A week rarely passes without news of another murder in the Republic. And for every victim, there is a shattered family who must live with the nightmare. Two women talk about their experiences of being bereaved by homicide

No mother ever expects to sit in a court room and hear how her son was murdered. No bride ever dreams that her husband will be violently killed one day. But every killing involves a family. With the Republic's homicide rate running at more than 50 a year, families all over the State are coming to terms with violent death.

Jean Reay feels her life has stood still since her husband Ned (46) was killed two years ago. The father-of-four died close to his home in Drogheda, Co Louth, on January 23rd, 2000. Peter McArdle was found guilty of his manslaughter in January and is serving an eight-year sentence.

The killing happened after words were exchanged between McArdle and Ned's son. McArdle followed the son home and kicked in the front door.

Hearing the noise, Ned got out of bed to investigate. "He never came home," Jean recalls. Ned was attacked and beaten with a wooden plank. He died from his injuries, in an ambulance on the way to Beaumont Hospital. He left four children behind, aged 17 to 22 years, and a 10-month-old grandchild.

Like every family, Jean never expected such violence to come to her door. "We were just a normal family. Ned was a civil servant, working in the local labour exchange. He never had as much as a parking ticket."

While she praises the Garda's handling of the case, she feels the courts system is skewed against the victims. "I don't know how the system works. It's all wrong, it's all the time in the culprit's favour."

The case did not come to court for two years and as the accused was let out on bail, Jean and her family faced the prospect of meeting him at any time.

She felt the family had no role in the case and she was just like any other member of the public in court. "He \ had access to everything, maps, photographs of my home. He had access to the book of evidence. We had access to nothing, absolutely nothing."

After the killing, a garda encouraged Jean to contact Victim Support. This was an invaluable help to her and resulted in a Victim Support volunteer accompanying her to court during the trial. When Jean found the hearing too distressing, she would leave the court and the volunteer kept her informed. "Only for her, I don't know what I would have done. My nerves were just shattered."

She is relieved the trial is over, but rejects any suggestion that life could ever return to normal. "We are existing, getting up out of bed because we have to get up, going to work because we have to. There's no meaning to life anymore. It's the first thing that hits you in the face every morning you get up out of bed."

Jean moved house in December because of the memories. "I tried, I really did try to live there for two years but I just couldn't stay any longer."

Now she is struggling to be both mother and father to her children. "It's heartbreaking looking at the kids. They miss their dad so much because he was a wonderful, wonderful father. Each day I look at them I know they are just pining away for him."

Jean thinks she has aged dramatically since the killing. "When I look at photographs taken prior to Ned's death, I feel I hadn't a wrinkle. Now I have the map of the world on my face. That's sleepless nights, worry, stress, the whole lot."

Trying to help, people tell her to pick up the life she had before she met Ned. "But I was only 16 when I met Ned. I don't have a life before Ned. He was my life."

IN a cruel twist of fate, Eileen Thompson buried her father on the day her 20-year-old son was killed. On January 26th, 1999, Liam Thompson was murdered on Dolphin's Road, Dublin. After Eileen's father was buried, the funeral party had gone back to a pub in Rialto, as many of her father's older friends lived there.

At one stage, she recalls Liam turning to her and asking her if she was afraid of death. "He said to me, mam, I'm not a bit afraid of dying. And I said, Liam, don't be talking like that."

Eileen left the group later that evening while Liam stayed on with his uncles and a family friend. In another strange occurrence, she got a telephone call from Liam at about 9.30 p.m. "He said, mam, I really love you and I want you to know that. Tell little bro\ I love him too."

"Looking back, it was unreal," Eileen says. "I really truly believe that he knew."

A few hours after the phone-call, Eileen heard a banging at her door and the nightmare began. She was rushed to St James's Hospital where she was told her son was dead. "It was like he was asleep but there were marks on his face. I remember looking at him thinking: this is not true, not true, not true."

She later learned that Liam was stabbed to death on his way home from the pub. He and Eileen's brother had been set upon by three men. They had been involved in an argument with Liam and his uncles earlier in the night. It later emerged that one man had returned to a house to get a kitchen knife before the murder.

Gerald Dunne (sometimes known as Gerard) was found guilty of murdering Liam Thompson and received a life sentence. Stephen McNeil was found guilty of manslaughter and is serving eight years, while Joseph Wade was sentenced to 18 months for violent disorder.Even now, Eileen cannot allow herself to think about it too deeply. "If I think about it, I'm afraid I'll lose my mind completely. Liam's in every vein in my body, every thought that goes through my head. It's like there's this big barrier around my heart and don't try to get through the barrier because you'll go mad."

Eileen found the court process "horrendous".

She and members of her family had to queue each morning to get a seat in the court. They were jostled by families of the defendants and every time Dunne was led past her, her body involuntarily shook.

She was very distressed to find herself alone in toilets with relatives of the accused during the hearing.

Eileen watched the accused talk and laugh with gardaí and felt that they should have more sensitivity when escorting defendants in a murder trial.

She says she was terrified to shed a tear in case she was accused of trying to sway the jury. The heavy police presence was very intimidating. "It seemed like he had all the control and we had none. I felt like we were the guilty ones."

Almost a year has passed since the trial, but she feels she is on a life sentence. "In a way it's doing time. I get up in the morning and I go to bed at night and all I've done is put in the time during the day."

Eileen returned to work for six months after the killing but couldn't cope with it. She was working with long-term unemployed clients but found she constantly had her hand on the panic button, fearful of being attacked. "I was like an actress with two faces, I was seeing clients but all the time I was screaming inside."

Neither Eileen nor Jean can look at juries or court houses on television since the deaths.

"There is no such thing as closure because at the end of the day these people are going to get out some day. Stand in my shoes for five seconds if you want to know about closure," Eileen says.

She still has unresolved issues about the case and has written 16 letters to Minister for Justice, John O'Donoghue, appealing for a meeting with him. It has not been granted.

She has contacted numerous politicians, but none of them will meet her.

"Unfortunately, the only time something will happen is when someone belonging to a politician is murdered. I challenge any member of the Government to meet with me. Hear what I, and people in a similar situation, are going through," Eileen says.

"There is no carefree laughter anymore. Murder has brought me to a dark, evil place, somewhere that I would have read about when I was a different person, before this happened. There is no way out of it. You can't leave this place because if you did, that would mean that it never happened."

A support group for the families of homicide victims meets once a month at Victim Support's office in Dublin. For more information, contact: 01-8780870.