Victim Impact Statement: ‘I can’t forget what happened', says woman molested at party
Claire O’Dowd read out her victim impact statement in Limerick Circuit Criminal Court
*Reader discretion is advised*
A YOUNG woman told a court how she was called a “slut” after she was sexually molested at a Christmas party for Crescent College Comprehensive sixth-year students while the perpetrators were referred to as “rugby lads”.
Claire O’Dowd, who was 17 at the time of the offences on December 22, 2017, waived her right to anonymity after reading out her victim impact statement in Limerick Circuit Criminal Court on Friday.
Daniel Feasey, aged 18 at the time and now 24, of Rossville, Patrickswell, and John Hurley, aged 17 at the time and now 23, of Knockbrien, Ballyneety each pleaded guilty to one count of intentionally engaging in offensive conduct of a sexual nature.
Below is her victim impact statement in full.
--------------------------------------
This feels extremely foreign. I've felt speaking up about what happened to me has just been impossible for so long. This has been six years of waiting for a chance to have this moment because it didn't end the night of the 22nd for me.
I apprehended that this was going to follow me in school. I heard and saw a few things over social media and through mutual friends over the Christmas break that this would continue to follow me for a while.
Immediately when I went back to school I was bombarded with jeering and taunting in the corridors and in my classes.
Immediately when returning, I knew I had to tell an adult in school. I felt extremely isolated re-entering after the break and was paranoid about my safety in school.
It felt like it was following me everywhere. Close friends had begun to cut ties with me because they didn't want to be associated with the “drama” around the whole thing. I felt I'd been ostracised.
I spoke to somebody so I could try claim back some peace of mind. However, once the school made a report that evening, they just as quickly redacted their helping hand.
I had shared classes with one of the two. It feels impossible to sit in maths while the person who invaded you in such a gross, personal way is sitting only a few feet in front of you, not to mention the fact of the taunting and jeering that would inevitably take place.
Exams and classes became an unmanageable task and it became impossible for me to attend school effectively. I had asked to meet with the principal to discuss some of these issues, because school was becoming unbearable. Any request I made to her was for my own peace of mind and did not regard anybody else's academic year.
I attended Julie Kilmartin’s from the start of February instead of school. I felt so alone, like I was forced into isolation... for something I never wanted. It was like I was being silenced.
But people did know, it spread around the school community quickly. Having coffee a few months after, I overheard a conversation behind me. Two women talking about what had happened to me. Random strangers.
They were treating my trauma like hot gossip. I had to hear them use my name. I had to hear them call me a slut. They were only ever referred to as rugby lads.
It felt so degrading and defamatory. It felt like what had happened to me was never taken seriously because of how indelicately the situation was handled by the school.
It happened with people my age outside my school too. At first in Julie Kilmartin’s, I went pretty unnoticed and had retracted into incognito mode.. One week, it suddenly changed, I was walking to my study hall and lots of people would stare and whisper around me.
Pretty quickly the feeling I had been running from in school caught me here too. You cannot ever control what people say, but I couldn't even have a proper conversation with my principal, because nothing was “sure” yet and it would cause a commotion.
Even if it meant compromising my education, safety and sanity.
And my education did take a hit. I was struggling to keep on top of my work and understandably, I also had a lot going through my mind.
My final grades experienced the knock-on effect. My future felt like it had been hindered because of something I never wanted to do.
Because of the toll on my mental health in the last few months of school, I had to postpone any ideas of a degree. My body and mind were exhausted. I felt like a shell of myself.
My time in LCFE allowed me to prepare for university, however, the inevitable I had been ignoring in Limerick Senior caught up with me. I still couldn't cope.
My life for the past six years has been getting calls from the guards with updates, around every three months or so, and they would send me into a spiral. This wasn't just going to happen in school, it was going to follow me everywhere.
I would be sent into a frenzy and I would enter a bad mental health episode, usually for around a month to six weeks.
It became impossible to attend college effectively, so if this is what it was like for two years of further education and one in university, I didn't know how I was going to be able to cope while trying to get my degree. It just hasn't been possible, not until I had my time in court.
The effect this has had on my health is ever-lasting. Physically, since the incident, I've been diagnosed with fibromyalgia. Fibromyalgia is a chronic pain disorder, which causes heightened pain and sensitivity throughout the body, chronic fatigue, migraines and memory and mood dysfunction.
I was diagnosed around one year after the incident. My GP and a psychologist told me that they believe my diagnosis is a result of PTSD from a heightened stress event/injury, which I believe is a result of what happened on the night of the 22nd.
However, it has not just been my physical health that has been impacted, my mental health also declined. My anxiety became unbearable, I struggled to cope.
Completing day by day tasks became an excruciating, restless endeavour. My social anxiety was also extremely heightened because I was never quite sure who knew what happened to me or some variation of it.
Going on a night out became an impossible endeavour, I would be extremely triggered by the environment and the crowds around me... I felt like I couldn't trust anybody. It felt unfair that I couldn't have fun like everybody else, I was always preparing for the worst-case scenario.
This constant state of anxiety and paranoia eventually led me to detach myself from everybody and the world around me. I became isolated and morphed into a hollow state of who I formerly was.
I struggled with depression and stumbled into addictive behaviours to try to cope. Cope with the feeling that I deserved what had happened, how I was treated and try to escape from all the pain it was consistently bringing me. I would eventually be diagnosed with clinical depression and anxiety.
Regardless of what fluctuation in mood I was experiencing, one thing always remained consistent, no sleep. From that night, I began only getting 3 ⁄ 4 hours of broken sleep a night. Broken as it would be interrupted by nightmares about that night, a form of PTSD.
I sleep OK now, but only because I'm medicated and more than likely will be for the rest of my life. I feel lost inside my own body, like I have no control over myself anymore. I was 17 and my body was taken away from me.
Unfortunately, all the scrutiny didn't stop once I had left secondary school. On several nights out after school, I had friends of John and Daniel come up to me on several occasions, questioning me and what happened that night and defending their friend's actions.
It happened enough that I had stopped going to these places where I would keep coincidentally meeting them. I couldn't stop it though.
I can't forget what happened to me on the night of the 22nd. But unfortunately, that night was only the end of the beginning.
For the past six years, I've had to (and all this time, it has truly felt only I have had to) live with the consequences of what happened that night. I've had all aspects of my own sense of self-worth be disrupted while this became the epicentre of my existence.
Well, I ask, have you ever been silenced for six years? Have you had to wait for your voice to be heard after six years? I have had to rebuild my sense of self-worth because the entire perception I had about myself was dismantled before my eyes. I was left to navigate a path I never wanted.
I've been constantly reminded of the night of the 22nd because it has changed all the circumstances in my life. I was punished and shunned for something I didn't even want to do. I want you to finally realise what ye have done. What ye have done to me and how ye changed my life without my permission.
To face an ounce of the scrutiny I've been under for your actions. You will finally experience the consequences of your actions, it's no longer me. After six years, the tape has finally been lifted and I will be silenced no more. Never again.
Thank you.