Margaret Trundle's 23-year-old son, Rory, was born as a brain-damaged baby and has been spasmodically violent as a teenager, but only against his mother. Neither his father nor the other members of his family have felt his wrath.
It is palpable that Mrs Trundle loves her son. Her problem is that she does not know what to do with him.
But where should she go to seek the help she believes must be available? Although she acknowledges that agencies like COPE in Cork have been a great help, she feels the fundamental questions concerning her son have neither been addressed nor answered.
In his rages, Rory has broken his mother's arm, caused her to have surgery to her hand and, more recently, taken her head, vice-like, in an arm lock while he pummelled her upper body. She broke free, luckily, and is of the opinion that by staying on her feet and struggling she saved her life. "I do believe that if I had been on the floor, he might have killed me," she said.
But this is not about a dark intruder who threatens and invades someone's privacy. This is about a loving mother and a loving son - a gentle son, when things are normal - who live under the same roof.
She described recently, very calmly, in the lobby of a Cork hotel, how she had had to lock herself into her bedroom in fear, coming down again after a full day only when other members of the family had returned home.
This mother's plea is not about finding an institution in which to lock her son away, as difficult and threatening as he may be. Rather, it is about finding other solutions, especially solutions that might allow her to keep him at home in a family environment with his brothers and sisters. While she has nothing but good to say about the agencies, such as COPE, who have helped out, the answers, she believes, have come up short.
Her son is a difficult case. She can tell, perhaps 30 minutes before an episode begins, that he is going to become violent. She knows it in his eyes and his face. Medicines have been prescribed; injections have been administered in the dire circumstances of the moment.
That's not what she wishes for her son. Mrs Trundle wants to know if there is a trigger that causes his violence. Is there someone somewhere who could advise her on this?
She thinks that out there in the world of medicine and science somebody must have the key. If she could unlock that closed door to which she has no entry at times, or even control it in a way that would make all the family happier, the quality of life for everyone would be better. That way, her son could remain at home in Midleton, where he wants to be, and she wants him to be.
She does not want him to be drugged up to the eyeballs and sent away. In a sense, that would be the easy solution. She fears that in modern medicine the preference will always be to use the available drugs to calm the anxious moments.
She is the driving force behind an organisation in east Cork, the East Cork Parents and Friends of the Mentally Handicapped, which has brought together a support group for families in similar circumstances. No fewer than 60 families are involved.