Many readers will have been moved by the testimony of Jacqueline Connolly, whose memoir, Deadly Silence, has been published this week. The book details the experience of losing her brother and husband to suicide, experiences that most people would find difficult to imagine bearing. It is also a clear-eyed account of the circumstances and aftermath of the murder of her sister Clodagh and three nephews, Liam, Niall and Ryan
Clodagh Hawe and her three sons were murdered in 2016 in Castlerahan, Co Cavan by Alan Hawe, Clodagh’s husband and the boys’ father, who subsequently took his own life. The story as recounted in the book raises troubling questions about coercive control, victims’ rights and social attitudes to familial murder-suicide.
A Serious Crime Review report into the initial investigation into the murder was finally completed by the Garda in 2023. The 800-page document has not been published but its findings and recommendations are “incorporated into senior investigative training”. This seems inadequate.
In Garda briefings on the report to Clodagh Hawe’s family, as described in Deadly Silence, they acknowledge flaws in the investigation’s handling of CCTV evidence and the manner in which key witness testimonies were collected. Digital evidence was also missed.
Just as unsatisfactory is the State’s failure to address the long-standing legal loophole surrounding inheritance rights in cases of familial killings. That became a matter of public debate following the killing of Celine Cawley by her husband Eamonn Lillis in Dublin 2008. Legislation proposing changes to the law was published in 2017, but was never progressed.
Irish society has also been slow to recognise the ways in which coercive control can be exercised, sometimes invisibly, in a family or relationship. The welcome introduction of legislation in 2019 criminalising such behaviour has hopefully raised awareness.
Murder-suicides, with all their attendant trauma, pose a particular challenge for the communities in which they occur as well as for law enforcement. Public reaction may seek to frame the crime in a way that diminishes the responsibility of the perpetrator. That was the experience of Jacqueline Connolly and her mother as they struggled to understand what had really happened to Clodagh and her sons. In their account, there is a lacuna in how the State deals with cases of this sort when there is no living person to prosecute for a crime.
None of the questions raised by this appalling tragedy would have come to light had it not been for the perseverance of Jacqueline Connolly. While her commitment and determination are to be admired, her search for the truth should never have been made so difficult.
