The Chorus - John Waters on Traveller Deaths

There has been a remarkable silence this past week from those normally so vocal concerning the sensitivities of Travellers.

Two months ago, following the conviction of Padraig Nally for the manslaughter of the Traveller John Ward, they told us that it was “of no consequence” what Ward's previous history was, because the penalty for previous crimes “is not the death penalty”. This logic has been unavailable to the Traveller Patrick Collins, whose baby son has been murdered. Patrick Collins did not kill his son, but this counted as nothing in the media coverage following the trial of the killer. One reading is that Patrick Collins's victim-status as a Traveller has been trumped by virtue of the fact that the killer of his child is both a Traveller and a woman.

But the pathology runs far deeper than that. The killer was Mary Collins, mother of the child and wife of Patrick Collins. Four years ago, she strapped her two children into a buggy and pushed them into the sea at Westport Quay. Patrick Collins's three-year-old daughter survived, but his 11-month-old son incurred brain damage and died later.

Although she later pleaded insanity, Mary Collins at first told investigating gardaí that a wheel had come off the buggy, which then fell into the water. She claimed to have jumped in to try to rescue her children. Later she admitted that she had pushed them in. At her trial, she on the one hand pleaded insanity and on the other claimed her husband was to blame. She was afraid of Patrick Collins, she said, claiming he beat her. She had gone to the quay to kill herself and her children in order to escape and go to heaven.

The fact that Mary Collins had herself a violent history and is a proven liar did not inhibit media coverage of her allegations about her husband in the wake of the instantaneous “guilty but insane” verdict in her trial. “She detailed a long history of domestic violence at the hands of her husband,” wrote Paul Cullen in the Irish Times. I am interested in that word “detailed”: why not “alleged”? Cullen went on to state that Mary Collins “told gardaí of a number of incidents in which he had beaten her with his fist, a poker and a hammer”. Why not “made claims to gardaí”?  

The Irish Examiner made the story its front-page lead, reporting Mary Collins's allegations as though they were established fact. The Irish Independent, at least, liberally employed variations on the word “alleged”. Some reports mentioned that, back in 1998, Mary Collins had stabbed her husband in the back with a steak knife. He received five stitches. “The reason I did what I did was all that torture and suffering for the whole of my marriage”, Mary Collins was quoted in explanation of her actions.

Virtually every report of the trial employed variations of the word “tragedy”. Mary Collins was described as a “tragic mum”. Patrick Collins was nowhere described as a “tragic dad”. Dr Conor O'Neill, a consultant forensic psychiatrist at the Central Mental Hospital, told the court that Mary Collins had been suffering from schizophrenic affective disorder “at the time”. It is difficult for a layman to understand how efforts to delve into the mental state of Mary Collins at the time she killed her baby son could be other than speculative. Yet, the public understanding of this case is now cast in stone: Mary Collins, driven mad by a violent husband, tried to kill herself and her children to get away from him.

All this is interesting and rather sickening. A society unable to conceive of a mother killing her child is prepared to go to any lengths to vindicate its own evasions. The alternative is too frightening: that Mary Collins is self-obsessed or evil. I do not know which of these she is, but I am interested in the way everyone is prepared instantly to accept the idea that her husband is evil, even though he has killed nobody.

Five years ago, when Christopher Crowley shot himself and his daughter after being cornered by gardaí investigating the abduction of five-year-old Deirdre, he was described in the newspapers as an “evil killer dad”. Nobody at the time speculated that he might have been mentally ill after spending 20 months on the run with his daughter following a custody dispute. Two other cases spring to mind. One, that of the little Grace sisters from Wexford, drowned last year by their mother, who also killed herself. Two weeks later, the bereaved father, Barry Grace, was featured on the front of the Sunday Tribune, under the heading “I didn't drive my wife to kill”. This interview followed a series of innuendo-laden newspaper articles suggesting that he had been seeking to take the children away from his estranged wife.

In fact, Barry Grace had been denied access to his children by their mother, who then told social workers that she was afraid he would abduct them. Barry Grace had done nothing except go to his local health board looking for help in obtaining access to his children. Social services, naturally, did nothing. His two beautiful babies were dead, murdered by their mother. Yet, here he was having to plead in public that he wasn't responsible.

The other case that springs to mind involved a mother who perpetrated such a grievous assault on her baby son that he suffered a brain haemorrhage and almost died. The judge said that the woman's actions were so abnormal that it was “reasonable” to think there were “extraordinary factors” behind it. He imposed a suspended sentence.

What we believe, then, is this: if a mother hurts or kills her child, it is because of some factor that placed her action beyond her responsibility (mental illness or the actions of a violent man, for example); if a father hurts or kills a child it is because he is “evil”. Impressive logic, don't you think?