Lonely and sad, Elaine felt she was ‘born bad’

Elaine thought she’d been “born bad”, “never felt free”, and was a lonely woman with no friends, the medical notes also reported.

Lonely and sad, Elaine felt she was ‘born bad’
She told psychiatrists that since puberty she wanted someone to tie her up and take control of her life

Niamh O’Connor
PUBLISHED
15/02/2015 | 02:30

On the last night of her 14th admission to St Edmundsbury psychiatric hospital in Dublin, 36-year-old Elaine O’Hara could not settle.

Rosetta Callan, a staff nurse of over 40 years, was on night duty and she sat on the side of Elaine’s bed at around 11 pm, she told the court.

“What’s up?”

“I’m just pissed off,” Elaine said before launching into an explanation why. She’d been seeing a man – they were both into bondage, but he was constantly coming to her apartment in Belarmine Plaza in Stepaside – he had a key.

Ms Callan told the court she told Elaine to call the gardai and tell them she was being harassed.

“She said he had young kids and she wouldn’t like to harm him by going to the gardai,” Ms Callan told the Central Criminal Court this week at the trial of Graham Dwyer.

The 42-year-old architect and married dad denies murdering Elaine on August 22, 2012, the day after the bedside conversation with Ms Callan took place.

Elaine was “tearful but kind of laughing too,” Ms Callan recalled in court.

Prolific notes kept by medical experts from the time Elaine was 12 were revealed to the jury.

“I’d rather be a boy, I don’t like being a girl,” session notes recorded Elaine as having said.

The psychiatrist Dr Anthony Clare, since deceased, mentioned in his case notes that Elaine’s sexuality was confused, observing that she did not dress in a feminine way.

“A play” had been going around in Elaine’s mind from puberty involved wanting someone to tie her up and take control of her life, the court heard.

Around 2000, Elaine had given her own explanation of the “play”, writing: “It was a bad night last night, I couldn’t fight it, I don’t know why, maybe I’m just tired of fighting, I don’t really know, all I remember is wanting to hurt myself really bad by tying myself up or by cutting – you have to get worse to get better. I just wish I could get better sooner rather than later, my head is in bits probably because of the play last night.

“I usually can control it but last night I couldn’t, I lost it. I’m glad I told someone . . . [It] is getting worse and has been for a long time – cutting, kicking, whipping, screaming, shouting. It was really bad, it wouldn’t leave me alone, all I wanted was to be left alone, but no, I always get worse, worse, more of the same.”

Elaine’s psychiatrist in St Edmundsbury Dr Matt Murphy told the court that she had been diagnosed with borderline personality disorder.

Her cognitive behavioural therapist Stuart Colquhoun, who saw her the day before she disappeared, testified when people were nice to her, she didn’t believe it was genuine, and when it was genuine Elaine couldn’t understand why.

Elaine thought she’d been “born bad”, “never felt free”, and was a lonely woman with no friends, the medical notes also reported.

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