Each and every one of us knows a Mark Hennessy

The man and the crime did not match, we could not reconcile the two, for we all know a Mark Hennesy, writes Joyce Fegan

Each and every one of us knows a Mark Hennessy

The man and the crime did not match, we could not reconcile the two, for we all know a Mark Hennesy, writes Joyce Fegan

WE ALL know a Mark Hennessy, we just pretend to ourselves we don’t. The white, middle class, middle-aged father of two — who doesn’t wear his criminality on his sleeve. He has us all conned. We play golf with him. We go for pints with him. We sit across from him in the office. We meet him on Saturday mornings at the kids’ soccer practice. We might even invite him inside our family home. We all know a Mark Hennessy, we just never really know what lurks beneath that Joe Bloggs surface.

There was the Graham Dwyer we all knew — the middle-class professional who was happily married to his college sweetheart, with whom he had two young children. Then there was the other Graham Dwyer — the man who led a secret life preying on vulnerable women, before he one day sexually assaulted and brutally murdered Elaine O’Hara, leaving her body to rot in the Wicklow mountains.

There was the Tom Humphries we all knew — revered journalist, husband, father, and GAA coach. Then there was the other Tom Humphries — sexual predator, child groomer, and eventually convicted paedophile.

There was the Kieran Creaven we all knew — the RTÉ producer, the middle-class suburbanite, who was married and living an exciting life covering some of the world’s biggest sporting events. Then there was the other Kieran Creaven — who travelled to Leeds alone on a Saturday night, covered up with an anorak and a long-peaked cap, to meet with whom he thought was a 13-year-old girl. In his bag were two boxes of condoms and in his past were years of a child pornography addiction. He is now a registered sex offender.

Yet, when we heard that 24-year-old student Jastine Valdez was abducted from the beautiful village of Enniskerry, in broad daylight on her short walk home from the bus stop, we were paralysed by utter disbelief.

At first we heard there had been a witness who had seen a young woman being bundled into a car. Next we heard about that car — a 171 Nissan Qashqai, not something the baddies usually drive. Finally, details began to emerge about the driver of that vehicle — middle-aged, middle-class male, married with two young children, who was not known to the An Garda Síochána.

The man and the crime did not match, we could not reconcile the two, for we all know a Mark Hennessy.

Our disbelief leads us to ruminate and question, as we grapple to find answers and make sense of this senseless crime.

“Did he know her? Surely he knew her. That would make things a bit easier, it would mean this wasn’t a random attack,” we say.

Just as we are thinking these things and talking them out with friends and neighbours, An Garda Síochána say there is no reason to believe that the victim was known to her killer.

We go back to square one. How could someone like that, do something like this, in broad daylight and in a safe little village such as Enniskerry?

Rumours start to emerge then that Hennessy may have been using online dating apps and social media to hunt for potential victims. “Ah maybe, they’d met online,” we think. But, just as we’re about to arrive at some sort of conclusion we hear that there is nothing to suggest that Jastine was communicating with strangers online.

We remain at a loss to make sense of this incomprehensible crime. All the ways we usually rationalise senseless acts are unavailable to us.

In crimes of a predatory nature, we say: “Oh she was drunk. She went back to a hotel with a stranger, what was she thinking? She was wearing next to nothing, what was she expecting?”

Unable to rationalise the mind of the criminal, we instead place ourselves in the skin of the victim.

We look at the variables we think are within our control, and assert what we would have done differently, therefore hypothetically ensuring our own safety in a similar situation. This is known as the just-world theory — we blame victims in order to explain why bad things happen. We all want to believe the world is fair and if we do things exactly by the book, then no harm will ever come to us.

But Jastine Valdez did everything by the just-world theory book. It was not 3am in the morning, it was 6.15pm on a summer’s evening. She was not walking home alone after some raucous party. She was coming home from her part-time job in full view of a village also winding down from a day’s work. In this instance, the just-world theory is completely and utterly unavailable to us, we cannot blame the victim and say what we would have done differently.

At 18 years of age, I read Barry Cummins’ book Missing Without a Trace in Ireland. I read about Annie McCarrick — abducted and murdered in the Dublin-Wicklow mountains. I read about Jo Jo Dullard — abducted and murdered while hitching a lift in Co Kildare. And I read about Fiona Pender who was seven months pregnant when she was murdered and hidden at an unknown location in the Midlands. The book was passed around my class, a sort of rite of passage to mark our 18th birthdays, a warning about what might happen to us out there, beyond the safe confines of these school walls. We took note, watched ourselves and always, always minded each other. However, 15 years later, I am unable to say that our best efforts worked, because crimes far beyond our control, did visit us.

We all know a Mark Hennessy, a Graham Dwyer, a Tom Humphries and a Kieran Creavan, for they walk among us in plain sight. We identify with them; we might drive the same car, have similar aged children and even like the same bands. This empathy is what makes their crimes incomprehensible to us — we identify with them in so many ways, save for their abhorrent acts. Joe Bloggs, whom we implicitly trusted, is now irreconcilable to us. We trust. They betray.

But in Ireland of 2018, where strangers leave food hampers outside the doors of struggling families and where neighbours knock in on you during the big freeze, we must continue to trust one another and not give these criminals our fear, for there is far greater good out there, than bad.

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