Wayne O’Donoghue - He’s served his time, now let’s move on

THESE last few days, and even weeks, will have been terribly difficult for anyone close to the tragedy surrounding the death of schoolboy Robert Holohan.

The tragedy has been revisited as a precursor to tomorrow’s scheduled release of Wayne O’Donoghue, the person responsible for Robert Holohan’s death.

The day’s events have the potential to be especially fraught. Mr O’Donoghue is expected to be released from Midlands Prison on the completion of his sentence for the manslaughter of his neighbour, 11-year-old Robert Holohan.

Mr O’Donoghue and his family will be apprehensive, worried and forced to confront a barrage of cameras, including some representing this newspaper.

He will find himself the centre of unavoidable and relentless attention. He has been the focus of this interest, some prurient and more entirely justifiable, since the day he was arrested over the death of Robert Holohan in 2005.

Such is the anxiety surrounding tomorrow’s events that Mr O’Donoghue’s solicitor has said that he [Mr O’Donoghue] is “very apprehensive” about his personal safety. It has been suggested that he might find it impossible to live in this country; that he might never escape the great tragedy that defines his past and will probably define his future where ever he might find it.

Robert Holohan’s family, especially his parents, will also face a great challenge. They will undoubtedly be the focus of attention and provocative questioning.

They, like any parents so grievously and deeply hurt, will find it extremely difficult to reconcile their great loss — the great emptiness in their family — to the recovered freedom of the person responsible for the death of their son. It is a challenge very few of us could overcome with the dignity and generosity we would expect of others. This is especially true as the tragedy is so fresh, still so raw and alive in their memory, in the memory of the community in which they live.

This event, and the potential it affords for intrusion of the most aggressive kind, represents an early and rigorous test for the principles safeguarding privacy enshrined in the code of practice agreed at the establishment of the Press Council of Ireland and the Office of the Press Ombudsman just last week.

The constraints are clear and any breach would, as Justice Minister Brian Lenihan warned at the launch of the council, force the government’s hand on the introduction of privacy legislation. As the minister pointed out there are powerful voices at cabinet who would be too happy to legislate to further control the press.

Restraint is no longer just a matter of taste or decency, it is an imperative on which continued press freedoms depend.

The length of Mr O’Donoghue’s sentence was such that Robert Holohan’s family have to come to terms with the idea of their son’s killer being at liberty earlier than many others in similar situations. However, the reality is that Mr O’Donoghue was charged, tried, convicted and sentenced.

The length of the sentence was challenged but it was upheld by a higher court. Mr O’Donoghue has now served that sentence and is entitled to his liberty.

That liberty cannot be constrained or qualified in any way; he has done his time and is, just as everyone who has served a jail sentence, entitled to recover his life in as much as he can. Tomorrow he will be the focus of attention but that attention should only be temporary.

It might be just too early to expect complete forgiveness but at least we can afford Mr O’Donoghue an opportunity at a redemption of sorts among those who love him and whom he loves. Even in a society where a man can have a hand chopped off in a pub, where a man walking home can be set on fire, anything less would demean us all.

Anything less would demean the memory of Robert Holohan and the promise that young life represented.