Chapter 6: Probation Revoked

Tony Muggivan

told JJ about my conversation with the administrator at Trinity House. I also told him about how I was always confused at Brendan’s unusual habit of laughing and giggling at things that

weren’t funny. The following is a report JJ sent to me after I talked to him.

On 12/18/1989 [18 December 1989], ten months after Brendan O’Donnell arrived at the Muggivan home, and after he had his probation revoked . .. I told my brother by letter that he had

signs of serious emotional disturbance. I told him that the reported history of violence was most important in understanding him.

I advised Tony that care should be taken that he be guarded from endangering himself or others and I told him that the reported history of sexual and physical abuse placed him at high risk of becoming an abuser himself. I suggested that this may have already begun to occur. I said the most likely candidates for suicide attempts are the offspring of parents who have committed suicide or made suicide attempts.

I responded to the reports of killing animals and suggested that this was a very serious indicator of problems. I advised Tony not to leave Brendan around children, unsupervised, until he had been cleared by a qualified mental-health professional. I recommended that the best treatment plan for Brendan would be institutional care. I proposed that Brendan not be released until he no longer needed external controls to manage his anger, impulsiveness, and potential for violence.

I advised that Brendan’s depression be addressed and that he not be released until this was done and until he had developed clear life goals being actively pursued in a realistic way. I advised that Brendan not be released until he had demonstrated being able to leave institutional care into someone’s supervision to whom he would be responsible for a fairly long period of time. I warned Tony that I was not for taking any chances until there would be clear signs that Brendan would be unlikely to harm himself or others.

I sent my brother material from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM-III-R) of the American Psychiatric Association (APA), and advised him not to share the material with Brendan since he was capable of using it for manipulation purposes rather than for therapeutic purposes. The material I sent included the diagnoses for Conduct Disorder, Under-socialized, Aggressive, and Major Depressive Disorder. It was clear at the time that Brendan was suffering from, at least, both of these disorders as described in DSM-III-R. (JJ Muggivan)

Ilasked an administrator at Trinity House why Brendan had a bandage on his left wrist. His said that Brendan had cut his wrist, in the administrator’s presence, after getting upset.

We talked for some time. He told me that he had never wanted to take Brendan into Trinity House in the first place as he was too young for that detention centre.

He was allowed out on weekend passes in 1990, but he would run away. Once, he went to his father’s house, when he should have been back in Trinity House. The Killaloe guards phoned me to go with them to talk to him. They were afraid he would set fire to his father’s house or injure himself.

When we got there, he was gone. Before we left, his stepmother came home and she complained to the senior officer, saying that she had a young child and was concerned for his safety. Everyone was afraid.

Brendan would always phone and tell me he was tired of running and wanted to go back. I would arrange for him to be picked up as he never wanted the guards to take him. When I pushed him to tell me why, he laughed and told me that they could do what they liked with you when they got you in. He said that if he got a chance, he would do a guard in.

I heard that he was mistreated by a guard in Galway and, from what I heard — from others as well as Brendan — I have no reason to doubt what he told me. Because of one guard’s actions, another could have been shot.

After the last time Brendan ran away while on a weekend pass, I heard that he had been sent to Spike Island in Cork. This is an island in Cork harbour which has a prison for adults.

In the nineteenth century, when Ireland was under British rule, Spike Island was home to a barracks for British soldiers. However, with the treaty of 1921, which concluded the 1916-21 war for Irish independence, the island was transferred over to the new Irish Government. The buildings were transformed into a prison.

Not long after Brendan’s arrival there, some inmates put drugs in his drink, causing him to fall asleep. They then burned his feet in boiling water.

After this incident, he made the most serious attempt on his own life. He had an inmate cut his wrist to the bone while he held a rag in his mouth to keep himself from screaming. He was found and taken to a doctor before he could bleed to death.

I heard that, a short time later, he was transferred to St Vincent’s Hospital in Dublin. When his wrist was cut, the tendons were also cut. The injury required extensive surgery to repair both the wound and the tendons.

While at St Vincent’s Hospital, Brendan tried to rip out the stitches from his wrist. He was placed on continual suicide watch. When he was considered safe to move, he was transferred to Dundrum Mental Hospital — a hospital for the criminally insane. At this time, he was just over sixteen years of age.

Between his stay at St Vincent’s and his transfer to Dundrum, I believe he spent some time in Wheatfield Prison. I remember driving to Dublin to see him with my sister-in-law, Josephine O’Brien, and being told that he had been moved.

We stopped in Kildare on our way to Dublin and Josephine brought some clothes for him. When we arrived at Wheatfield Prison, we were made to wait several hours before being told that he was not there but was in the city. We left the clothes for him and drove home to Mountshannon.

Brendan later told me that he was in hospital at the time because he had been beaten up by an inmate.

When my brother, JJ, came over on holidays in the summer of 1990, I brought him to Dundrum. Previously, Kevin Brennan, who was on the staff at Trinity House, had asked me to try to get background family information on Brendan, as no one in Dublin seemed to know anything about his early life.

I called JJ and he advised me to call Joe Carney to do a social history and send it to Kevin Brennan.

I felt bad about having bothered Joe Carney so much over the previous year, and having taken up so much of his time, so I decided to try to get as much history as I could myself. I talked to as many people as I could.

I had plenty of time to talk to his sister and grandmother because of driving to Dublin with them. They gave me a lot of information.

I wrote it all down and sent it to Kevin Brennan.

Since then, JJ has done a more detailed childhood history of Brendan, which he writes about in the following chapters.