‘My mother killed my dad’: Daughter breaks silence after years of abuse in Dublin home
Eliska “Ellie” Ryan began preparing for her victim impact statement as her father lay dying in a hospital bed after being attacked by his partner, her mother.
The 16-year-old wanted to document his last moments as they happened “in case the gardaí came, I didn’t want to forget”.
She also wanted to record in detail the suffering both she and her “wonderful dad” had endured in secret, following years of abuse in the home.
Reading her statement at the Circuit Court on her behalf, her sister Lynn Ryan broke down several times, as she described how Ellie and their father lived in a “house full of hostility” for years.
Now, with the help of her sisters, Karen, 46, and Lynn Ryan, 44, who now have legal custody of their younger sibling, Ellie wants to shine a light on the secret life of a child caught up in domestic violence.
She is also appealing to other children to “speak up” if they too are suffering in silence.
“I just want children like me to know someone will listen," she said. “Me and dad didn’t say anything at the time, we didn’t want to burden my siblings so we said nothing.
“They would have helped but we didn’t tell them and now I just don’t want any other child to go through what I did. My dad has died, and my mother did that."
James ‘Shey’ Ryan, 69, from Hastings Lawn in Balbriggan north Dublin was the man Ellie described in court as her “protector and safe place”.
His tragic death has left his entire family traumatised, and struggling to come to terms with learning since he died that he had been caught up in years of alcohol rages and drunk fuelled feuds at the hands of his partner.
“If we had known, we could have done more,” said Karen. “Olesja was in the end estranged to us, but we only started learning things when it was too late,” said Lynn.
Nearly one year after his tragic death, Ellie’s mother Olesja Hertova was jailed on July 4, for two years and nine months (to be backdated from the day she went into custody on August 27, 2024) for “forcibly” pushing Mr Ryan onto the road outside their house on August 10, 2024, which resulted in his death.
The impact from the fall, which was captured on a neighbour’s CCTV, caused blunt force trauma to Mr Ryan’s head. He suffered complications and died the next day in Beaumont hospital.
His devastated children Karen, Lynn, James and Ellie, along with his sisters Jacqueline, Una and Deirdre had to endure hours of watching him battle to live.
The court was told doctors could not perform surgery as the swelling on Mr Ryan’s brain was too severe and therefore there was nothing more they could do for him.
His life support machine was turned off at 5.30pm on August 11, 2024.
It was a tragic end to years of abuse by his partner, which Ellie Ryan said resulted in him seeking two safety orders from the courts, but “never activating them”.
“He obviously didn’t want people to know, nobody wants anyone to know that stuff, especially a man,” said Karen Ryan.
“Everything just got worse, not only did he die the way he did, but we found out about all this when it was too late,” said Lynn.
Autopsy results showed his illnesses did not contribute to his death, which was a result of complications arising from blunt force trauma and a fall.
Having viewed CCTV, Ms Hertova, who Judge Martin Nolan said was at first “evasive” in her statements to gardaí, pleaded guilty to her partner’s manslaughter in May this year.
As Ms Hertova was taken from the dock and brought back to the Dóchas Women’s Prison to serve the remainder of her sentence, family members shouted “Two years and nine months for killing someone? That is a joke.” The court heard Hertova was “deeply remorseful” and wanted to cut her hands off for what she did.
“I don’t believe anything she said,” said Karen.
Mr Ryan’s three daughters sat down with the this week because they wanted to highlight domestic violence in the home and call for changes in the law that prevented them from telling the court about the abuse.
Ellie Ryan is now in the legal care of her sisters Karen and Lynn from Mr Ryan’s marriage, and she said alcohol played a significant role in the abuse at home.
“My mam drinks a lot,” said Ellie. “At least in prison she can’t drink, the minute she drinks you can see her face change.
“It would start between 4 and 6 o'clock after I came in from school. She would finish one bottle and say, ‘let’s go for a walk with the dog’. But she wanted to go to the shop and get another bottle of vodka.
“She was completely functioning, I was just a child, but I learned that’s the way it was, and my mam would just keep drinking all the way through the night.
“I would wake up for school the next morning and she would still be drinking. Sometimes it went on until 1 o’clock the next day."
It was during these binges that Ellie said her parents would start arguing.
“I felt like the parent to her,” she explained. “They fought a lot, and I would have to get in between them.
“I rang the gardaí on her many times, but it never went anywhere.
“When she would kick off, me and my dad would have to walk out of the house."
In her victim impact statement, Ellie said: "Growing up, I watched my parents fight constantly. Our house was full of hostility, and I learned from a very young age how to read every noise, every glance, every silence, just so I could be prepared for what might come next.
"Me and my mother were close in our own way, and there were good days too.
"But when she drank, she would sometimes turn into someone I did not recognise."
“You could actually see her face change when she drank but when she was sober you could have a conversation with her. We could talk she was a normal person."
She said her mother gave her “cuddles and was affectionate”, but “as soon as you got the smell of vodka, you knew what to expect”.
Karen said: “For years we didn’t know any of this. We knew Olesja behaved strangely, she would send us weird messages at night, quotes and sayings and weird YouTube videos.
“But my dad never told us, and we never knew the extent of it."
The latest figures from Men’s Aid Ireland show in 2023, 8,682 men made contact for domestic violence support and at least one in seven men will experience domestic violence.
The figures for Women’s Aid are much higher, and show in 2024:
- 35% of women, more than one in three, had experienced psychological, physical, and/or sexual abuse from an intimate partner;
- There were 32,144 contacts with Women’s Aid, including 24,396 with the Women’s Aid 24-hour national freephone helpline, and 7,748 with its face-to-face support services;
- During these contacts, the group heard 46,765 disclosures of abuse, including 41,432 disclosures of abuse against women and 5,333 disclosures of abuse against children.
