Mother of Seb refutes RTÉ claims that she was invited on to The Late Late Show.

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IMMEDIATE: Tuesday 11th March, 2014.

 

 

Mother of Seb refutes RTÉ claims that she was invited on to The Late Late Show. 

 

The mother of tragic Seb Creane, who was stabbed to death by Shane Clancy in 2009, appeared on Ireland AM this morning to refute claims by RTÉ that the Creane family had been invited to appear on The Late Late Show in 2009.

 

Nuala Creane rejects RTÉ’s statement (issued on the evening of Monday 10th March) which claims that the Creane family was the first to be asked to take part in the programme, but declined.

 

RTÉ’s statement came on the back of an exclusive TV3 documentary, ‘A Search for Justice – Death in Bray’ which aired on Monday night.

 

Over 200,000 viewers on average tuned into TV3’s A Search for Justice – Death in Bray commanding a 13.9% share. The programme reached 528,000 individuals in total with a peak audience of 252,900.

 

Click here to see Ireland AM’s interview with Nuala Creane.

 

The mother of tragic Seb Creane, the young man who was stabbed to death by Shane Clancy in Bray in 2009, appeared on Ireland AM this morning to strenuously deny claims made by RTÉ that her family had been invited to appear on The Late Late Show in 2009.

 

RTÉ last night (Monday 10th March) issued a statement claiming that the Creane family had been the first to be asked to take part in the programme but declined. RTÉ also maintain that the invite to appear on The Late Late Show remained open to them throughout. However, Nuala Creane strongly denies this. Speaking to Ireland AM’s Sinead Desmond, Nuala said:

 

“They never invited us on to the show, and in fact, when we look at it now, it would have been totally insensitive of them to have invited us on the show. We were in bits.

 

“But, apart from that, that we were not invited, all of our interactions at that stage, a month after Seb’s murder, were through the Gardaí.”

 

When Sinead asked how Nuala had found out that the interview was to be broadcast, Nuala said: “It was the week of the 25th of September. I’m particularly aware of it because Seb’s month’s mind was coming up on that Saturday, and the guards came and said that this interview was being broadcast on The Late Late Show, and I got so sick with worry. I was so upset that I couldn’t tell Jay because I knew that this would have left him reeling.

 

“I couldn’t believe that this is what we had to face. How could anyone do this? I couldn’t believe it. The guards said to us ‘look, we cannot stop this. There is nothing we can do. We’ve asked them’. They said ‘all you can do is write a letter’.”   

 

Nuala then went on to explain how The Late Late Show agreed to postpone the interview with Shane Clancy’s mother by a week so that it would not air the same weekend as Seb Creane’s month’s mind memorial service, but she then detailed how RTÉ informed her that they would be running with the interview the following week. 

 

“I sat down on the 1st October. I rang Cathal Goan’s office first and I spoke with his secretary and then I sat down and I said I was now putting my concerns in writing. And I wrote to him and I said ‘please, we’ve lost one son, we nearly lost the other. We can’t face this. Dylan is too vulnerable now at this stage to be facing this. The inquest is the proper forum. Please, hold it. Wait until following the inquest’.

 

“Cathal Goan did not respond to me. I got a phone call from whom I now know was the then Executive Producer of The Late Late Show – a man called Jim Jennings and he said to me that he had been given my letter from Cathal Goan, so that he could deal with my concerns, and I said ‘well Mr Jennings, let me send you a copy of my letter because I can’t speak to you about this issue’, and that is why Mr Jennings wrote back to me.” 

 

Nuala Creane then went on to read from a copy of the letter Mr Jenning’s allegedly sent to her in 2009, on behalf of The Late Late Show. The letter detailed how it was not RTE’s intention to add to the Creane family’s distress but that the interview would indeed be going ahead and would not be postponed indefinitely. The letter did not extend an invite to the Creane family to participate in the show.

 

When asked by Sinead Desmond if she had ever expressed a wish to appear on The Late Late Show, Nuala said: 

 

“When your child is murdered or killed, and you go into the morgue to see your child for the first time, you’re not allowed to touch their body. Physically, the guard will prevent you from touching your child’s body because the state has not had time to do the autopsy, because your child’s body has become the property of the state until the state discharges its duties.

 

“The state wasn’t going to discharge Seb’s right to fair procedures until the inquest. So as I said, if there was criminal proceedings nobody would be allowed make any claims until following that inquest, but here we are five weeks later, an opinion is given by a doctor on The Late Late Show. His opinion on that programme became fact. It was taken up by the rest of the media, and the perpetrator became the victim. That is what happened.”

 

Nuala Creane’s closing words to Sinead Desmond were: “The real issue is that our state has not put procedures in place to protect people. We’ve moved on from that [The Late Late Show broadcast].

 

When asked what she’d like to see happen going forward, Nuala said: “Like I said we’ve moved on but this is not going to be last time this is going to happen. All we say to the state is ‘please protect people’.”

 

“I’m wearing a badge that says ‘stop bullying’. We have been bullied by this state, from the moment Seb died, at every level. We went through all the processes. We thought we were doing the right thing by keeping it quiet. We didn’t involve the media. We went through due process. Save for the Gardaí who dealt with us, at every level beyond that, we were treated with disdain and I have said this to the Attorney General herself. We have been treated with disdain and given only platitudes. Now that is how murder is dealt with when the victim has taken his own life. Please, change things. Don’t leave people in the mess we were left in.” 

 

Over 200,000 viewers on average tuned into TV3’s A Search for Justice – Death in Bray commanding a 13.9% share. The programme reached 528,000 individuals in totalwith a peak audience of 252,900. With exclusive interviews from Jennifer Hannigan, the girl at the centre of the tragedy, the documentary told the story of one young man’s heartbreak which led to a frightening sequence of events culminating in the killing of Seb Creane, the attempted killings of Jennifer Hannigan and Dylan Creane and the suicide of Shane Clancy. The 90 minute documentary featured Seb’s parents Nuala and Jay Creane, Seb’s brother Dylan and his girlfriend Laura Mackey, as well as Shane Clancy’s mother Leonie Fennell.

 

ENDS

 

Click here to see Ireland AM’s interview with Nuala Creane

 

Click here to watch the full episode of ‘A Search for Justice – Death in Bray’ on 3Player

 

‘A Search for Justice – Death in Bray’ aired on Monday 10th March at 9pm on TV3.