What goes on behind closed doors

John O’Brien was found not guilty of murdering his wife, Meg Walsh. Someone killed her but 12 of his peers decided on the evidence provided to the central criminal court that it was not he.

One thing that is beyond doubt and is without contradiction is that John O’Brien beat his wife in the past, badly.

He’s admitted to that. She has admitted to that from the grave. A letter written a couple of weeks before she died deemed inadmissible by the judge as evidence in the trial was released after the not guilty verdict.

It was a first hand account of a horrible night of abuse written by the dead woman herself. It details an angry man who got his wife home and hammered her with his bare fists, smashed her head against the staircase, raining such a ferocious battering upon her that she said the Our Father out loud and asked him to finish her off. Her words.

She claimed he said she would never leave the house alive. She did leave the house alive and went to the guards who advised her to see a doctor and a solicitor. Why did they not arrest O’Brien? Was that not the reason why she went to them in the first place.

If they had arrested O’Brien would events have unfolded any differently? Why was O’Brien not brought before the courts and tried for being the wife beater that he is?

Why is he not in jail? Why is he still not being tried for serious aggravated assault? Is it because beating your wife or partner really isn’t all that serious after all?

Are the gardaí not statutorily obliged to investigate all incidents of wife beating, even if the victim eventually refuses to press charges? Clearly not in Ireland where what goes on behind closed doors would frighten the life out of law-abiding citizens. I can understand why the judge would not allow Meg’s letter to be entered as evidence, because he could only allow events dealing with her death to be considered, she clearly didn’t die from that beating.