In 2016, Clodagh Hawe and her three sons, Liam (13), Niall (11) and Ryan (6) were murdered in their Co Cavan home, by their husband and father Alan Hawe, who later took his own life.
It was, and still is, Ireland’s largest murder-suicide and the brutal killings sent shockwaves throughout the country.
In her book, Deadly Silence, Clodagh’s younger sister Jacqueline Connolly, gives her account of the circumstances leading up to the mass murder and how her brother-in-law, Hawe, coercively controlled and manipulated her unsuspecting sister.
Looking back now, Connolly says she can see some of the red flags surrounding Hawe, but at the time, she wasn’t aware of this form of abuse.
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“I didn’t know what coercive control was until they [my family] were killed,” she tells Róisín Ingle on the latest episode of The Irish Times Women’s Podcast.
Connolly and her family first spoke publicly about their family tragedy in 2019, after feeling let down by the initial Garda investigation.
The media attention that followed prompted the gardaí to commission a second investigation by the serious crime review team, the findings of which were disclosed to the family in January 2024. It found the initial inquiry mishandled CCTV evidence and missed digital evidence in the case.
The family are now calling for the report to be made public, in order to highlight the behaviours of family annihilators and to prevent further tragedies. Connolly believes this action could save lives.
“Clodagh, Liam, Niall and Ryan might still be here… Look at all the murder suicides that have happened up to now and [they all have] the same coroner’s investigation. What have we learned? I’m being vulnerable, I’m being open. Take and learn from it.”
In writing the book, Connolly also hopes to raise greater awareness about domestic abuse and the warning signs to look out for. “There are people in the shadows, men in GAA clubs in communities, caring, kind, trusting, but what are they like behind closed doors?”
“When you saw Alan, you saw Clodagh, you saw the three boys, they went everywhere together. They were this family unit. They were in my eyes, the perfect family. There was nothing untoward going on,” she recalls.
“I didn’t see anything to challenge. Now we’re educated on what coercive control is. We’re educated on what family annihilators look like. I might not have liked him, but I trusted him”.
[ ‘I knew him for 20 years ... I knew him but I didn’t know him’Opens in new window ]
The book, she says “is to protect women and children and to safeguard them and to show people it could be anybody standing around you. One in three women are coercively controlled.”
You can listen back to this conversation in the player above or wherever you get your podcasts.
