Media must read between the lines when it comes to murder-suicide

Coverage of such cases has brought to light the media's power to inform society about a phenomenon of which they would otherwise have little direct knowledge

Diarmuid, Tadg and Mark O'Sullivan.  Yesterday, a jury at the inquest into the death of Mark returned a verdict of unlawful killing and that both his brother and father took their own lives.

On October 26 last year, Mark O'Sullivan was asleep in his bedroom when he was shot dead by his father Tadg and brother Diarmuid following a festering row over who would get the family's 150 acre farm in Kanturk, Co Cork, when Diarmuid and Mark's mother died.

Tadg and Diarmuid were later found dead near an old fort close to the farmhouse, about 500m away.

Yesterday, a jury at the inquest into the death of Mark returned a verdict of unlawful killing and that both his brother and father took their own lives.

Since the National Suicide Research Foundation began collating figures in 2007, at least 64 lives have been lost to what we term, murder-suicide in this country.

Their record does not include probable cases of murder-suicide and cases of filicide without suicide where a parent murders their child but does not kill themselves.

The vast majority of cases in Ireland are what is termed familial, where the perpetrator, usually male, kills close family members and then kills himself.

Significant questions remain about what occurred beforehand. 

Statistics tell us that a history of abuse most likely preceded these killings. 

Murder-suicide presents a profound obstacle in that the primary sources or witnesses — victims and perpetrators in the incident — cannot explain what happened and why. 

Thus, a gap exists between what can be established about such an incident and the demands of an often traumatised community for an explanation.

Media coverage of these cases has brought to light the media's power to inform society about a phenomenon of which they would otherwise have little direct knowledge.

But media coverage is problematic and misrepresentative of murder-suicides as a wider social issue. 

Media accounts of murder-suicide typically forego exploration of these significant questions, presenting these cases as isolated and linking them to mental health problems, financial debt or as being out-of-the-blue.

We were told the deaths of in Kanturk were motivated by a dispute over a proposed will. 

In previous coverage of the Hawe case in Cavan, we were told that Alan Hawe was “the most normal man you could ever meet”, yet he murdered his wife and three children. 

Michael Greaney in Cobh was “deeply troubled about finances” which was subsequently linked as a motivation for killing his wife Valerie, and the attempted murder of his daughter.

What we are not told is that murder-suicides are cases of extreme domestic violence.

As a result, these accounts tend to cloud rather than clarify the problem of domestic violence.

The media, by putting forward causes of mental health, financial debt or indeed family strife, can lead to the portrayal of the perpetrators as victims.

We are implicitly led to believe that if the perpetrator or perpetrators couldn’t control their actions, then who is responsible?

These problematic representations by the media focus on what and not who is responsible.

These violent outbursts are more often than not, linked to mental illness by repeated references to perpetrators’ previously good nature with the implication being that mental illness changed this.

Alan Hawe, for example, was a father, husband, son, community, and family man. He was “a valuable member of the community”, a “real gentleman”.

The illness and the act are intertwined in the narrative either implicitly or, in some cases, explicitly. 

Alan Hawe with his wife Clodagh and their children Liam, Niall, and Ryan, who died in a murder-suicide at their countryside house in Co Cavan, in 2016. 

We are told that that mental illness is the only plausible reason for familicide, implying that only people with a mental illness could carry out such a crime. 

In fact, data from a large study of homicide-suicide in the US has shown that 38% of offenders had no history of mental illness. 

Whilst they may be factors in these cases, they cannot be examined in isolation. Causation and association are not synonymous.  

These stories are also often over-simplified by virtue of gender. These narratives about violence against women, children, and family members portray these men as having some sort of ‘triggering incident’ that made them behave out of character.

By doing this, they suggest that murder-suicides are not a societal or gendered problem but a misfortune that occurs to problematic individuals. 

Coverage does not link these violent crimes to acts of coercive control. References to domestic violence, is frequently done so only in the context of increased calls to organisations such as Womens Aid in the days after they occur.

Media accounts of murder-suicide typically label these events as “tragedies,” presenting them as crimes which are isolated events that are unrelated to other similar cases. There is also a patriarchal narrative that runs through coverage. 

Female victims are often presented as secondary characters in media coverage around murder-suicide and are spoken of only in terms of their relationship to the perpetrator as opposed to having agency in their own right.

By suggesting motivations for the events, there is a tendency to indirectly blame the victims, “why didn’t they leave”, “he must have not been in his right mind to do such a thing”. This shifts blame from those responsible.

Societally, domestic violence is seen as a private problem, but research tell us that it follows specific patterns. It does not occur because of some external influence or pressure, and the perpetrator did not snap or lose control. 

Equally, murder-suicides transcend across race, class, gender, and geographic lines — it is not a private family matter, nor is it out of the blue or tragic. It is a major social problem that resulted in the deaths of 64 people in Ireland since 2007.

Journalists have an essential role in helping readers process difficult and complex issues. Proper contextualization is necessary for educating the general public about the role of domestic violence as a precursor to femicide.

If, we as a society want to create a wider understanding and the prevention of such incidents , we cannot view the cause of them through such simplistic prisms of mental illness or point to economic structures as a reason for the murder-suicide.   

In refusing to name murder-suicides as cases of extreme domestic violence and coercive control, we are continuing to hold a cloak over these “private crimes”. It is not a private family matter, nor is it out of the blue. It is a major social problem.

Audrey Galvin is an associate teacher in journalism at the University of Limerick