'Life to me should mean never seeing him outside the prison gates': Campaigners call for parole process reform

Campaigner Kathleen Chada says that new parole recommendations are a bittersweet victory for those advocating for victims' rights.

A woman who survived a frenzied knife attack in which her best friend was killed has called for more action and clarity following the establishment of the new Parole Board.

Sinead O’Leary spoke out yesterday following confirmation from Justice Minister Heather Humphreys of the commencement of the Parole Act and the establishment of the new Parole Board.

Ms O’Leary, who was stabbed 20 times in a vicious attack by Peter Whelan, who then murdered her friend, Nichola Sweeney, at Ms Sweeney’s family home in Rochestown, Cork in 2001, said she has concerns that the board structure doesn’t go far enough to represent the voice of victims or their families.

She had been campaigning for a victims’ rights advocate to be appointed to the new board, for reforms of the parole process, and for the introduction of exclusion zones so that violent criminals cannot return to the area where their victims or their victims’ surviving families now live.

“When I spoke to the minister in the past, she said she was positively disposed to the appointment of a victims’ rights advocate,” she said.

There needs to be a clear distinction that the balance between the rights of the perpetrator and the rights of the victim have been met in this process and it’s not clear if that balance has been met.

Sinead O'Leary wants a clear distinction between the rights of the perpetrator and the rights of the victim.

The act puts the parole process on a statutory footing and establishes an independent, statutory Parole Board to decide on parole applications.

And life-sentence prisoners must now serve at least 12 years before being considered for parole compared to the previous seven years.

Transparent system

Ms Humphreys said that the new system would be more transparent and fairer and that the new board includes members who have “significant experience of working with victims as well as prisoners”, and she said victims of crime will be able to make submissions to the board if they wish.

But the mother of a woman who was brutally murdered by her boyfriend in 2013, said he could be before a parole board in just a few years.

Ann Dunlea’s daughter, Olivia, 36, was stabbed in the neck in her home in Passage West, Cork, by Darren Murphy, 41, on February 17, 2013.

As she lay dying in her bed, he set fire to her quilt before going downstairs and lighting a fire in the middle of a table in the hope that the blaze would conceal his crime.

Murphy was jailed for life in 2018 after a jury found him guilty of murder.

Olivia Dunlea: “A life sentence should mean life."

Ms Dunlea said: “A life sentence should mean life. We could be back to square one in a few years if he’s before a parole board. Life to me should mean never seeing him outside the prison gates.

He should pay for this crime. I don’t care what any do-gooder says. You can’t rehabilitate those people. I have no sympathy for him whatsoever.

Victims’ rights campaigner Kathleen Chada, whose two sons, Eoghan and Ruairí, were killed in 2013 by their father Sanjeev, who was sentenced to life imprisonment in 2014, expressed relief at the Parole Act, and the 12-year move.

“It seems incredibly wrong that at seven years he would have been eligible for parole,” she said.

Speaking on RTÉ radio’s Today show, she said the change for which she had campaigned, was “bittersweet” in the circumstances, but that she would “take victories where they fall”.