Sex Crimes (17 page)

I’d watched the clip and it was noxious. Libby had been quite vile.

But the courts and police do reserve the right to discretion and cautionary action and in this case, I believe the girls should have been given a serious talking to and received psychological support. I don’t believe they pose any threat to society, unlike Bergin, whose next drunken tryst might be with a mature-looking fourteen year old!

I was determined not to follow the damn case. I wanted to wipe my hands clean of it. The slimy Tim Murphy was splashing his mug all over the air-waves, shouting long and hard about gender equality. This from a man who has a firm full of males and a secretarial pool full of attractive young females. He’s such a hypocrite.

Outside the court house on that fateful day, I sat with Libby’s parents and talked to them.

‘I don’t think we can cope with this,’ Casey O’Neil sobbed.

‘Our family’s reputation is shot. I’ll probably lose my tenure and frankly, we’re going to have to change our names and move to a different area,’ Tom added.

I looked at them. Parents wondering where they went so wrong. They had given their daughter the very best education and a comfortable lifestyle. But to be honest, I wondered where they had gone so wrong as well. The girl was clearly damaged. What had damaged her so badly?

‘What’s your relationship like with Libby? Do you talk? Is there open communication?’ I asked.

They looked at one another uncomfortably.

‘Not very good, lately, that’s for sure,’ Libby’s mother conceded. ‘We used to be very close, Libby and I. Really good friends. We’ve grown apart over the last few years, I suppose.’

‘Is there something that triggered her retreat from you, do you think?’

Another furtive look passed between them.

‘I’ve been suffering from anxiety lately and …well….Tom and I haven’t exactly been getting on very well.’

‘Oh, tell it like it is,’ Tom O’Neil said more forcefully than I had ever heard him say anything.

He was a quiet man who had not contributed much during my meetings with the family. The whole business had been very distasteful for him as if his daughter being raped was a major inconvenience. How he managed to process the new spin that his daughter was the rapist, I can only imagine.

‘We haven’t had anything that could be considered a marriage in a very long time. We tolerate each other’s presence in the house and only stay together because of Libby. To give her stability and not disrupt her during her most important last years of school.’

‘Oh, don’t think she doesn’t sense that you’re also having an affair with a nurse you met at your A.A meetings. She’s overheard us arguing about that,’ Casey O’Neil said caustically.

‘That’s a pretty personal thing to be sharing, Casey. That I’m a recovering alcoholic. But you and I both know I am not having an affair.’

‘So what do you have Viagra for? Hey?’ she hissed.

‘I’m not going to dignify that with an answer, you vile creature,’ he said back.  ‘Perhaps your suicide attempt last year might have been a catalyst for her becoming distant.’

The two of them were playing some sick game, trying to outdo one another in the public humiliation stakes. It was interesting that during a time when Libby must have been terribly afraid and confused, being questioned by the police, the parents were only concerned about themselves. I wanted to get quickly away from them but thought I should remind them of who was needing the most attention.

‘Libby is going to need an awful lot of support if they go ahead and take this case to trial. If anyone is going to need a name change after all this, it will be her,’ I said, trying to change the subject.

‘It’s that Abigail Proudfoot that led her astray,’ her mother said, shaking her head. ‘You’ll remember that before that night, before all of this, my daughter was a virgin. It was that tramp who coerced her into behaving in such a way.’

‘We’re still not sure of course what transpired after the footage was taken,’ Tom sighed. ‘When that bastard woke up he still might have forced himself upon our daughter.’

‘She hates her father,’ Casey said suddenly, looking up at me. ‘She’s afraid of him. Why is that, Tom? What did you do to make her despise you so much?’

Tom bristled and stood up, smoothing down his crumpled suit.

‘That is not true Casey,’ he replied. ‘ We’re not overly close but love doesn’t have to be clingy and fawning all the time.’

‘I think she hates you because you’ve got a thing for teenage girls!’ she announced, loudly enough that someone near-by turned to look at us.

‘How dare you. That’s not true,’ he said, looking like he might strike her. ‘You take that back. I’m sorry Ms Bourke, for my wife. She’s under a great deal of stress.’

