5th May 2018
When I was a young girl, I accidentally came across private correspondence belonging to my mother that referred to my estranged father’s relationship with Ann Lovett, along with a description of her death in 1984, two years before I was born. I knew nothing about my father when I was growing up. My mother left him when I was a baby and I knew not to ask questions about him. I was an only child and there was nobody I could talk to about what I had found. From then on, if I saw Ann’s name printed in a newspaper, my heart raced and my palms would sweat. I was overwhelmed with guilt, sadness and a profound shame.
As a teenager, I continued to assume the absolute worst about my father. All I knew was Ann's age and her death so speculation took over. The anger and shame I felt turned in on myself and I began to believe that I was corrupted and worthless and that I would grow up to have an inherent ‘badness’ inside of me. I hurt myself in secret and came close to ending my life on more than one occasion. As a young adult, when the internet became more accessible to me, I spent years secretly researching Ann’s death by combing through historical news articles, message boards, blogs, journals and documentaries, gathering scraps of information to try to piece together what happened in Granard before and after Ann died in the hope of uncovering what my father’s role in all of this had been. The more I read, the more I became convinced of some manner of a cover-up, facilitated by what I assumed were parochial, incompetent Gardaí. I saw references to the three separate inquiries carried out after Ann’s death and couldn’t understand why, in spite of these, there were still few solid facts to be found. I struggled with the weight of knowing who Ann’s baby’s father might be but was paralysed by it. I was unable to process or suppress the contemplation of the senseless loss of Ann’s life, the tragic, lonely stillbirth of what might have been my half-brother, the suffocating atmosphere of the town closing ranks, the silence.
When I reached my twenties, I made contact with my father for the first time and was trying to work up the nerve to put questions to him about Ann, in person. This was a highly charged time. I was a young mother on lithium treatment for bipolar disorder and I fell to pieces after a few text message exchanges. I backed off, breaking off all contact. I couldn’t hold it together and felt like I was shattering in all directions. I felt duty-bound to the citizens of Ireland to exhume a side of the Granard narrative that was still ‘unseen’ - a patriarchal network that, as I saw it at the time, helped my father leave town, free to start a new life, with everything quietened, smoothed over. At that fragile point in my life, I just wasn’t mentally or emotionally strong enough to take on meeting my father for the first time, coupled with the responsibility that came with potentially having just one shot at interrogating him about this intense history. I wish I had known the darker and more sinister layers to this terrible story back then.
The silence surrounding this horrific tragedy has been an enormous burden on so many people. Three lives ended in a state of unthinkable desperation, and the trauma that stayed with those who cared about Ann and Patricia fueled endless cycles of depression, alcoholism, self-harm, violence, self-destructive behaviour and sadly, suicides. Remains and after-effects of this trauma have embedded themselves into the generation that followed Ann’s and my father’s. I have not yet begun to find a way to rid myself of this unshakable sadness, this internal rage in all directions. I am sure there are other young people my age connected to those in Granard who feel the same. I feel so strongly about this closing quote from my father: “What kind of signal is it that we are sending out to our children, that it is OK to brush things away under the carpet and remain silent for decades?”
I would like *everyone* to read my father’s interview in the Irish Times today. I hope people feel angry that a vulnerable minor was manipulated, intimidated and silenced this way by the church. Look at the spineless way they’ve responded. I am so proud of him for having the courage to come forward like this. It can’t have been easy. So many lives were ruined because of the way this was handled back in 1984. I can’t even begin to go into it. All I ever wanted to see was accountability. To pull back the curtain on whatever parochial collusion went on at that time. I want people to also remember these sickening quotes from editorials, letters, and sermons after Ann died.
Eugene McGee’s front page editorial, “Ann Lovett’s Decision” (Feb 1984)
“Who is to say Ann Lovett did not die happy? Who is to say she has not fulfilled her role in life as God decreed?”
Canon Gilfillan sermon at Sunday Mass (Feb 1984):
“The secret of what happened is with that little girl in the grave,” he said. “What happened should have been left to the town to deal with in its own way. My firm belief is what happened should not have been covered by RTÉ or the newspapers: it should have been kept parochial, local. They gave us loud-mouthed publicity of the worst kind, but God is good and able to triumph over evil reporting.”
The Catholic Archdiocese of Armagh in a letter to the poet Christopher Daybell (Feb 1984):
“I think her sad death reflects more on her immaturity than on any lack of Christian charity amongst the family and people with whom she lived.”
I recently read Han Kang’s beautiful ‘The White Book’ and wept at her articulation of the existential weight she carried while grieving the death of her older sister who lived only a few hours after a premature birth. Her words mirrored the feelings I had pushed down within myself across the years. “If you had lived beyond those first few hours, I would not be living now. My life means yours is impossible. Only in the gap between darkness and light, only in that blue-tinged breach, do we manage to make out each other’s faces.” I think of Ann all the time. In the weeks leading up to this piece, my father told me that my middle name ‘Ann’ was given to me after her. I had always silently wondered about that name when I looked at my passport.
In 2014, I visited Granard on her 30th anniversary and recorded the sounds of the place where she gave birth alone and scared in the cold and the rain at 15 years old, where her baby Pat died stillborn and asphyxiated, where Ann’s body went into irreversible shock, where she knew she was going to die. I sat there and listened to the crows in the fir trees that surround the grotto, a dog crying in the background, the church bells, the quiet. It was heartbreaking. I would like to make this small recording available for the first time and will donate any download proceeds towards the Together For Yes campaign.
Sorry this is long and sprawling. I never thought this day would come, when I would finally feel like I wasn’t holding all of this in. I never imagined that it would have worked out like this. I want to thank Rosita Boland for her important reporting on this story and for her kindness and sensitivity over the past few weeks. She showed such care and dedication to the people involved in this story and my father and I are grateful to have a chance to start our lives over. I look forward to meeting him for the first time very soon. I’d also like to take this opportunity to say thank you to my husband Dave for his constant support. To Sinead Ring, Anthea McTiernan, Michael Fitzgerald, the McGaherns and the Murphys, thank you all for the kindness ye showed me when things were overwhelming. Thanks too to the small number of friends I felt able to confide in over the past twenty years. I wouldn’t be here without ye.
Ann and Patricia, ye deserved a better life than the one ye knew. We will never forget you. RIP Pat. xx