O'Donoghue Not Guilty of Murder

Forgiveness can't be obligatory
No one wants the O'Donoghues hounded, but people can withhold absolution from Wayne, says Eilis O'Hanlon


Sunday January 20 2008


HERE they come, the small army of legalistic nitpickers and pettifoggers, dancing around after Wayne O'Donoghue as he's released from the Midlands Prison after serving three minutes -- sorry, years -- for the manslaughter of schoolboy Robert Holohan, all clambering over one another in their race to insist that he has paid his debt to society and should therefore be given every indulgence and the benefit of every doubt as he settles down to his new life.


Where do they learn to talk like this? Is there some night class they attend at which every ounce of ordinary feeling is squeezed out of them, drop by drop, and gradually replaced with the desiccated dust of pedantry? Some brainwashing machine they're hooked up to which asset-strips their vocabulary of all those words and phrases which make communication on a human level possible, leaving language as nothing more than the cold tools of logical Law Society analysis? Paid his debt to society, indeed.

"Society" doesn't have anything to do with it. What we should be talking about here is a dead child and a devastated family. The State, in all its formal majesty, may be satisfied with whatever meagre penance was paid by O'Donoghue, but that doesn't mean those who beg to differ have to doff the cap in deference to our superiors and agree that all's now right with the world. We can still think the whole thing stinks. We can still think O'Donoghue got off lightly and that the memory of Robert Holohan has been horribly traduced.

Anger isn't always a bad thing. Retribution is a bad thing, but when the legal eagles and their media parrots deliberately conflate all feelings of anger at the workings of the law with some primitive thirst for bloody vengeance, they're pulling off the oldest rhetorical con trick in the book. They're shooting down arguments which have not even been made.

Nobody in their right mind wants the O'Donoghue family hounded by vindictive mobs, like Frankenstein's monster surrounded by torch-bearing villagers. They're just not in the mood to be fobbed off with patronising mantras about the law of the land having spoken and how that should be the end of it. It might be the last word of the law, but it shouldn't be the end of speaking freely about what we think of it. The right not to agree with the law is as important as the law itself.

The Irish Times editorial went even further following Wayne O'Donoghue's release, quoting Jesus on the subject of forgiveness. Of all the sly sleights of hand, that one takes the biscuit. Bland talk of paying one's debt to society is bad enough without bringing divine forgiveness into the equation. Forgiveness is an entirely personal matter, and if victims say "never, never, never" to it then that's their absolute right, and we should respect them and defend their right not to forgive to our last breath.

Making vulnerable and broken people feel inadequate because they don't have it in them to forgive those who have violated them and their families -- whatever forgiveness even means in such a context -- is the worst form of emotional bullying.

Forgiveness is not obligatory. There are times when the urge to forgive so readily could even be construed as unhealthy -- making it seem as if there is no act of wickedness which cannot be undone by therapeutic acts of symbolic catharsis.

If it happens at all, forgiveness should follow proper punishment, not be a replacement for it. And when the punishment is generally felt not to have been sufficient, then talk of forgiveness is self-indulgent special pleading.

The family of Robert Holohan even had to listen last week as their child's killer was repeatedly commended for his "courage" in making a statement to the waiting media outside prison.

Some might say that O'Donoghue's two-minute statement, far from being a selfless act of bravery, was, at best, the very least that could have been expected -- and at worst a meaningless and minimalist gesture.

"I feel and carry the burden of guilt for my actions each day," he says. Well, so he should. What does he want -- congratulations?

Deeper than that, there were things very wrong with O'Donoghue's statement -- though not picked up on at the time -- which do not exactly throw a glowing light on the man himself.

"I fully accept personal responsibility for all of my actions" -- again, I simply don't see how accepting responsibility should be offered as some kind of generous concession to his victim's family, especially when they don't want apologies, they want answers. Saying you accept full responsibility is the easy part. Showing it is what matters.

And in that regard, what evidence are Mark and Majella Holohan meant to see of O'Donoghue's full acceptance of responsibility when he can still talk, three years later, only of "causing to them the loss of their beloved Robert".

What kind of spineless weasel words are those? By "causing to them the loss of their beloved Robert", he presumably means "killing Robert". Does someone who genuinely accepts total responsibility still refer to the death of a child in such detached terms, as if it were something which merely happened to Robert rather than something he actively did?

It's an interesting psychological point which I'm not qualified to answer, but words like that make me uneasy. That part reads like a political statement, not a human one.

There's also the not inconsiderable matter of O'Donoghue's apparent plea to be left alone. Part of accepting responsibility for terrible deeds is acknowledging that the deeds were indeed so terrible that you have lost the right, however difficult that might be to endure, to make any demands in return for your shouldering of blame. It's not a process of negotiation. You have to accept responsibility, and leave it at that, asking for nothing in return, expecting no favours, no reward, no praise, no sympathy.

Others can make the case that you should be left in peace if they wish, but somebody who truly accepts responsibility for killing a child would be wise to refrain from being so easily offended or upset. A few tabloid photographers following your car or poking their lenses at you is nothing next to a dead child.

The law is a side issue here. I'm talking about what happens in a person's own head. Morally speaking, have you truly taken full responsibility for killing a child and then hiding the poor boy's body if you're still capable of feeling affronted by intense media interest?

What's happened to your sense of priorities if your mind even works that way?

Wayne O'Donoghue was a lucky young man. He got a light sentence, and has plenty of influential voices speaking up on his behalf now that he's been released.

The least his supporters can do for Robert Holohan's family is stop trying to paint his killer as some kind of suffering martyr in his own right.

Come the day that Wayne O'Donoghue has children of his own, he'll realise who the only real victim was here.