IS MENTAL HEALTH AN EXCUSE TO KILL?
I think this photo, is very true when we think of the dividing opinions of Irish Society to the murders of Clodagh Hawes and her three children last week in Cavan. Never before have I seen the Country so divided over what would have been a murder case had the murderer Alan Hawes lived.
It was very obvious that many needed to see this case as a "mental health" issue, rather than a domestic violence issue.
For me it dragged up so much, some of it I can mention, some of it I wont, out of respect to the four victims, I couldnt help but identify with the children, having as an 11 year old child myself, witnessed my own mother stab my daughter to death, Noleen was stabbed 40 times, she died of one stab wound, the other 39 were needless savagery.
The night my mother murdered Noleen, she also tried to kill me too, three times, but I survived and I am here to remember that night, 4th April 1973, when as an 11 year old child I gave birth to another child with 5 adults in my family home, and two other men out in the garden, one of them a police officer waiting to help my parents clean up the scene.
So it was expected for me that I would identify with the little children who Alan Hawes murdered because my own mother tried to murder me and I witnessed a murder when I was a similar age to the three young children Alan Hawes murdered.
This case has caused me considerable anguish, for all sorts of reasons, and I cant help but wonder if my parents had of been apprehended by the police when they murdered my daughter, would the country excuse them too and put it down to "mental health"?
I am no expert, but looking back, and having discussed my parents with my own psychologists over the years, there is no doubt that both my parents had serious mental health issues, neither of them were "diagnosed" by a doctor.
But my psychologists have confirmed that they did suffer from mental health issues, however, my father worked his whole life, and never took a day off work, and when the police did begin to investigate them both, they were both capable of evading justice and putting a good fight up to ensure they didnt get convicted, they also protected other abusers and made sure they didnt face prosecution either so just how mentally ill were my parents?
And even if we knew how ill they were, would that excuse the many years they allowed their children to be sexually abused by others outside of our family, for payment, and the many years of abuse they put us through?
My mother knew that she had to pay her TV licence on time or she would be prosecuted, so she understood the law. Both of them knew to keep the abuse secret and to threaten us daily if we told, so they understood that abusing their own children was breaking the law.
Social services WERE involved in our family life, and visited my family home, I have records to show that, at least four of my siblings were under the care of the children's division of St John of God, and were seeing psychologists, and yet they didnt detect any mental illness in my parents, or any need to take us into care.
My parents were both cold and sadistic bastards, who knew what they were doing, and knew how to get away with what they were doing, to their dying day, they evaded justice, and died "innocent".
So is mental health an excuse to murder innocent children? NO, I dont believe it is.
I have suffered from mental health issues since the day my daughter was killed in front of me, I have been diagnosed with having severe depression, anxiety and PTSD, I have always engaged with my doctor and actively sought out help from all the helping services over the years and still do to this day.
I am on medication and in long term therapy, and I have reached places in my mind that it is nearly impossible to come back from.
Like other abuse victims I have suicide ideology.
But rather than end my life and take my whole family with me, I like the many other abuse victims who have contacted me over the years, have felt that my family would be better off without me.
I felt I was a burden to my family, that I was holding them back, that if I ended my life I would be freeing them up, or releasing them from having to live with me with my mental health issues.
And I know speaking to others over the years that is how they felt, when they suffer with depression and mental health, when they think of taking their lives too.
That they felt they were letting their families down, that we were failures in some ways and that if we were to end our lives we would be doing our family a service.
We never for one minute thought that our families couldn't live without us, like Alan Hawks did, we never for one minute thought that we had that right to decide, to play God.
We felt we were a burden to those we loved, because we couldnt shake off the depression, because we couldnt live a normal life, because we couldnt do what other normal families do. We felt we had failed those we loved, and we wanted them to go on and live a full life without us holding them back.
This is the first time I have ever spoken so openly about my mental health, or about others who contact me every day struggling to survive against all the odds.
I feel that it needs to be spoken about, that there are many of us out there struggling, with poverty, with depression, with mental illness, with loss, with poor housing, or homelessness, with being a single parent and with employment, or with debt.
And yet, in the wake of Alan Hawes, who didnt seem to have any money worries, or other such pressures, I cant help but feel that those of us, out there in the real world, living in the real day to day world of failure and debt and depression and darkness.
That our realities have been forgotten or almost over looked when the Country rushed to defend Alan Hawes and his actions by lumping him in the same category as those of us who suffer every single day, week after week, year after unbearable year.
Because it was people like us that you rushed to place Alan Hawes into the same category as so that gives me a right to respond even though I will no doubt be attacked for doing so.
And yet, its not hard to compare myself to Alan Hawes, to ask myself "could I have reached the places he did in his mind that led up to him doing what he did" and the answer is no, plain and simple no.
I dont care how bad it got for me, I dont care where I go to in my mind, how far down, it would never ever occur to me to take the life of another, or others, that I love.
No doubt some of you will slam me for this post, I will be attacked or accused of all sorts, but I know pain, and I know struggle, I know darkness and despair. And I know what its like to see someone you love being wiped out in front of you, I know how long it takes for that someone to actually die.
I know what its like to have your own parent try to end your life too, three times in one night, and to have to live with that parent knowing they tried to kill you.
I know mental health, I lived with two people who had serious mental health problems and I know suicide, thoughts of suicide are my frequent companion, and three of my siblings ended their lives but took no one with them having battled for years with their own mental health issues.
Alan Hawes would have had all the services available to him in his area being a vice principal, he would have had ongoing support from his peers and he would have had a vast knowledge of what services he could have accessed.
Unlike thousands of us, he also had the money to pay for private care if he felt he needed it, do I believe he snapped? No, I do not, do I believe he had a choice? Yes I do, do I believe he should be pited or excused or forgiven? NO, I do not.
I make the choice every day to live, against all the odds, against all the blackness and despair, against all the injustice, I choose to live, when for me it would be so easy to die, so very easy.
I speak to people all the time that also choose to live, when for them dying would be so easy, its harder to live when your in my shoes, than it is to die.
Alan Hawes had choices too.
This post is for all of those people out there who like me, live with suicidal thoughts every single day, who struggle to stay alive every single day, and who like me are insulted to be placed in the same category as a man who murdered his wife and innocent children and has been excused because he "must have mental health issues".
