Charleville brothers’ mother: ‘I forgive the son who killed my twin boys’

The mother of the nine-year-old twin boys murdered in north Cork earlier this month has said she forgives their adopted brother who killed them before taking his own life.

Paddy and Thomas O’Driscoll were stabbed to death in their home in Deerpark, Charleville, on September 4. The body of their brother Jonathan, 21, was recovered some 15km away in the neighbouring town of Buttevant a short time later.

In an interview on UTV television last night, Helen O’Driscoll revealed that she went looking for Jonathan in the aftermath of the killing.

“I know people might say ‘what’s wrong with her?’ because I went looking for my John. I wanted my John.” she said.

“This was my baby boy, my pride and joy, my rock. He was the bone of our family. I could never hate him.

“I know people do hate him. I know the wider community of the Travelling community hate him. But as I have said 101 times, I am his mother. I forgive him and I couldn’t give a hoot what the whole world would say about my son, because I know him as the boy that I reared.”

It has emerged that, as Jonathan fled the family home after the attack, he said goodbye to a younger sibling playing in the garden.

Mrs O’Driscoll said that Jonathan had been a private young man.

Adopted when he was small, it is believed he may have been struggling with not knowing who his biological parents were.

Mrs O’Driscoll said she wanted to speak out in the hope that another family does not have to go through the same anguish, and to send a message about the need for young people to talk through their problems.

“They need to look at me,” she said. “If they do harm to themselves or any of their other siblings, their mother and their father will be going through what me and my husband and my children are going through. I wouldn’t wish that on no mother.

“And if you have problems or trouble, if you can talk to your mother or your father — even if they’re not yours or whatever, if they reared you, they loved you just as much as they love their own — talk to them.

“Try to get help. If it’s only a phone you have to pick up and there’s a person to talk to you or somebody that you feel comfortable like an aunt or an uncle, anybody.

“But just talk.”