Don't let evil triumph: We must act to stamp out male violence

Ryan O'Rourke's childhood babysitter Sarah Hines, her two children, and her friend, were murdered by John Geary and ever since, he has recognised the threat that men present to women

The funeral of Alicia Brough at St Peter's Church, Rockchapel, Co Cork, in November 2010. Picture: Dan Linehan

I still remember the moment I found out. 

“Sarah’s dead. She’s been murdered”. Five words, from my mother, that I immediately dismissed as nonsense.

‘Sarah can’t be dead. Why on earth would anyone murder Sarah?’ I thought.

Sarah Hines was kind and caring.

She had been mine, and my brother’s favourite babysitter growing up. She knew how to make ravioli the exact way we liked it. She made us laugh with jokes and games, and as we got older, she became an older sister figure to us both. Someone we looked up to.

She wasn’t someone who should ever have felt the hand of violence, but she did, and so did her two beautiful children, three-year-old Reece and little baby Amy, who wasn’t even six months old.

Another beautiful soul was taken that day, Alicia Brough, who was only 20. I never got to meet Alicia, sadly, but I’ve grown close to her family and they are the salt of the earth.

I had known violence before that, even at the age of 15. My youth had its share of it.

But I had never known violence like this.

It seemed inhuman, incomprehensible, that a man could murder two innocent women, and two children, one of whom was his own flesh and blood.

But despite my disbelief, it was real. There was no reason for them to die, but they were dead all the same. All because of one man, not a monster, but a man, and his violence.

That day changed my mindset forever. I started seeing men as a threat, not to me, but to my friends, my mom and my family.

It wasn't that I saw every man as a monster. But I saw the potential for danger.

To this day I still think, “what if I had noticed something before the fact” – “I could have saved them.” People tell me there is nothing I could have done, but they are wrong.

I knew Geary. I saw him regularly, and I failed to see what he was really capable of. But the signs were there. The things he said, the way he acted. There was a reason to be afraid.

So I started looking at other men who were around me. Men with short tempers, and who told poor jokes, and in general, seemed to have just the slightest underlying resentment towards women. And I found there were a lot of them.

One moment that perhaps sums it up the most for me came years after.

Alicia Brough, 20, who was murdered along with Sarah Hines and her two toddlers on November 16, 2010. Picture: Handout/PA Wire

The topic of Sarah’s murder came up in conversation in the smoking area of a small rural Limerick bar.

A “lad,” who I didn’t know, chimed in with some ill-gained “local knowledge” he had apparently picked up.

“But she wasn’t a saint,” he said as if it were fact. “She drove him to it.” This young man did not know Sarah, he didn’t know Alicia, nor did he know either family of the victim, or even Geary.

But this tone of blame had been passed through the parish and he had accepted it, without question, and repeated it.

He did so because he believed it. Because there is a culture that led him to believe that there must be some reason, some justification, that made Geary murder my friends.

There was, of course, none.

Later, he sheepishly approached me and apologised. He explained he was just talking nonsense.

But words carry weight. And I have carried that weight with me to this day.

Because as long as there are men who believe there is a justification for hurting women, women will never be safe.

And like a mould grows in a damp room, violence grows from words and jokes, if left untreated.

So men, when women tell you they are afraid, don’t diminish it.

Because it might not be “all men” but there are some.

They look just like you and I. They don’t have horns, or claws, or glowing red eyes.

What we can do instead is move to stamp out all aspects of male violence. Call out your friends. Call out strangers. Call out yourself.

Evil triumphs when good men do nothing.