went to a hotel in Carlow for a meal before heading back home. I was concerned when I saw Fr McNamara arrange to sit next to Brendan. After we had almost finished eating, I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw the priest again put his hand on Brendan’s inner thigh.

I got Brendan’s attention and signalled to him to move away from the priest. Before he could move, however, Fr McNamara asked him to go for a walk with him around the town of Carlow. I stayed close behind them, watching to make sure that nothing more would happen. It was a nightmare to be keeping an eye on the priest all of the time, while, at the same time, trying to help Brendan deal with his fear of the guards. I had previously informed the guards in Killaloe about the complaints against Trinity House and the beatings in Clonmel. Superintendent McCarthy acted immediately though, and, very soon after I talked to him, a detective was sent to investigate.

After several hours of questioning Brendan, the detective talked to Mary and me and told us he had no doubt about the truth of Brendan’s story. However, he phoned me four to six weeks later and told me that the case could not be proven and would have to be dropped. I was later told by an administrator at Trinity House that the staff member had resigned.

Brendan remained very nervous, and was especially so whenever he saw a garda car. I now had to worry about coming up with the rest of the money for the solicitor, which I managed to doin the following few days.

Ihadn’t been making much money on the farm, or doing extra work for additional money, because of all the time I had been spending on Brendan and the court case. I had to begin hoping that

the cows that hadn’t calved yet would all have twins and that help would come from somewhere. But the cows didn’t have twins and I had to work for the help.

I was, however, hoping that everything would now settle down. In the days after court, we relaxed more, and Brendan went shopping with my wife. She bought him a knitted pullover with a rope design which he really liked. One day, he came home and told me he had met a guard who didn’t stop him and question him. I told him that he had nothing to fear from the guards any more.

After some time, he seemed happy. But sometimes, when I thought I had reassured him, he would ask me again if I thought they would come after him again. It drove me crazy trying to explain to him that he was safe. The other thing that drove everybody in the house crazy was his cleanliness. He never drank a cup of tea without checking the cup to see if it was clean. He would wash the cups before drinking from them. One day, my son, Brendan, got angry with him and rubbed a slice of bread on the kitchen floor and then ate it. He told Brendan to watch how it wouldn’t kill him.

Brendan bonded very well with my wife. He would sit in the kitchen and talk to Mary for long hours while she was doing the household chores. He would frequently make tea for her and, when she was bed-ridden with her back, he would bring tea to her before she got up in the morning.

He learned how to drive the tractor, and this caused some jealousy between him and my two older children, Brendan and Kevin. My two younger sons were too young to drive, or I earn to drive, so they were not as bothered by him. When there was work to be done, Brendan O’Donnell would try to avoid it.

In the morning time, the cows would have to be brought into the shed to be milked at about 7.30 or 8.00. One of my sons would be expected to get up early and bring in the cows. Brendan never wanted to get up, and by the time he did get up, someone else would have brought them in. He was unwilling to do any work. This was resented by my sons, even by the younger ones.

There was a German who came to the village every year for about twenty years. His name was Hans Mollidor, and he was a good friend of mine. When he came to the village, I would spend a lot of time fishing with him on the lake. He died a few years ago.

Hans was a very kind man and liked hiring the children to do work around his house. He would pay them ten pounds a day for their work, even though the children would spend more time playing, fishing and eating, than they did working.

The work consisted mostly of collecting dead branches from around his house and burning them. This meant making big fires which the children loved. For the children, his visits were like a holiday. At the end of the day, Hans would line up the boys and give them their pay. He would have the money in his wallet and, when he gave them their pay, they could see that he carried a lot of cash. He had a very nice Mercedes and would often take the boys for drives.

Brendan started to work for him but would never eat any food at his house. He always came home early for his meals. Even though he worked shorter days, he still got all of his pay. The food at Hans’s house consisted mostly of noodles and cheese. I had it many times and found it delicious. Hans would prepare the food and enjoy watching the children eat.

One evening, Brendan came to me and said that he wanted to buy a scrambler motor bike — an old one that would cost about five hundred pounds. I told him he had no money for the bike. He said that he would get a job and earn the money. I promised that if he saved a good deal of the money for the bike I would help him with the rest.

My oldest son had a scrambler bike, but it was completely broken and finished. My sons had had good fun with it on the farm though. I got Brendan a job at two pounds an hour working for Norbert Hau who lived in Cloonamerrin. Cloonamerrin is a townland not far from Mountshannon and about two miles from my home.

