Alanna Quinn Idris: ‘I am a strong person but this was very hard’

On Monday of this week, Josh Cummins (19) received a three-year sentence at Dublin’s Circuit Criminal Court. Almost two years ago, on December 30th, 2021, Darragh Lyons (19) and two other boys attacked Alanna Quinn Idris, then 17, and her then boyfriend, Louis O’Sullivan, on Ballyfermot Road in Dublin.

In the course of the attack, Quinn Idris was struck in the face with the saddle of an electric scooter. Her eyeball was ruptured in the attack, during which time she became unconscious, and despite several surgeries, she has since lost all vision in the eye. She also suffered a broken cheekbone and tooth.

In March of this year, Cummins’s co-accused, Darragh Lyons (19), was sentenced to four and a half years in prison for assault causing serious harm to Quinn Idris.

Quinn Idris is now 19. Talking to The Irish Times about her reaction to Cummins’s three-year sentence, she said: “I just feel like it wasn’t justifiable really. I feel it was like a smack in the face, not only to me but to any other woman or girl who has been a victim of some sort of violence in Ireland. The punishment doesn’t really fit the crime.”

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She fears that the short sentences will act as a deterrent to other victims of violence coming forward to give evidence.

“I 100 per cent think that the lenient sentences will deter other people from coming forward. For me, I know I am a strong person – I’m not trying to blow up my own head or anything – but for me to have gone through everything I have gone through, even being a strong person, I found it a very hard process. I know it would be hard enough for other people to go through that too. But now, for anyone knowing everything I went through, and seeing those short sentences, why would they go through all that stress for that result? I think it will really scare people off about coming forward about their own assaults.”

Quinn Idris has given a number of interviews this week. “I see it as something that needs to be done,” she says. “I can’t let these people just get away with this and think it’s okay. I can’t send the message to anyone else that would do something like this, or to any other person who would hurt somebody, I can’t let the message be out there that that is okay for them to do and that they would get away with it without being called out.”

What helped her to get through a horrendously challenging time, involving multiple surgeries, a disrupted life, and attending court, all at a time when she is still a teenager?

“My family are always there for me. Sometimes it is a bit much because I think they think I need more support than I feel I do! I feel like I’m fine doing everything by myself. I am the oldest of six. I have always been the strong one, a leader kind of person, just kind of naturally. But my family are so ready to help me with anything that I need, and I am grateful for that,” she says.

I am half white and I am half black, but if I had been a white Irish girl, and these boys hadn’t been white, then my assault would have been more of an issue I think for a lot of people

—  Alanna Quinn Idris

“I did have my partner [Louis O’Sullivan] at the time. He was the other person who was with me, at the assault. We always had that thing together throughout everything else; he’d been through it too. That really did help me too. Now we aren’t together any more, but I am just having to push myself through it.”

Quinn Idris talks about how the assault has since affected her social life and her sense of safety in public places.

[ Alanna Quinn Idris tells court the life she knew came to ‘abrupt end’ on night of attack ]

“Any girl – I think any young girl – is always fearful when they are out and about, it is a natural thing. No, I don’t mean - it is not natural, but it is something girls and women do go through. Now, knowing that this has happened to me, I am a bit more fearful.”

She talks about the recent riots. “I thought it was crazy. It was the last thing I ever thought was going to happen in Dublin. It was insane.” It also made her think about her identity and the racism she has experienced.

“I am an Irish person. I have been in Ireland my whole life. I am mixed heritage. My mother is Irish, my dad is Nigerian. I am no different than any other Irish person. What happened to me was done by four Irish boys.”

She goes on to say: “I find it so ironic then – and someone actually left a comment on my TikTok about this – if this had been other way around, if I had been maybe more of a white Irish girl when I was attacked, then it would have been a bigger issue. I am half white and I am half black, but if I had been a white Irish girl, and these boys hadn’t been white, then my assault would have been more of an issue I think for a lot of people. I just find it really ironic the way people go on. What happened to me was that I almost was killed by four Irish people.”

She got to give a victim impact statement. Did it help?

[ Father hails Alanna Idris Quinn’s Leaving Cert results months after she lost sight in eye in high-profile Dublin attack ]

“Not really. I felt like everything I said was just forgotten about. I think I would like to say that when it comes to the courts, I feel like – in my opinion – that you can’t really just say whatever you want [as the person on trial] and have it be a mitigating factor. These people have used the reasons that they have grown up in Ballyfermot and they have come from broken homes and they left education and everything like that. But I have lived in the exact same area my whole life. I wasn’t given an opportunity to talk about my life in court, and anything that had happened to me as a result of the attack.”

Since the attack, and having had her photograph widely published in the media, Quinn Idris has been recognised in Dublin by a number of people she does not herself know. She is a beautiful young woman, with a visible eye injury, and has had to accustomise herself to unwelcome attention. She knows people mostly mean well, but while some wish to sympathise with her, others say things that bring her back to a time she does not wish to dwell on.

“I feel it is like scary, the amount of people who would know me and come up to me. The majority of people are lovely people, but some do freak me out a little bit. I remember one time I was standing outside a coffee shop while my ex was inside, and a man came up to me and started talking to me. I was trying to figure out if I knew him or not, but I realised I didn’t. He started going on about the awful ‘bayting’ [beating] I had had, and all these really inappropriate things. I am someone who really struggles not to be polite to people, I just don’t want to offend anyone, and I found it so hard to get away from him,” she recalls.

Quinn Idris did her Leaving Certificate last year, and praises the staff of her school for being so supportive of her in the wake of the attack. She went on to start a post-Leaving Cert (PLC) course but had to drop out.

“I ended up dropping it because of the stress of courts and surgeries and everything, and it was just too much for me to handle. That’s why I’m thinking if I didn’t have all that [the assault], I could have done it and been able to go about my life like any other normal person. I feel like everything could have been so much different. This happened right before my 18th birthday. Right before my debs, my graduation, and it is something that was always hanging over me during all of these times. I had plans to travel and stuff like that, and go to college.”

She has since started another PLC course; a two-year course in organic horticulture, and has a job working as a hotel housekeeper. “I would love to eventually do agriculture sciences and from that, with the organic horticulture and sustainability, be at a point where I can provide for myself and not have to rely on other people. I would love to be able provide my own food, and maybe even electricity,” Quinn Idris says.

“But I haven’t actually been to college since my surgery, because I wasn’t able to go outside. Again, I am a bit over my head, I have missed so much of the course now with this and for me to catch up it is going to be a whole other ordeal. It has all been unnecessary stress.”

She had further eye surgery in April, but the operation was not successful. She has recently had the same procedure again. “I have to see now if this one will stick and if it does, thank God, I will need some more work done outside the eye, to make myself look as close as how I used to as we can get. That’s what I am hoping for.”

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