Dad sent a suicide text before killing his family
TWIST: Final message failed to arrive on phone
Steve Humphreys
An undated family photograph of Adrian Dunne and his daughters Shania and Lean.
Wednesday May 13 2009
Adrian Dunne sent a suicide note via text message before killing his wife, two young daughters and then himself.
The misspelled message told exactly what was going to happen. "Ciara and Aidran are so very sorry. We nott going to Livepol. Instad we pick heaven. Please forgive". (sic)
When gardai finally forced their way in the Dunne family home at Monageer in Co Wexford they found Leanne (4) and her sister Shania (3) suffocated and laid out toe-to-toe on the sofa with their dolls and covered by a duvet.
Hanged
Their mother Ciara (26) was on the floor with a ligature around her neck and Adrian (29) had hanged himself in the hall.
The technicians who examined Adrian's phone cannot explain why the message failed to reach its intended destination.
A State inquiry has found the tragic couple were driven by debt and despair. The couple owed about €34,400 to banks and credit unions. They did not even have a cooker.
They wanted to move to Liverpool, the home of their favourite football team but when this seemed no longer possible Adrian took matters into his own hands and carefully planned their deaths and their funeral.
The Monageer Inquiry report confirms the failure of health and social services to coordinate the help needed for the partially sighted children, Ciara's "docile, child-like nature" and Adrian's blindness.
Despite a wide array of professionals knowing that the family was in trouble, the communication between them was "disjointed".
Coffins
Even when the family went to an undertaker on the day before their deaths and planned their funeral down to the music, the clothes the girls would wear and the white coffins, the gardai were slow to respond to the concerns raised by the undertaker.
Social services put off contacting the family until the following Monday evening, three days later when gardai broke down the door and found the tragic murder-suicide scene.
Adrian Dunne's family have demanded the full publication of the report, large portion of which are blacked out for legal reasons.
Tragedy
"It is not understood how anybody will learn anything from this report" they said, stressing there is no report on "how the provision of services can be improved to perhaps prevent such a tragedy occurring again".
Children's Minister Barry Andrews has admitted that lack of funding will not allow the setting up of a round-the-clock social worker service -- one of the key recommendations of the Monageer inquiry.
- Clodagh Sheehy
