Mother Insane in Daughter’s Death

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Mother Insane in Daughter’s Death

January 23, 2008

By Paddy Clancy

DR. Lynn Gibbs, a psychiatrist who drowned her 16-year-old daughter Ciara in her bath, offered a wistful smile to her husband Gerard when a jury found her not guilty of murder by reason of insanity.

He took her head in his hands, closed his eyes tightly and laid his temple against hers. Then he stepped back to allow others their turn before his wife was escorted, a psychiatric nurse on either side, to the Central Mental Hospital in Dundrum, Co. Dublin.

Observers at the Central Criminal Court in the city said the scene crystallized the catastrophic reality that was endured by a solid, middle-class family tormented by the effects of 47-year-old Gibbs’ dreadful illness.

During her trial on a charge of murder the jury heard how there were “never any cross words” within the family and how Gibbs “lived for her family.”

She had looked on her daughter as “the apple of her eye,” but she feared the teenager had inherited her illness.

Gibbs’s family and mental history were put before the court. Her own mother had suffered depression and took her own life when she was 49. Her father died of lung cancer. Gibbs had attempted an overdose at the age of 20 during a depressive period in university.

Gerard Gibbs broke down a few times as he told the court how he and his wife were trying to get their daughter help for her undiagnosed eating disorder. He said that, with hindsight, he realized the discovery of Ciara’s eating problems had resulted in a massive change in his wife who lost almost 14 pounds.

He discovered Ciara’s body in the bath, and a cleaver nearby. His wife was lying on the floor with blood on her. He lay them side by side on the bed, slapping their faces to try to revive them.

He said his wife, whom he had been with since she was 18, had an excellent relationship with their daughter. He choked back tears as he added, “She loved Ciara.”

Lynn Gibbs admitted drowning Ciara after becoming convinced she was suffering from anorexia and that there was no hope for her. The teenager died at their home near Gowran, Co. Kilkenny, on November 25, 2006.

Gibbs denied murder. The verdict that she was not guilty by reason of insanity was returned under the terms of an act that only became law in June 2006. It replaced a century-old law that did not allow for any consideration by a jury of diminished responsibility with regard to fatal assault.

It took the jury just 21 minutes at the end of a two-day trial to decide that Gibbs was not guilty of murder by reason of insanity.

The case had tugged at the nation’s heart-strings.

Justice Paul Carney told the jury that the evidence pointed strongly to the fact that Gibbs did not bear criminal responsibility in respect of the tragic event by reason of her mental disorder.

He added that if the jury was to decide otherwise they would be saying in effect that “psychiatry is bunkum, that you have no time for it, that you don’t hold with it.”

The Garda (police) officer who led the investiga-

tion into the death, Superintendent Aidan Roche, said outside the court, “The verdict has been a correct one and I can only hope that some day Lynn will be well enough to come home.”

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