Our lives utterly destroyed by killing - family

REACTION:THE McLAUGHLIN family said that their lives had been "utterly destroyed" by the "brutal and pointless" killing of their daughter and sister.  

The family emerged from the court to read a victim impact statement but they were forced to retreat behind the gates of the Four Courts because of the huge media scuffle.

Dozens of camera crew, photographers and reporters jostled at the gate as Siobhán's sister Aisling stood behind the wrought-iron bars and read the statement.

She said the family were haunted by the fact that they were unable to help Siobhán on the morning she died, "unaware that the place she felt safest in was, in fact, the most treacherous".

The family agreed with the sister of Pavel Kalite, one of the Polish men killed in Drimnagh, when she said that people who did such things "cease to be human".

Siobhán's mother, Deirdre McLaughlin, said the last few years had been "absolutely horrendous" but the family's faith in God had kept them going.

Her one consolation over the last two years was to remember the words of a nun who told her that Siobhán's soul went to heaven so fast that it could not be measured.

"These words have stayed with my family for the last two years and they will stay with me forever. That's what keeps us going, our faith in God," Mrs McLaughlin said.

Asked what the guilty verdict meant to her, she said justice was done and "we are happy, we are very happy", but also heartbroken.

"The last two years have been absolutely horrendous, absolutely unbearable. But now there is a little bit of closure, a tiny bit of closure. But it will never be closed, never."

Siobhán's sister Brighid said the family had been changed forever since Siobhán's death. "I'm altered forever. The whole family is altered forever. There's no joy and there will never be joy any more even though he's gone off in the prison van tonight," she said.

She said the pain would never leave them. "All I want to do is to see her again. That's all that anyone in the family wants to do."

Asked to describe Siobhán, she said "her life was her family". Siobhán had been portrayed as a glamorous woman but she was also a caring person, bringing trays of food to the Simon Community, Ms McLaughlin said. "She was a total sweetheart."

She said she could not isolate any favourite memories because every memory was special.

Ms McLaughlin, a former journalist and now an artist, said she knew every line in her sister's face. "I drew her all the time," she said, adding that her face would be etched on her mind forever.

She herself had already suffered some trauma in her life before her sister's death, having fought breast cancer and lost her husband in a drowning accident. "I thought life couldn't get any worse, and it did," she said.

The McLaughlins also praised the work of the Garda, particularly Det Sgt Michael Gibbons, who said a prayer over Siobhán's body when he arrived on the scene.

Siobhán's friends paid tribute to her on RTÉ News last night. Cathy Reilly said Siobhán was devoted to her son, who was three when she died.

"I'll never know any woman to bond like she bonded with that little boy. It was an incredible experience to watch."

Carol Summers said her friends never believed suggestions that the death was suicide. "If it was a car accident or an illness you could begin to comprehend it, but the way she died, you could never get your head around it."

Anne Clohessy said it was still very hard to contemplate that her friend had been murdered but a guilty verdict meant that justice had been done. "But again it doesn't bring her back."