A daily struggle to deal with life without Sheola

“IT does stick in your head, to go in and open a coffin and look at your beautiful daughter in absolute bits.”

More than a year after his daughter was strangled to death by her ex-boyfriend in the early hours of a July morning, Sheola Keaney’s dad still struggles to deal with the memories.

The 19-year-old student was looking forward to starting a business studies course in college, enjoyed socialising with a wide range of friends and was doted upon by her mother Carol, father Peter and her family around the Cobh area of Co Cork.

But on July 14th 2006, the life was squeezed out of her by 21-year-old Thomas Kennedy, now serving time in the Midlands Prison in Portlaoise for the murder, and life for her loved ones will never be the same.

“She was my only daughter and, at the moment, I’m finding it tremendously hard because all her friends she went to school with are all turning 21. They invite me but I say no, because it’s their night. The next hurdle I’ll have to face now is Sheola’s 21st in January. That will be hard,” says Peter Keaney, sitting at home in Clonmel, the town which was also home to Sheola for eight years after her parents separated, and before she returned to Cobh in preparation for her third-level studies.

“When she was here every weekend, the place would be thronged with people,” he recalls. “You’d miss all the fuss around the place. It’s too quiet now.”

For almost three days after Sheola was last seen by her friends after a night out in Cobh, the community searched for the popular teenager, hoping she would be found alive. But, eventually, her body was found in a laneway on July 16th, wrapped in black plastic, weighed down by metal bars and covered with hedge clippings.

“It’s the indignity of the way he left her, the way he left her in plastic bags and covered up. It’s very hard, no matter how much you butter it up and try and make it nice – there’s no nice way about it. None of the public could see her, except for her mother and myself and close family members. To see your daughter inside in a coffin that the public couldn’t see, is the last indignity for anyone. He destroyed her.”

Asked how he feels now about his daughter’s ex-boyfriend and murderer, Mr Keaney answers quietly: “I feel indifferent to him. I just can’t understand how anyone could go out and do such a hideous crime, not realising the upset and heartache and pain, not alone for our families, but it’s affected a major amount of people, like her friends and cousins. They’ve all been traumatised by the whole thing. Obviously his family has been traumatised by it. He’s destroyed a lot of people’s lives through a selfish act.”

In December Kennedy changed his plea from not guilty to guilty at the last moment, and then got the mandatory life sentence for murder

However, enquiries made by Sheola’s dad about Thomas Kennedy’s life in prison have not left him feeling any better. Housed in a protected wing at the Midlands Prison, Kennedy has access to education courses and prison activities as well as an exercise yard and gymnasium.

“The way things are at the moment, there’s no value on human life. You take someone out and go off to prison and you’re well looked after while inside and can do whatever courses you want. To me, that’s not prison. It’s all geared towards them [the convicts]. It’s just all wrong. There should be more there for the families afterwards.”

He describes a lack of support for victims’ families, such as an absence of state-funded bereavement counselling in the south and south-east. “I’ve written to the Minister for Justice about it. Here we are, pumping all this money into giving them an education in prison, but the government should be looking at the people left traumatised after this.” Among the organisations which he’s found helpful is Advocates for Victims of Homicide (AdVIC).

“My life has changed in so many different ways. I walked into a room full of people whose sons and daughters were murdered, and I actually felt normal. There’s a big stigma to do with murder because people don’t know what to say to you. You learn to live with that. You walk into a room and the whole place goes quiet. Over the last year, I’ve got help from my own GP who has been fantastic, and my family and my therapist in Cork. Other than that, I don’t think I’d be here.”

Among the places where Sheola is fondly remembered is Rockwell College, outside Cashel, where she received her post-primary education. Her father has since presented a trophy to the school which will be awarded for hockey every year, and has been touched by the response from staff and students during visits since her death.

“Even to go out there again, I could see her skipping down the hallway, full of life. No matter where you go, she’s there.”

Peter Keaney continues his quest for truth, to establish the facts of his daughter’s last hours in this life, seeking information from the gardaí, the DPP’s office, and anyone who has been involved in the investigation.

“When I get the answers I want, I might get some sort of closure. I can say, when I meet Sheola again, ‘I asked all the questions’. When I meet her face to face, I can say I did everything humanly possible.”

But no matter what sort of satisfaction he gets from his persistent questioning of the authorities, it will never ease the heartache, never make it easier to deal with her shocking death, never alleviate the loneliness.

“It’s just a void that can’t be filled.”