Chapter 8: After His Mother’s Death

JJ Muggivan

After her mother’s death, Ann Marie returned to Whitegate to live with her father and two of her brothers. The youngest brother, who was seventeen months old when his mother died, was taken to England to be raised by an aunt. Brendan continued to attend school in Whitegate. For some time after his mother’s death, Brendan was found several times at her grave. He would either ride his bicycle or walk the two miles from his home in Whitegate to Clonrush graveyard. Now that Ann Marie had moved back to Whitegate, she had an opportunity to get to know her brother well. She had been separated from him for about seven years and knew him only from visits back and forth between Whitegate and Eyrecourt. Shortly after his mother died, Brendan began to believe that she had managed to find enough medicine in the hospital to kill herself. He developed the theory that his mother would steal medicine from the nurse’s tray as the nurse was taking the medicine around to each patient. Eventually, according to his theory, his mother had enough medicine to kill herself from an overdose, and that she did. Brendan repeated this theory to me in my interview with him at Dundrum in 1989. Ann Marie noticed the continuing grief in Brendan over his mother’s death. She noticed that when something went wrong, he would go to her grave and lie on it, sometimes into the night. She also noticed some strange behaviours she had not previously seen. For a lengthy period of time, Brendan had been asking her to save old bread and bread crumbs for him. He explained that he had a pet fox out in the fields across from where they lived, and that he needed the bread to feed it. Ann Marie complied with his demands and would save the bread and bread crumbs for him. At intervals, Brendan would put the bread and crumbs in his pockets and leave the house to go to feed the fox. Ann Marie became curious about the pet fox and wondered about her brother’s relationship with it. She had trouble believing that a child could get close enough to a wild fox to make it into a

pet.

One day, she asked if she could go with him to feed the fox. He brought her with him. When they arrived at the place where he had reported having the pet fox, Brendan got down on his knees and began calling to the fox to come out of the bushes. He took the bread out of his pocket and placed it on the ground in front of him.

After a while calling, he said to Ann Marie, ‘Isn’t he a lovely fox?’

Ann Marie responded, ‘I can’t see a fox at all’, and recalled that ‘there was never a fox around anywhere’. It was clear to her, however, that the fox was very real to her brother.

Brendan got upset when his sister was unable to see the fox but he finally accepted that, indeed, she could not see it. He then asked her not to tell his friends that she had not seen his fox as they might believe what she said rather than what he was saying. Ann Marie told him she would not tell his friends anything about the fox.

She noticed many other unusual behaviours. One day, he was riding his bicycle by the post office in Whitegate and got a bad fall. He broke his leg in two places. When people came to give him assistance, he showed no signs of pain or distress.

Instead, he was laughing. His leg was put in a cast and he was advised to be careful until the leg was ready for the cast to be taken off. He ignored the warnings and rode his bike regularly until the cast was eventually removed.

The year following his mother’s death, Brendan was transferred from Whitegate school to Mountshannon school. He attended Mountshannon school from 4 April 1985 to 30 June 1987, riding his bicycle the three to four miles from his home to the school, together with his older brother, David. The principal of Mountshannon school was Jim Collins and he gave evidence at Brendan’s trial to the effect that Brendan was ‘the most disturbed child I would have had’.

Jim Collins told the court that when Brendan first arrived at the school he was a quite polite child and showed no signs of behavioural problems. It was clear to him though that Brendan had taken his mother’s death badly. He did not make close friends and seemed to rely on his brother a lot. He also seemed to be quite suspicious of everyone and watched the teachers closely while they were supervising play-time.

Brendan was behind the rest of his class with his school work, and the principal said in court that he would have considered him to be a suitable candidate for remedial work.

Jim Collins recalled that around March and April 1987, Brendan began to be absent from school, sometimes not turning up at all, and on two occasions arriving only to disappear before school started. On the first of these occasions, the principal had eventually found his pupil after a search, and had persuaded him to return to the school, but Brendan had refused to go into the building. He had agreed to work in the school garden, however.

Shortly afterwards, an agreement was reached between the school and the O’Donnells that Brendan would continue to attend until his Confirmation in June 1987. He remained on after his Confirmation, in order to captain the school hurling team in the primary schools’ final. Brendan scored a number of goals, and the school won the final that year.

Jim Collins said in testimony that he believed his pupil had acquired reading and writing skills and could read a newspaper and write ordinary letters.

In the summer of 1990, Tony asked me to go with him to visit Brendan in the Central Mental Hospital in Dundrum in Dublin. At the time, I did not know about the opinions of Doctors Gerry O’Neill and Charles Smith. Dr Smith had seen Brendan in 1990 after his transfer from Spike Island to the Central Mental Hospital. Brendan had a mutilated left arm, and Dr Smith testified that selfinjuries such as Brendan’s were common among people with personality disorders.