Brendan left the house at nine o’clock every morning and came home at about 2.20 p.m. A few times when I visited, I watched him working from Norbert Hau’s kitchen. He worked as if he had a bag of cement on his back. You really wouldn't see what he had done by the time evening came.

As the days went by, he was getting up later and later. As the money got less and less, the idea of the bike came to an end. I noticed that he was also coming home earlier and earlier in the afternoons. At the time, I believed he was just lazy and didn’t want to work.

Years later, Norbert told me that he was never able to get Brendan to eat anything from the time he arrived until the time he left. This meant that Brendan would eat breakfast, walk two miles

to Norbert Hau’s, work a few hours, and then walk back the two miles to my home without having eaten since breakfast.

The two miles back to my home are mostly uphill, especially the last mile. When I heard from Norbert that Brendan had not been eating, I realised how much stress he must have been under from his fear of germs in food, and how much he had to endure because of this fear.

Norbert later told me that Brendan had been caught entering a nearby house and stealing apples and bananas. It seems that he did not have the same fear of germs in fruit. I now realise that he was trying to hide his unusual fear from everyone.

There were so many incidents with Brendan throughout the summer of 1989, it would be impossible to tell them all. He wanted a lot of attention from me. He talked a lot about guns — Russian guns, American guns — almost always about army guns. I would try to change the subject but was never very successful.

One day, I took down one of my guns — a three-shot semi-automatic — and said to Brendan, ‘Come on, let’s see what a good shot you are.’ He told me to take it away, saying that he had got into enough trouble over guns. I knew that he did not really want me to take it away.

I had some idea of why he had been institutionalised but I did not know all the details. Later, my brother, JJ, interviewed a number of people, including Brendan, about what had happened.

According to Ann Marie O’Donnell, at the end of 1987, when her brother was thirteen, he was passing a workman who was laying a cement footpath. The cement had been laid already, but was still wet, and the workman was standing near to a pile of sand. When Brendan walked by, he kicked sand onto the wet concrete with his foot. An argument followed, in the course of which Brendan kicked more sand onto the concrete. As Brendan was kicking the sand, the workman put a shovel in front of his leg, causing Brendan to hit the shovel with his shin.

Brendan’s injury may have been caused by a combination of the man swinging the shovel and Brendan kicking. Ann Marie maintained that Brendan had kicked the sand to annoy the workman, whereas Brendan’s account, as related to JJ, was that the workman had deliberately hit him with the shovel and that he was innocent of any wrongdoing.

In any event, Brendan was enraged and threw rocks into the workman’s yard. He later left his house and went to the home of a man named Denis Tuohy from whom he stole a gun and some cartridges. On his way back to his home with the gun, he met an elderly man, Michael Ames, whom he confronted, threatening to shoot him if he did not get down on his knees.

Brendan then proceeded home, firing a shot in the air and a shot in the direction of the workman’s house. The guards were called and Brendan was eventually arrested and sent to St Michael’s in Finglas, Dublin. He was later transferred to Clonmel in County Tipperary.

The incident represented the end of Brendan’s school career and the beginning of his institutional care. As JJ concluded, it was a major turning point in Brendan’s life. It set him on a dangerous, destructive course, and he seemed unable to change direction.

Brendan told JJ that during one of his assessments after his arrest, he found himself alone in the room, and walked behind the examiner’s desk to see what was being written about him. According to Brendan, the examiner had written that he was depressed.

JJ asked Brendan about his stay at the reform school in Clonmel. Brendan told him that he was beaten badly at this school, and he gave a detailed description of the strap which he said was used. He said that he was punched in the face many times. He ran away on a number of occasions and was eventually sent to Trinity House in Dublin.

At the time, I knew none of these details, but I put the gun away and was always careful that both the gun and ammunition were properly secured in different places. My son, Brendan, told me later that he remembered how Brendan would spend much of his time in school drawing pictures of guns. This was not long before he confronted the people in Whitegate and fired the shots.

My sister-in-law, Vera O’Sullivan, started a small business buying and selling young goslings. This business required that someone be available to answer phone calls from buyers. Brendan took over the task and performed it very well. He would sit on the couch with the phone and carefully write down all of the phone messages and orders. He was very exact about the job and I still have notes he took while performing it.

He talked a lot about keeping physically fit. He would say, ‘You have to keep fit in case you have to go on the run.’ He never seemed to get over the idea that he should always be ready to go on

the run, escape from someone, particularly the guards, or be ready to defend himself. He seemed to live with fear, whether fear of germs getting into his food or on his hands, or fear of the guards.

