Natasha O'Brien: 'It feels like I've been robbed of years of my life'
Natasha O'Brien speaks to the media on the street outside the Dail. Picture: Sasko Lazarov/ © RollingNews.ie
Natasha O’Brien wishes she would stop being asked about gender-based violence. She doesn't like being called a women’s rights activist.
Yet these are the two terms she has been labelled with since she stood on the courthouse steps last summer and criticised the suspended sentence handed to her attacker.
For the Limerick woman, who has been using her voice in the hope of changing the justice system for the better, violence does not discriminate.
“I wish that people would ask me about violence and not gender-based violence — just violence. I wish people would ask me about victims, and not women. Because violence doesn't discriminate,” she says.
“I wish people would see me as Natasha, human rights activist. Not Natasha, women's rights activist. There are so many people that are affected by the issues that I speak about that are not women, and it is so unfair to exclude all those people from an experience that they share.”
Last June, then-serving soldier Cathal Crotty was given a three-year suspended sentence for a vicious and unprovoked attack on Natasha, which included a broken nose.
The suspended sentence, and Natasha's powerful condemnation of it, prompted protests across the country, many of them addressed by her.
However, sitting by Howley’s Quay in her native Limerick, encircled by dozens of seagulls, she says people have only heard 50% of her message.
“That gives to the narrative that women are victims, women are weak. And it's actually very harmful to the message. Women do experience a lot of violence, but so do men, so do people.
“A feminist isn't someone that lifts women up and empowers women, a feminist is someone that lifts people up and empowers people, and I think that's the piece that we miss here.”
Following an appeal by the DPP, Crotty was jailed last month for two years for the violent assault.
Having fought for justice for more than two years, Natasha is now left with a lot of grief for the person she didn’t get to be.
“It’s been strange and challenging to adjust to my personal fight being over. But it's also been very underwhelming to have reached this ‘justice’. It just feels so wrong and unfair, I'm experiencing a lot of grief for myself,” she says softly.
Now, she gets to finally sit with the feelings she has been “running away” from.
“I’m finally feeling everything. I’ve been running away from how I feel and getting triggered and now, I'm in a safe place, I’m able to allow myself to feel. It’s just so unfair that as victims, I would say you’re in survival mode.”
While awaiting the original sentencing — and then resentencing — of Crotty, she can’t help but feel like her life was put on hold.
“It feels very unfair, and it feels like I've been robbed of years of my life, of my 20s, where I should have been a young 20-year-old learning about life. And instead, I’ve had to become a fighter for justice.”
Some victims spend years waiting for trials and court dates — and some never get them. Since she spoke up outside the court, the fight has never been about her, it has never been about justice for only herself, nor was it ever about revenge.
“It hurts a lot to be given the privilege of justice when all my work has been in demanding justice across the board and to be slapped in the face with justice for myself feels so disappointing. I know we have to start somewhere, and there has to be an example set, I understand.
“I never wanted my own justice, I never wanted karma. I didn't want revenge.
"Having experienced what I experienced, having been treated the way I was treated in the system, I just wanted to do my best to see if there is anything that I can do to just maybe try to help it, try to help reform it in a way.”
While she has been grateful to be given a platform and to have found a community, she says her experience has been in some ways conflicting.
“I don't feel like I've achieved anything because I've only achieved it for myself, and that's capitalism.
"That's not equality, that's not empathetic to just want things for yourself and not for others. I don't have any more worth than you, so why should I be getting justice when you don’t?”
Getting some justice almost makes her feel “like a billionaire in a world full of poverty”.
Reflecting on that time outside the courthouse, she recalls only seeing red.
“I was accidentally given a platform from that interview leaving the courthouse, a lot of people resonated with that and I had no idea because I was just in a fit of rage and I only saw red leaving that courthouse.
“In that moment, I was furious. I felt I lived a lie thinking our systems were modern. It’s totally dystopian, it doesn't reflect society, it’s almost like a time machine, you walk into a courthouse and you're catapulted to 100 years backwards.”
While Natasha has received a good deal of support, she also has received a lot of hate.
According to her, some see her as this “irritating virus” and it all stems from “conditioning”.
“When we grow up, we're told children should be seen and not heard. As teenagers, we're told not to speak when the teacher is speaking. In college, don't go to the lecture unless you're going to stay quiet and pay attention. Then in work, what your boss says is gospel. You do what you're told.
“We all live long lives of conformity. We are all taught from a young age, that there is somebody that knows better than you. In my situation, like for so many victims going into a courthouse, the general belief is the judge knows better than you.
"Who are you? You're just a victim. You don't understand the law. You don't understand justice. The judge is on the pedestal. We're taught not to question power.”
But Natasha has never been able to keep quiet. For as long as she can remember, she has always been a disrupter, a questioner.
“I've always been a bit of a black sheep. I've always talked too much in school and never did my homework, I'm not saying that they're all positive attributes, but it's just who I've always been.
“Maybe to some people, I'm this irritating virus that doesn’t conform to just accepting something.
“People think I'm an attention seeker, people think I'm crazy because they can't relate to the fact that I would open my mouth and question something when they have been taught their whole lives not to.”
However, it makes her sad to receive so much hate. She feels a little love and empathy would go a long way.
“I don't feel upset about myself or self-conscious. It makes me sad that there are people that don't understand the basics. How cruel and horrible that these people feel the need to lash out at someone who is doing absolutely nothing but trying to help people,” she says.
For 22 years, Natasha was “never a victim”. And in a split second, it all changed. According to her, the veil between a normal life and a life of trauma is fragile.
“Please don't wait for it to happen to you or someone you love for you to finally care about this. Please care now,” she says.
“My message is an attempt to say, don’t prepare yourself to become a victim, but let's put the measures in place to know that if that did happen, you would be protected. Let's put a safety harness.”
She feels ready to finish this chapter of her life and is now looking forward to exploring new creative avenues.
“I want to write more music, focus on nurturing that side of me. I've been playing music my whole life, I play a lot of traditional music. I've started to realise how healing music is for me. It’s so soothing, it's so grounding. I do struggle to feel emotions, but music helps me to do that,” she smiles.
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