IN further evidence yesterday, Mr Brendan O'Donnell told the Central Criminal Court of his gradual involvement in crime and of hearing voices telling him to harm himself.
He had received a two year sentence at Waterford Court in July 1989, when he was 15 and was sent back to Trinity House where he was detained until April 1990. He could not recall seeing a doctor but alleged he was sexually abused there by a staff member and had reported this.
By the time he was 16, he was sleeping rough. In April 1990 he said he was convicted of burglary and larceny at Ennis District Court and sent to St Patrick's Institution for young offenders. He said he had received a hard time there from the other prisoners because he was from the country. He sought, and secured, a transfer to Spike Island prison in April 1990. After about six weeks he became very depressed thinking about his mother's death. "I wanted to die to be with her."
Mr O'Donnell said that he got another prisoner to cut his wrist with a razor. He stood in a half door toilet cubicle and put a towel in his mouth so he wouldn't be heard screaming. He put his hand over the door and the other prisoner cut his wrist through the muscles and sinews to the bone. "I watched him doing it", he said; "I didn't feel any pain."
He was later taken to Cork Regional Hospital, where his wound was stitched. He tried to bite the stitches out, but was given an injection and "knocked out". On the suggestion of his counsel, Mr Patrick MacEntee SC, Mr O'Donnell rolled up his sleeve and revealed a badly scarred wrist.
In an earlier incident, he said he was tied up by another prisoner and a bottle was melted on to his foot, as a result of which he had to have a skin graft. He showed his scarred foot to the court.
He said he was seen in the hospital by a psychiatrist and sent to the Central Mental Hospital in, Dundrum, where he stayed from June to September 1990. "I was upset I didn't succeed and die", he said.
While at Dundrum he became ill and was treated at St Vincent's Hospital for blood poisoning. He spent a month there and was then moved back to Dundrum.
In September 1990 he was transferred to Wheatfield prison in Clondalkin, Co Dublin. He was released in January 1991, when he went to Ballinasloe to live with his sister, Anne Marie, in a flat. Things did not work out and he went to stay with his grandmother for about a month. His uncle did not want him to be there and he went to live with Father Sean Nealon, then the curate of Eyrecourt, Co Galway, in Father Nealon's house and stayed there for three months.
"I got on very well with Father Nealon", he said. "He's a good friend of mine."
Father Nealon sent him to stay with friends of his in England. After going to Wolverhampton, where his aunt lived, he got into trouble when he snatched a handbag. He was sent to a bail hostel but absconded back to Ireland, where his father refused to allow him to stay in his house.
Mr Tony Muggivan, a distant relative into whose care he had previously been placed, gave him keys to a caravan, where he lived for a couple of months. This was in late 1991, Mr O'Donnell said.
In September 1992 he was living in a flat in Portumna in the same building as his sister, Anne Marie, who had a small baby. They got on well this time, he said, and she cooked him meals.
He said he had then started feeling depressed. A doctor in Portumna gave him medication, but he hadn't taken it. He would get drunk every night instead to stop himself being depressed.
In October that year he started hearing a young man's voice outside his head telling him he was fat and no good and only a criminal.
Mr O'Donnell said his sister started trying to poison him by putting poison in his milk and tablets in his dinner. "I said I was going to kill her", he said. "I picked up the kitchen knife and went to stab her in the chest."
Mr O'Donnell said he was taken by gardai to St Brigid's psychiatric hospital in Ballinasloe from where he was discharged on December 1st, 1992. After that he travelled around Ireland for a while. He stole money in Dingle and stole another £80 from a man whom he threatened with an axe.
Then he went to London and from there to Scotland.
While there he was arrested by police and it was found he was wanted in Wolverhampton for a handbag snatch. He was remanded to Brinsford young offenders' institution in Wolverhampton and then, in June 1993 to a prison in Warwickshire.
While in prison in 1993 he cut his right arm razor. "I heard a voice telling to cut myself open. It was devil's voice. It was evil".
Mr O'Donnell said that, apart from smoking "lots" of hash, was not a drug user.
He said that he went on hunger strike for two weeks while in Brinsford. "I wanted to die. I didn't want to eat", he said. He said the voice of a young man, which he had heard before, told him to go on hunger strike to die. He had come off the strike when he stopped hearing the voice.
The "devil's voice" had also told him to hang himself and he had made a towel rope, the court heard. He had no doubt about hearing those voices. He said he remembered seeing butterflies about a foot big coming out of the ceiling of his cell. He believed they were going to attack him.
Mr O'Donnell said that he was freed on licence from prison in England on March 25th, 1994. He went to Belfast after reaching agreement with the probation services that he could do so. He stayed there for a few days before returning Co Clare.
The trial continues today.