‘Of course it’s true,’ she said bitterly. ‘You admitted that affair with your student. A mere teenager.’

‘The woman was nineteen,’ he said, heavy on the word
woman
.

‘Semantics. Barely out of high-school,’ she snapped. ‘Well I told your daughter about that and she was horrified.’

‘You didn’t!? How dare you!?’ he said in an almost growl. ‘That was over a decade ago and not something that has ever happened again and you had no right to tell her that!’

‘You had no right to destroy my life like that.’

Okay, that was it for me. Enough! Those two were poisonous and I could understand how Libby might have been damaged by living in such a war zone. That was emotional abuse to subject a child to that. Sharing intimate information such as some historic affair was also damaging.

‘Do you mind if I make a suggestion?’ I asked. ‘Libby has been advised that she does not need to answer questions until she has legal counsel and a guardian present. I know a woman, a defence lawyer, who is very good and she would work well with Libby, I think,’ I said, figuring the poor girl would need someone like Sheryl Linstead. ‘I’ll give her a call if you like and see if she can get down to the station this afternoon.’

‘Fine,’ Casey nodded. ‘That sounds good. How much is all of this going to cost? If it goes to trial?’

‘A lot,’ I said. I couldn’t lie. ‘With your income you would not be eligible to Legal Aid for a public defender.’

I looked to each of them, the middle aged man in his bad suit and the pinched, hard woman with the severe blonde bob, and I frowned.

‘Which one of you is going to the questioning?’

‘Um,’ Casey said quickly. ‘Neither of us. We asked the school counsellor to go as our representative because I don’t think either of us could handle listening to the details of …this business, again today.’

I nodded and walked away. They were a pretty unlikeable pair and lacked any trace of concern for the welfare of their only daughter.

I walked away from that circus, glad that my home life was so settled. Those O’Neil’s had riled me though. Thoughtless, heartless parents. Libby was probably so under-loved that she was acting out with her promiscuity and sexual perversions in a misguided attempt for intimacy. No wonder she wanted to keep that little baby in her belly!

The radio in the car was playing a
Drop Dead Gorgeous
song that afternoon and I switched it straight off. Ironically the scandal had put their albums back on the charts. Number one, two and three on i-tunes apparently. In a strange twist of fate, Chris Bergin was benefitting financially from this. The old ‘proceeds from a misdeed’. But there was nothing anyone could do about that.

For months after those girls were charged, the entire world’s eyes were still watching the ongoing sensational soap opera. They were seen largely as bad girls, evil entrapping creatures who tried to destroy a celebrity. But there others like me, that prefer to look deeper for the real reasons behind their behaviour and there I see not bad girls, but sad girls. Girls looking for love and attention in all the wrong places.  

***

14.

Julie Farrelly

 Our phones had sat on the table between us and despite the coffees, the lunch, the one glass of wine each and the constant conversation, those phones were really the main focus of our attention. It was almost two in the afternoon and the committal hearing should have been nearly over. The lawyer had estimated that it would be done and dusted by lunchtime. The staff in the café were starting to get sick of the sight of us. At least little Harrison was having a good sleep.

When Meg’s phone finally did ring, it made us both jump and I almost peed myself. My heart leapt into my throat and Meg just stared at it with both hands over her mouth.

‘Answer it,’ I snapped, desperate.

‘Hello?’ she said into the phone. ‘What happened, Chris? Tell me.’

Her voice was shaking, her face pale and her eyes shut, screwed up tightly.

‘Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God,’ she breathed frantically.

Meg hung up, dropped the phone back onto the table, put her head down and began to howl like she was turning inside out. My stomach dropped.

‘Oh, Meggy,’ I said reaching out to touch her dark hair.

She looked up at me and sniffed a deep and snotty sniff and then grinned through her tears.

‘No Jules,’ she said. ‘They dropped the charges.’

And then I burst into tears as well and we sat there blubbering happy tears of relief.

‘Thank God. I mean, really.  Like, thank-you God,’ I cried.

I’m an atheist but right at that moment I wondered if there wasn’t some divine presence looking out for Meg and Chris and their kids. With Chris freed from this millstone, he and Meg could concentrate on repairing and rebuilding their lives.