Karen said in 2022, Ellie told them her mother had given her a black eye, and she reported it to Tusla.
“Social workers met Ellie and our dad and all they did was give us a safety plan,” said Karen.
“They asked the social workers ‘what do we do, where do we go when my mother is like this'.
Ellie said they never told the rest of the family and instead both she and her father often slept on park benches or in the car to get away from her mother when she was violent.
“We had no money. I didn’t tell anyone — I didn’t think it was fair to tell them because they would be constantly having to deal with it."
The Ryan sisters said nobody could ever understand what it was like to be in a domestic violence situation unless they have experienced it and that is why they are speaking out.
“I want people in my situation to know that there is help, just find someone you can talk to, I didn’t tell anyone because I thought it was normal,” said Ellie. “I felt I had to protect him [my dad], because if he was injured, that would break me inside."
She described how her home which was supposed to be a place of safety and comfort, was one where you “walked on eggshells”.
“If I heard her coming up the stairs, I knew by the sound of her steps that something bad was going to happen. Sometimes I would have to try and guilt trip her just to go to sleep, otherwise she would just keep drinking and then wake up not knowing what happened."
After Mr Ryan’s death, the family discovered two safety orders their father had secured against Olesja after his death while packing up his belongings from his home.
“She was abusing my father and Ellie for years,” said Karen. “We didn’t know.
Lynn said: “Olesja was very estranged from us in the end, we didn’t really talk to her, she was always included in the family for Ellie and my dad’s sake, but we didn’t know any of this until it was too late."
The sisters said they were “devastated” their father’s killer could be released from prison as early as next year.
Judge Nolan said the manslaughter charge was at the lower end of the scale, with a headline sentence of five years.
However, there were mitigating factors, such as Ms Hertova’s early guilty plea and her apology to the family. He said he did not believe she was at risk of reoffending.
“It wasn’t enough,” said Lynn. “But loads of what we wanted to say was not permitted in court and that really hurt us.
“We were not able to say in court our dad was in a domestic violence situation and that she had been physically assaulting him,” said Karen.
“How is that justice if we can’t say all that was going on, and most of it we only learned afterwards."
Karen said having researched other cases abroad, she could find “no trial that this information was not allowed”.
The family are now writing to the Director of Public Prosecutions and the Oireachtas calling for amendments to be made to the Criminal Justice (Evidence Act).
Their proposals include:
- Amend the Criminal Justice (Evidence) Act to allow the introduction of domestic violence history (Garda call-outs, protection orders/safety orders, affidavits, medical reports) at sentencing, even without a conviction. Allow such evidence in manslaughter or domestic homicide sentencing with judicial safeguards;
- Revise sentencing guidelines under the Criminal Justice Act 1993 to include “pattern of abuse” as an aggravating factor in domestic homicide cases;
- Provide judicial guidance/training on coercive control and the admissibility of abuse history.
Their suggestions include:
- Relevance and proximity test (abuse must be recent and related);
- Evidence must be corroborated (eg Garda reports, protection orders, medical records);
- The accused must be given fair opportunity to respond.
“This matters because it recognises the realities of abuse, including coercive control and underreporting,” said Karen and Lynn.
“It also empowers victims and families to see justice and it prevents courts from mischaracterising abusers as having a ‘good character’ and that is how Ellie’s mother was described.
Ellie Ryan said she was “terrified” Judge Nolan was going to release his mother from prison on the day of sentencing.
“I just thought she is going to go and all she would do is drink again, the only good thing about her being in jail is that she is not able to drink".
Mr Ryan, a former Defence Forces member, was doted on by his family.
“There was nothing he wouldn’t have done for us,” said Karen.
Lynn said: “He was always trying to help us if something broken, he would be there, and the grandchildren adored him, he was just one of those men that everyone knew and he would talk to anyone.”
Mr Ryan and his wife Enda had previously divorced, and she died in 2011.
Ms Hertova moved from the Czech Republic to Ireland in 2004 and was in a relationship with Mr Ryan for about a year when she fell pregnant with Ellie.
“Ellie was always adored by us all,” said Karen. The teenager now lives with Karen during the week and her sister Lynn at the weekends.
On the night their father was seriously injured Karen and Lynn were both at home with their own families.
“Dad came home from the pub and my mam had been drinking," explained Ellie. "They started arguing and I went down to stop them.
“Next thing he was gone out the door and she went after him. I looked out and he was on the floor; there was blood everywhere.
“I knew it was bad. The neighbours came out and we had to wait an hour for the ambulance, I was ringing them saying ‘this is so bad you need to come now’ and they didn’t."
Ellie held her dad as he was lying dying on the ground in her arms. “I will never forget it, it haunts me, he just said ‘Ellie I want to go home’ but I knew it was so bad.
“My mother was freaking out, she looked spaced out completely. I just had to try calm her down for the rest of the night and she went to bed finally.
“I was in and out of sleep. Mam just slept all night and didn’t go to the hospital."
Karen, Lynn, and James, as well as his sisters, kept a beside vigil by Mr Ryan as he clung on to his life and they tried to piece together in shock, what led to him to him being on life support.
“We eventually had to drag it out of her what she did,” said Karen. “Olesja said ‘yes I pushed him’.
Ms Hertova turned up at her partner’s funeral, but the family asked her to leave, which she did.
Lynn said: “We will never get over it, I had brain surgery at the time and was trying to recover.
“It is not something we can move on from, we want changes to the law to let the whole story come out, and for people like our dad not to be afraid to speak up."
While Karen said: “It is so hard for men especially to leave a situation like this, he had his home he was going on 70 and they had a child but even when we report things, nothing happened.”
CONNECT WITH US TODAY
Be the first to know the latest news and updates
