Ann Lovett's death came just four months after the outcome of a divisive abortion referendum in which a two-thirds majority voted to enshrine the right to life of the unborn in the constitution, creating confusion over where that left the rights of the mother. By the time an unwitting Mary Maguire left her home on Moxham Street shortly after, the news was already out in the town. Ann was still conscious. The same day Sr Plunkett was reading out her statement to the media, a government meeting was being held in Dublin about the Ann Lovett case. This was due to a combination of exposure and blood loss in childbirth, with exposure being the main factor.

The forecast was for a cold, wet windy day. I remember when they were taking the coffin out of the hearse, there was a collective gasp . Please subscribe to sign in to comment. “I thought she might have stayed on to help out with the school magazine.”. “Ann Lovett is after dying,” they told her bluntly.

“I knocked on doors and people said they didn’t know the Lovetts at all. It was to Mary she had come on December 27th, put her arms around her, and confided, “Mary, God, I’m pregnant.” She didn’t tell Mary how many months pregnant she was; perhaps she did not know herself.

He spoke of their “close-knit” family. .

Lovett then pleaded with McDonnell not to tell anybody. Ann’s father, who was from the village of Kilnaleck, Co Cavan, moved the family back there in 1972. The grotto was built in the 1930s, under the direction of Fr Peter O’Farrell who had been a curate in Longford town, and volunteered in the Royal Irish Regiment. The 2015 Poetry Competition "A Poem for Ireland" shortlisted the 1991, This page was last edited on 9 July 2020, at 02:10. The Garda file that went to the coroner has never been publicly seen. “They were very basic,” says Desmond.

Her favourite subjects were art, English and biology. He rushed to the grotto, at which point the canon and Tony Kelly were arriving on the scene. “Ann was a girl who was full of life, and had a great energy about her,” says Michael.

But Ann Lovett did not go to school that day, and was apparently not missed by either teachers or classmates. Or understanding, and empathetic. The family lived in the Co Cork town in a Victorian house on Graham’s Terrace overlooking the harbour. McDonnell did not know for sure whether the child Ann had borne had been his, but he had lived with the tragic outcome for the rest of his life.

Many residents of Granard, accused the media of being overly intrusive and of wrongly attaching blame to the community for the tragedy.

She was fond of hanging out with her friends in Granard’s one small “pool hall” – in reality a little grocery shop with a pool table and four Space Invader game machines crammed into it. One of the shops opposite Cnoc Mhuire was a small grocery, run by Michael McCarthy. The story shocked the nation and left many asking how such a thing could happen. The next day Granard was swamped with national and international media. We have gone through the past week with Ann’s family, and shared their grief and their sense of loss. Also in the ambulance was a Sr Damien, who was attached to St Joseph’s Hospital, Longford. The one question everyone wanted an answer to was: how could this have happened? We respect and accept the personality and individuality of each of our pupils. She was very, very outgoing, very bubbly, and a bit of a tomboy. The ambulance arrived at 5.10pm, by which point it was dark. Ann Lovett (6 April 1968 – 31 January 1984)[2] was a 15-year-old schoolgirl from Granard, County Longford, Ireland who died giving birth beside a grotto on 31 January 1984.
“My pal said, I don’t care what anyone says, but she’s not pregnant.”, “I said, is she supposed to be? “It was very morose . It was the Gallagher home and Eugene Gallagher’s young daughter answered. I can’t remember a single thing about how she phrased it, just that Ann was dead. Emily O’Reilly went to Granard on February 12th. In front of the assembled media, Sr Plunkett sat among her silent staff and read out the following words in a shaky voice. He, like most other people, had first heard of the story two days earlier in the Sunday Tribune. In the afternoon of Tuesday, 31 January 1984 in Granard, County Longford, fifteen-year-old Ann Lovett left her Catholic Cnoc Mhuire Secondary School and made her way to a Grotto dedicated to the Virgin Mary at the top of her small hometown in the Irish midlands. The baby and Ann were carried to Dr Donoghue’s car, and he drove Diarmuid Lovett, his dying daughter and dead grandson back to the family home on Main Street to await the ambulance. For others it was an opportunity to finally reveal similar stories that had remained hidden for decades. A friend pierced her ears for her one evening when Ann called to her house. Main Street Granard is anchored at one end by the Cnoc Mhuire secondary school, and by St Mary’s church on an small hill at the other end. That she died. Who was the father – a person guilty of statutory rape for having sex with a minor – and where was he? “I thought she was going to seek help.”, Dr Marie Skelly, the obstetrician who had attended Ann in Mullingar hospital, told the inquest that “I have known of five certain cases where pregnancy was concealed right up to the time of birth, even from people in the same house and I have known of two that were concealed from people sharing a room with the pregnant woman.”. In summing up, coroner Patrick Mangan said it was clear Ann’s parents did not know she was pregnant, otherwise they would have sought help for her.
Of those who responded, most declined to be interviewed.


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