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#HernameisClodagh
When the story of what occurred on 29th August 2016 in Ballyjamesduff, the media, the church and the community showed a skewed media coverage and outpouring of support for saintlike family man Alan Haugh who had a moment a madness, a psychotic episode, that led to Ireland’s largest family murder suicide. This is the story of the people that should have been talked about, mourned, remembered and honoured: Clodagh, Liam, Niall and Ryan, told by Clodagh’s sister, Jacqueline.
Clodagh’s family weren’t strangers to tragedy, pain or suffering before this fatal night. Jacqueline speaks of her brother’s and husband’s suicide in recent years and how this final tragedy put the proverbial nail in the coffin for the family. There was a deadly silence, no callers or visitors, people didn’t know what to say or act around them. They became pariahs isolated in their suffering. Jacqueline remembered the poignant words Clodagh said to her before she was murdered: “We shouldn’t be defined what happens to us”, so Jacqueline made it her mission to fight for justice, answers and change in legislation.
She explores the momentary insanity that led to them burying her family with their murderer and how they paid the price undoing this foolish mistake and how they asked for funds for Pieta House instead of Women’s Aid and the regret they had feeding into this false narrative of a depressed man who snapped, but they weren’t to know. They weren’t privy to knowledge left in the suicide note/murder letter, (as it was evidence needed for the inquest.) They were rushed into this funeral by a priest who refused to share valuable knowledge to the investigation citing confessional privilege instead of helping a grieving family find their answers and an inquest that doesn’t apply the same rigour because the murderer and victims were dead.
This was a heartbreaking read/listen full of tragedy and reality of the country we live in, the Church that keeps the secrets , the Gardai that do a half arsed investigation and the inheritance laws that shockingly left all Clodagh’s property to her murderer due to the Succession Act 1965.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Suicide, Violence, Murder