Sinéad O'Connor

TRIGGER WARNING: I will be discussing the issue of child abuse in this blog.

It's been seven hours and fifteen days since I found that Sinéad O'Connor had been taken away. 

We've lost many talented musicians in recent years, but none have moved me as much as that of this amazing, talented, beautiful Irish artist.

Like most people, I became aware of Sinéad when the single Nothing Compares 2 U was released in 1990. Even as someone who prefers their music to arrive on albums, I could tell this was an amazing recording. The video was both artistic and touching, with Sinead shedding a real, unscripted tear, whilst looking fabulous and like no other artist.

I was saw her play the Pyramid Stage at Glastonbury that year. As this was before the days of big screens, and I was a long way back in the crowd, 'saw' is perhaps not the best word. But I did hear her. (A recording of her set can be heard here.) The single was also being played by almost every stall that had a sound system, I remember. It was effectively the theme tune for the festival. People find it hard to believe now, but she really was talked about as being an Irish Madonna.  

Then came the infamous Saturday Night Live performance in 1992. This was the days before the internet, and I didn't even own a TV at the time, so I knew of this only as a news item. We're used to rock 'n' roll people shooting from the hip, but there was nothing impulsive about this act of rebellion. From the Ethiopian flags on the microphone to the Bob Marley song War she sang, everything was thought through. The picture of the Pope itself had belonged to her late mother and she been carrying it round waiting for the moment to destroy it. 

It nuked her career, but then she was never going to be the pop princess the record company wanted. I didn't see it at the time, but her appearance at the Bob Dylan tribute later that year is justifiably famous. When I watch the video now, and see her, so young and fragile, as she is booed by the crowd, it is still gut wrenchingly awful, right up until the moment Kris Kristofferson whispers in her ear "don't let the bastards get you down" and she launches into an acapella version of War. What's less appreciated is how significant the occasion was for Sinéad. Bob Dylan was her hero, whose music comforted and inspired her after she'd been floored by the death of Elvis. This was not a minor gig for Sinéad. 

I respected her for this, but I knew almost nothing about the issues she was trying to raise. I was hardly a fan of the Catholic Church, but the criticisms of the Church at that time were of the Father Ted variety, where priests were idiots, but not monsters. That changed a little over twelve months later when I found myself working for the Simon Community in Cork City. 

There I started to encounter the Ireland that Sinead was trying to tell people about. The other volunteers of the Simon Community either came from abroad, like me, or from the fringes of Irish society. The later were often themselves survivors, or at least witnesses, to abuse in Convent Schools or other Church establishments. Child abuse was, literally, never talked about in Ireland in the press, and the very few cases that came to light were usually referred to as 'incest', not abuse. From the Social Workers I encountered I also learnt how some abusers they had identified were effectively untouchable due to patronage from the Church. These people weren't priests, but just influential members of the congregation. What we didn't ask was why the Church didn't want any investigations. Nobody else asked either and Sinéad remained a loan, marginalised voice. But during the two years I lived in Ireland this all changed. 

First came the case of Brendan Smyth, a priest from Northern Ireland who'd been arrested for child abuse in Belfast, but who had then fled to the Republic, where the Catholic Church and the government protected him for three years. This was was not a minor scandal - it brought down the government - but at the time the issue was mainly one of cross-border extradition, always a difficult issue during the Troubles, rather than the abuse itself. 

Then in 1995 the bubble burst. There was a new case in the papers every month, it seemed, and this time they weren't being brushed under the carpet. Some people still refused to accept the truth. I remember one woman ringing in to a radio show to say that we should forgive priests as they were being deliberately tempted by Satan, and others simply chose to ignore the facts, but for most ordinary Irish it was now obvious that Sinéad had been right. 

How closely she was personally linked to abuse we would only later learn. She was named Sinéad after the mother of the doctor who delivered her. He was Eamon de Valera Junior, the son of a former Irish President. In a strange piece of synchronicity, it would later emerge that de Valera Junior had been involved in the covert kidnapping of children from the Magdalene Asylums to be adopted by childless couples. The Asylums, where single mothers, sometimes rape victims, were incarcerated for life were yet another Irish scandal.  Sinéad herself went to a reform school next to one Magdalene Asylum, and as a punishment she had to spend a night with the elderly ladies who's spent maybe sixty years in these prisons. This incredibly sad, and frightening experience was turned by Sinéad into one of her earliest songs, Take My Hand. 

But Sinéad didn't just witness abuse, she experienced it at home, from her mother, whilst that picture of Pope John Paul II looked on. This didn't just change her life, it changed her and she was eventually diagnosed with Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Thanks to my work experience in Ireland I have gone on to become a qualified Social Worker. I have done child protection work, but I have also worked with abuse survivors and have been privileged to have them tell me their stories, sometimes before they told anyone else. 

This takes courage, and Sinéad was over the course of her life to show great bravery in describing herown abuse. Unfortunately, there is rarely a happily ever after in these stories. She had to live with the scars of her early life. Her mental health problems, her family and relationship issues, even her changes of faith, are totally familiar to those of us who work with survivors. You can help people like Sinéad, but you can never take away the damage that has been done. I'd have loved there to be a fairy tale ending to her story, but there never was going to be one.

Just before I left Ireland I had the opportunity to appear as an extra in the film Michael Collins, a dramatic, and realistic, depiction of how Ireland became free, and stars Liam Neeson as the title character, and the late Alan Rickman as Eamon de Valera. Sinéad sang on three songs on the soundtrack, and her collaboration with The Chieftains on the project would also give us a version of The Foggy Dew, which is one of my favourite tracks by her. 

The final song of the film is She Moved Through The Fair. Mystical and haunting, there is no other Irish trad. song like it and nobody, not even Van Morrison, has ever sung it better than Sinéad. She would recorder an even better version a couple of years later, which I've always loved, although now it is almost too poignant to listen to. 

I'll admit I've shed a tear for the death of Sinéad; for the death of a remarkable talent, a fearless activist and a beautiful but damaged soul. But I also mourn for the many other lives lost or diminished by abuse in families and institutions, both in Ireland and elsewhere. May we all, just like Sinéad did, work to ensure there are fewer victims in future.