I spoke to Brendan for twenty minutes, and later made a written record of our discussion. In the course of our conversation, Brendan told me that his father had never been able to show affection for him and was unable to engage with him in any kind of intimate or personal conversation. According to Brendan, when his father had paid a visit recently, their only discussion had been

about the weather.

In sharp contrast to what Brendan described as extreme emotional estrangement from his father was the relationship he told me had existed with his mother. He said that he had been very close to her, and I saw numerous signs that he had not fully mourned her loss. He told me of visits he had made to her grave since her death, and I could see clear signs of unresolved grief questions, particularly the perception that his mother was a tragic figure, unloved and uncared for by her husband.

When Brendan and I discussed his attempted suicide, it was clear that he had intended it to result in death. From my professional knowledge and experience, I could see that it had been a classic adolescent attempt with typical features. Brendan did not see himself as having control over his body, his mind or his life. As a result, he seemed to be fed with an angry desire to end what he believed was controlled and owned by others. Imagined satisfaction was available to him by the belief that he could at least control his death and thereby arouse a sense of grief in those to whom he wished to be close.

As Brendan had still not reconciled his conflicted feelings over the death of his mother and his inability to communicate with his father, and as he had not increased personal control over his own decision-making power concerning his destiny, I felt it was distinctly possible that he would attempt suicide again.

I also saw a possibility that his anger, frustration and other pent-up feelings might result in anti-social behaviour if they were not addressed in appropriate psychotherapy.

It seemed to me to be important that Brendan be given the opportunity to participate in a reasonably normal adolescent environment. He told me that the jacket he was wearing belonged to a young man with whom he had developed a friendship. This man had, reportedly, been incarcerated for killing a number of people in a fit of rage. In this environment of adults, who were clearly not models for social growth and development, Brendan was easy, vulnerable prey to the needs of those around him.

My overall impression was that Brendan was in an extremely confused emotional state and highly susceptible to influence from any adult. Because of his failure to form a strong attachment with an authority or father figure, it seemed likely that he would form relationships which would support his anger towards such figures. Deprived as he was of opportunities to socialise with peers of the opposite sex, he would not be able to form a real relationship which might have aroused and nurtured more positive feelings.

I had heard the reports that Brendan had been sexually abused and felt that if these reports were true, they could be causing serious sexual confusion at that crucial stage in his development.

Brendan’s prolonged depression and the absence of nurturing relationships had apparently given rise to the development of an aggressive conduct disorder which, it seemed to me, was likely to worsen without an appropriate treatment plan. I felt that Brendan would have benefited from such a plan. He came across as intelligent, very verbal and articulate, and he was capable of a good deal of insight when engaged in a relaxing conversation. I could see that he was highly manipulative in his relationships, but my overall impressions were that his manipulative tactics were fairly obvious, easy to identify, and could have been readily bypassed or confronted in therapy.

Brendan was due to be released the following March, at which time he would, in effect be asked to assume control. I believed that he needed treatment prior to that release and that the process

of his taking control over his life needed to be initiated immediately.

Following our visit with Brendan in the Central Mental Hospital, Tony and I had a conversation with Superintendent Con McCarthy outside Scariff garda station. The superintendent’s concern at the time was that nothing was being done for Brendan while he was in prison, and that, consequently, he was likely to come out worse than when he had gone in. Con McCarthy said that he was having nightmares that Brendan would, later on, go into the home of some old person who might be living alone and kill them. People who live in the country are uniquely vulnerable to criminal activity. It could be days before a crime against someone living alone might be discovered.

The superintendent couldn’t understand how people who were not trained in psychology could see the problem before them, yet the professionals did not seem to be doing anything. I said I would write a report of my assessment of Brendan and send it to Dundrum. This was done, and my assessment, dated 17 October 1990, was sent off, but nothing came of it. Iremember my brother saying that they were taking good care of Brendan’s hand, which had been badly damaged by the suicide attempt in Spike Island. I said that repairing his hand without mental-health care

would only enable him to handle a gun better.

When I did my assessment, I did not know that Doctors Charles Smith and Gerry O’Neill had already done a number of assessments over a period of two years.

Dr Smith gave evidence during the trial that Brendan was a very immature boy who was highly vulnerable to his older and more seriously delinquent companions. He said that it might not have been possible for the staff at Trinity House to have helped Brendan sufficiently because of the nature of his problems and the damage already done. However, he had hoped that, on his release, Brendan might have been persuaded to go to a residential family-type centre. In the event, Brendan did not serve his full sentence and they did not have enough time to persuade him to do

this.