What drives a man to kill his family?

Why do men — statistics show it is mostly male partners who perpetrate this crime — kill their families? It can be to do with an ‘intense sense of shame about their masculinity’.

Some crimes are so inconceivable that we become transfixed by them.

The murder of Clodagh Hawe and her three boys, Liam, Niall, and Ryan, by her husband and their father, Alan Hawe, on August 29, 2016, is one such crime.

When we are transfixed by something, we are rendered motionless. We are at a total loss as how to deal with it.

The idea that the place in which you should feel safest, your home, and the people with who you should feel the safest, your family, is in fact the most dangerous scenario for you, is inconceivable to us.

As a society, we have grappled with many inconceivable horrors, from Church and institutional abuse to all-out gang violence on our streets.

When a crime moves from a public to a private place, our parameters of understanding shrink considerably.

And when it is committed by a person well known to the victim, as opposed to by a total stranger, the lines blur even further, and we can lose our faculty to reason.

When Clodagh, Liam, Niall, and Ryan Hawe were found murdered in their Cavan home in summer 2016, some grasped at the mental health of Alan Hawe in a futile attempt to explain away the inconceivable. Mental health professionals were quick to point out that people with tendencies towards suicidal ideation do not physically harm others in the process of their own tragic self- destruction.

So where to next?

We couldn’t ask Clodagh what her life had been like. Nor could we ask any of her three boys. We also couldn’t question Alan Hawe about why he did what he did. Although he did try to control the narrative somewhat, by being the one to leave a letter. A letter which Clodagh’s family had to wait more than a year to see.

Families were left with unimaginable grief and a litany of eternally unanswerable questions.

The nation was transfixed. Here was a crime that happened behind closed doors, in the private sphere of family. Was it even our right to be privy to this information at all? Is this a public matter or a family’s personal one?

This week, Clodagh’s mother, Mary Coll, and sister, Jacqueline Connolly, were interviewed for an RTÉ Claire Byrne Live special about their unanswered questions.

They revealed information about Alan going bridesmaid dress shopping with Jacqueline and Clodagh, about him walking Clodagh up the aisle for their wedding. There were other snippets of information that we all tried to piece together to shed some light on this inconceivable crime, one with which, as a society, we seem at a loss to deal.

Clodagh Hawe

Not so long ago, domestic abuse was seen as a private family matter. It was not the job of An Garda Síochána to police the private dwellings of this country for any abuse that might be going on there. If you heard shouting coming through the walls of your neighbours’ house, you turned a blind eye. If you suspected a friend or family member might be in trouble, you may have turned the same blind eye.

How do we process crimes of an intimate nature? How do we report and repair from them?

So far, we haven’t been so good at either.

Statistics show that, on average, a woman will be assaulted by her partner or ex-partner 35 times before reporting it to the police. When it is reported, only 29% of women who had experienced severe abuse report it to An Garda Síochána. And national research from 1999 found that between 1% and 6% of domestic-violence offenders in Ireland receive a prison sentence.

It comes back to that oldest of social diktats, “don’t wash your dirty laundry in public”. But that diktat neither protects nor repairs.

Had Alan Hawe not killed himself, had he been charged, he would have possibly stood trial for quadruple murder, not just any murder but the murder of his partner and children. The crime of familicide is a rare enough one, but it is a reality.

It is a crime we struggle to understand, due to the fact that the victims and the perpetrators cannot be questioned for studies. And we are left with relatives grasping for answers on national television, with a justice minister asking them for ideas on how to deal with familicide.

In looking for some understanding of, or answers to, this inconceivable crime, we can look to researchers.

Why do men — statistics show it is mostly male partners who perpetrate this crime — kill their families? It can be to do with an “intense sense of shame about their masculinity”.

Clodagh Hawe with her sons, Liam, Niall, and Ryan

Neil Websdale, professor of criminology and criminal justice at Northern Arizona University, has researched and written about the crime.

“It was often presumed that male-perpetrated spousal homicide was a final exertion of power and control over their wives,” writes Websdale.

But fatality review teams are occasionally finding something else at the heart of familicide in the modern world — perpetrators who suffer an intense sense of shame about their masculinity, much of it unacknowledged or bypassed.

Websdale has also points out that while most perpetrators of familicide have a track record of violence, some have no known history of abuse.

In the case of Clodagh Hawe and her children, her sister said there was no sign that Clodagh was afraid in her marriage or that Alan ever raised a hand to the boys.

However, there was evidence that something was going to “come out” about Alan and he felt it could lead to a life of ruin for his family.

This concept of a good life spinning out of control is apparently connected to the crime of familicide.

These seemingly civil and often reputable men are frequently quiet, subdued, respectable, upstanding citizens who killed because their lives were spinning out of control,” says Websdale.

“Bankruptcy, unemployment, destitution, familial dissolution, or some other calamity profoundly undermined their sense of masculinity.”

What drove Alan Hawe to do the inconceivable? What was the thing that, if and when made public, would unravel his respected family man persona? What drives a man to kill his family? We are all still looking for answers, both private families and public citizens. In the pursuit and publication of those answers, we can hope to find some understanding of, maybe even prevention from the crime, and possibly some semblance of repair.