One day, when he was talking about being fit and ready to go on the run, I said to him, ‘Come on — let me see what a good runner you are.’ I was about forty-eight years old at the time. We lined up in a field, agreeing to run a race of about fifty yards. He got a shock when I was able to stay neck and neck with him.

When we finished in a tie, he looked at me and said, ‘Jaysus, you’re a tough fucker.’ He had a sense of humour about being beaten and didn’t talk too much after that about what a good runner he was!

I was away one day and before I left, I gave him, Kevin and my son Brendan, some work to do on the farm. Brendan O’Donnell wanted to drive the tractor all day and not do any of the rough work. My son Brendan finally got fed up and confronted him. They both got into a hard fist fight. It ended in a standoff with both of them agreeing to shake hands. I heard about the fight later and thought it a positive sign that they had made up like grown-ups.

Brendan was very wary of any kind of physical contact. You could never leave your hand on his shoulder. He would be inclined to cringe away from you. For example, I did a little judo when I was a young man in England. I tried to teach Brendan a few of the judo moves, but it was impossible to get close to him to teach him.

I sometimes lent the children the boat to go fishing on the lake. I would never send my youngest son, Ross, alone with him as he was small for his age. I always sent Gerard with Ross, as Gerard was big and strong for his age and would protect Ross. On JJ’s advice, I was not for taking too many chances.

Brendan sometimes would ask me to lend him Hans Mollidor’s cruiser. This boat had cost fourteen thousand pounds — second hand — and I was responsible for taking care of it. There was no way anybody was getting it. I took them out in it several times and let them all drive it. I believe I gave them all a good time. I used to tell them jokingly that my home was more like a holiday home.

My sons used to play hurling but Brendan never showed any interest. Before he was institutionalised he had been a remarkably good hurler and athlete. Now, he seemed unable to compete or even to join with my sons in any activity. Every chance he got, he would be in the kitchen talking to Mary.

By this time, Mary was having a lot of problems with her back, and she had to go into hospital for an operation. Before she went, Brendan took good care of her and was really worried about her. He used to make tea and toast for her. He told me a lot about his own mother and the way that she had died. He said that she had taken her own life.

Apparently Brendan’s mother had died in hospital when she was having her womb removed. He said that he never believed that though. According to Brendan, she must have got hold of tablets from the nurses’ tray, saved them up, and taken them all at one time.

Regarding the mother’s suicide attempts, JJ would later interview both Brendan and his sister, Ann Marie. According to the latter, there were numerous suicide attempts.

At the age of sixteen, Brendan gave JJ a surprisingly detailed account of a suicide attempt that had occurred when he was between three and four years of age. He said that he had seen his mother trying to get out of bed in a dazed state. She had fallen to the floor, hitting her face on a locker beside the bed, and her nose was bleeding as she hit the floor. Brendan said that his mother was unable to get up from the floor, which was now covered with blood. He went for help.

The mother was taken shortly afterwards to a hospital in Ennis, County Clare, where she remained for several months. The children reported hearing later that their mother had attempted to kill herself by taking all of her medicine and drinking a half bottle of whiskey.

This is probably the suicide attempt referred to by Doctor Ledwith when he testified at Brendan’s trial.

Margaret O’Donnell died in a hospital on 28 January 1984 when Brendan was almost ten years old, Anne Marie was about thirteen and a half, and the youngest child was seventeen months old. Brendan’s older brother was eleven at the time. The cause of death was reportedly a blood clot that broke loose from Margaret’s leg and went to her lungs when she was recovering from surgery.

Initially Brendan believed that his mother was not dead and that it was somebody else’s body in the morgue. During the actual burial, he tried to jump into the grave to save her, saying that she

was alive and would be smothered by the clay that was being shovelled onto her coffin.

At the end of May, my wife, Mary, went into hospital and I believe that Brendan was lost without her. I tried to take the children to visit her as often as I could. It was a round trip of about a hundred and ten miles from my home to the hospital, and I was driving to visit her with some of the children three or four times a week. This meant I was away from home a lot. Brendan had less time with either myself or Mary.

During all this time, I had only one visit from a probation officer. I got no help from any other source. To keep a child in detention costs about five hundred pounds per week, yet the State gives

no help when you take a child into your home. Brendan received no counselling or any other kind of mental health care.