An American woman whose Irish husband ended his and their three-year-old daughter's life by walking in to the sea has spoken of her relief at being granted permission to exhume the remains of her child for burial in her native country.
Rebecca Saunders posted on her Twitter account “Clarissa’s Cause” about the development.
“Today I was granted the licence to exhume Clarissa. After nine years I will be able to take Rissa home! This has been a really long time coming. It’s a day for celebration. A heartfelt thank you to everyone who has helped to shape this in to reality. You’ve no idea what this means to me and May family.”
In April of last year Ms Saunders met a $50,000 (€45,280) fundraising target to have the remains of her child exhumed and transferred to the US for burial.
Rebecca Saunders tweeted "We've done it - thank you" as her Go Fund me page hit its €42,000 target following a huge reaction to her appearance on RTE's Claire Byrne Live. The story of her plans to exhume the body of her daughter first broke in the Irish Examiner.
Ms Saunders, who lives in Houston in Texas, says nine years ago "in a fog of grief and shock" she permitted her darling child Clarissa to be buried "with the father she loved, but who took her life from her."
Note
Rebecca was just 26 years old when her husband Martin (50) drowned their daughter Clarissa McCarthy at Audley Cove in West Cork on March 5th, 2013.
Three days later father and daughter shared a single coffin at a requiem mass at St Mary's Church in Schull. They were laid to rest in an adjacent graveyard.
In a suicide note left for Rebecca, Mr McCarthy wrote that: "If you can take Clarissa to America I can take Clarissa to Heaven.”
He told her that her family would be dead by the time she read the letter.
“You can now get on with the rest of your life as mine and Clarissa's is about to end. By the time you will get to read this letter I and Clarissa will be in Heaven. You did not realise how much I loved you. I could not see my daughter being raised up by a stepfather,” he wrote.
Ms Saunders set up the Go Fund me page to pay for legal counsel in order to apply for the remains of her daughter to be exhumed. The monies will also pay for the exhumation and transfer costs to the US if her application is successful.
All funds not used in the process to exhume Clarissa will equally be donated to Edel House in Cork, which supports victims of domestic violence and Cork University Maternity Hospital Neonatal Unit.
Snap decision
Rebecca said that when tragedy struck she believed that Martin had taken a snap decision. However, subsequent information indicated that there was a degree of planning to his actions.
"I really can't say that I feel I will ever be able to forgive him. I feel like he used his daughter as a sword to stab me in the heart with. And I think that is very, very wrong. I think that the expectation that I had that I bury Clarissa so quickly was...it just wasn't fair. Clarissa and her father died on a Tuesday and they were buried on a Friday. In that small space of time I had to decide what happened to this little girl who was my world.
£The first thought that struck me in the shock that I was in was that I didn't want her to be alone. At the time I didn't know just how planned out Martin had gone. The totality of the steps he took to ensure that if it wasn't that day he had the steps in place to carry out his end game another day."
Marriage
Meanwhile, cracks in the relationship between Martin and Rebecca began to emerge six months after their marriage in the summer of 2006. The pair met when she was a teenager and studying in Ireland.
Rebecca says her husband got in to legal battles over land and became fixated on them.
She felt that family life was non-existent as Martin was 'obsessed' with his legal issues and his work as a farmer. Rebecca says she and Clarissa were "forgotten about”.
Rebecca and Martin sought marriage counselling and made every effort to turn their relationship around. On the night of the tragedy Rebecca had arranged to meet someone to talk about accessing legal aid to end her marriage.
She told Martin she was going to dinner with a friend. The pair had discussed the disintegration of their relationship and Rebecca had brought up the subject of divorce.
Poignantly, Rebecca says that some of her happiest times with Clarissa were on the beach where she drowned.
Rebecca, who has remarried and has two children, says that she is trying to learn to live with the tragic loss of her firstborn. She wants to live and not allow the tragedy to "consume her."
Inquest
An inquest in to the deaths in 2014 heard from Assistant State Pathologist, Dr Margaret Bolster who said that both Mr McCarthy, who was found to have a blood alcohol concentration of 204mgs per 100ml, and Clarissa had died from acute cardio respiratory failure due to drowning. She found no evidence of physical restraint.
Coroner for West Cork Frank O' Connell returned verdicts that both Mr McCarthy and Clarissa died from cardio-respiratory failure due to drowning and that in the case of Mr McCarthy it was self-inflicted while in the case of Clarissa, she was taken into the water, became unconscious and drowned.
The inquest in Bantry Co Cork heard that a major land and sea search was launched for the duo when a note addressed to Rebecca was discovered in the milking parlour on March 5th. The note was in Mr McCarthy's hand-writing.
Mr O'Connell, who read the note, said it was clear why serious concerns over the safety of the duo were raised as the farmer was "explicit" in the note about his intentions.
The inquest was contentious. It became heated when Mr O’Connell said that Mr McCarthy may have held his daughter underwater with some objections from persons present.
Mr McCarthy had changed his will before his death and excluded his wife from inheriting major assets.
If you have been affected by any of the issues raised in this article, you can freephone the Samaritans 24 hours a day for confidential support at 116 123 or email jo@samaritans.org.
You can also freephone the national Bereavement Support Line run by the HSE and Irish Hospice Foundation at 1800 80 70 77 (Monday-Friday 10am-1pm), and the contact information for a range of mental health supports is available at mentalhealthireland.ie/get-support/.
In the case of an emergency, or if you or someone you know is at risk of suicide or self-harm, dial 999/112.