‘So, will you let him move back in now?’ I asked after we’d calmed down enough to talk.

She shrugged and the smile dropped.

‘I don’t know. I can’t just forget about it. I feel like I’ve been hit by a bus. Physically and emotionally. I’ve got raging hormones all over the place. I don’t want to slip into post-natal depression again.’

‘Having Chris there to help with the baby and Olive will ward that off. Clay and I will come and visit and things will get back to normal,’ I cajoled. ‘Please don’t define Chris by the worst thing he’s ever done. That’s not fair.’

‘I know. I know. Chris and Clay are meeting us here in ten minutes. They’re leaving from the rear exit to avoid the crowds,’ Meg said and pushed her hair back behind her ears.

I had noticed more people walking back away from the court. I presumed it must have been a big turn-out. It was an open court and every man and his dog will have turned out to see Chris arrive at court. The lucky few who pressed inside would have been entertained by the sordid details. Meg was not strong enough to deal with the hearing and didn’t want a take her baby along. It would have been a media spectacle.

And then a man stopped outside the window and stared at us. I felt uncomfortable and frowned at him but he was staring very rudely right at Meg. Meg looked up and gasped. The man was about fifty and kind of scruffy. He was in a brown suit. I looked at the two of them. It was obviously someone who had recognised Meg as the wife of the man of the moment and then a woman near the man grabbed his sleeve and pulled him along.

‘That was weird,’ I said, just laughing off the creepiness of it.

Meg was staring straight ahead like she was in a trance.

‘Meg?’

It took a few seconds but then she looked up at me.

‘Julie. I love you,’ she said quietly. ‘And I trust you more than anyone I have ever known. More than I trust Chris these days.’

‘The feeling’s mutual,’ I smiled.

She was a great friend and we had been there for each other through so much.

‘But,’ she swallowed hard. ‘I’ve been weighed down with something terrible for the past week. Something so horrible I haven’t been able to process it and I’ve just locked it away in the dungeon of my soul, you know?’

‘Only a writer could tell it like that,’ I smiled back at her. ‘Unburden yourself Meg. If you think it will help.’

‘Okay.’ She took a deep breath. ‘You know that stupid fling, the one we were talking about just before lunch. My indiscretion all those years ago.’

‘Uhu,’ I answered, looking over her shoulder to make sure Chris and Clay weren’t approaching.

‘Well, the guy…the guy was Tom O’Neil, the father of …of
that
girl.’ 

I stared at her and I know my mouth fell slack.

‘I beg your pardon!?’ I said, leaning forward, trying to read her face, not sure I had heard this correctly.

‘I didn’t twig at all initially. I didn’t want to know anything about the case. I completely avoided the newspapers and the media and her name was suppressed. I spoke to no-one and as you know, Jules,  I asked you all to never discuss it anywhere near me. I didn’t even know the girl’s surname until last week just before Harrison was born. Chris left me a copy of his paperwork for court on the kitchen bench and told me if I wanted to look over it, I could. He thought it might help me. Help understand it. ’

I was in shock, still trying to wrap my head around what I had heard. I was trying to concentrate as I listened to her go on.

‘Sure, Chris had confessed it all to me after the cops had charged him. Told me about the blonde and said he vaguely remembered the dark one, Libby…going down on him but he said he couldn’t explain why he did what he did. He blamed the combination of exhaustion, a line of cocaine and alcohol and said he went mad.’

‘But, the father. You’re sure?’

She nodded slowly.

‘I looked at the paperwork. Curious. Really wanting to know it all. With the file just sitting there I was overcome by a need to understand it more. When I read that name, O’Neil, and then saw her father was a Professor Tom O’Neil it clicked. That was him at the window, just now.’

She put her hand over her mouth again.

‘That is the most bizarre coincidence I have ever heard,’ I said, amazed. ‘What are the chances?’

‘No, Jules,’ she whispered across at me. ‘I don’t think it was entirely coincidental. I think that girl knew. Let’s face it, I write for a teenage audience and it’s not hard to connect me to Chris. It’s in every interview or biographical piece.’