ONE of the attackers who left the American author Robert Drake paralysed after a vicious assault in Sligo in 1999 has sent an apology to his victim, writes Eithne Shortall.
The attack, which Drake believes was in response to his homosexuality, has left him confined to a wheelchair and with brain injuries. He now has difficulty speaking and eating. Glen Mahon, 21 at the time of the attack, and Ian Monaghan, then 20, both from Sligo, were convicted in 2000 of causing serious harm to Drake, and sentenced to eight years in prison.
Where I Am, to be broadcast on RTE1 on Thursday, follows Drake as he travels to Ireland for the first time since the assault. The documentary reveals that one of the attackers wrote to Drake to apologise.
“They’re men now and one of them wrote me a great letter that said how having a kid really made him think differently,” said the American author, who was 36 at the time of the attack. “He just thought, ‘Wow, what if someone did this to my kid?’”
In the documentary, Drake also returns to Dublin, where he meets the author Colm Tóibín, and to Sligo, where he revisits the site of the attack. The author said it had been easy for him to forgive the attackers because the gardai caught them right away, allowing him to set aside that aspect and concentrate on himself.
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The attack led to the end of Drake’s relationship with Kieran Slevin, an Irish doctor for whom he had moved to Sligo. Slevin also features in the documentary.
Drake believes the two attackers realised he was gay and thought he was trying to make a move on them. “I guess if I could talk to them I would ask only one question, ‘Why didn’t you just leave?’” he said.
Drake does not say which of his attackers wrote the letter, although the film implies that it was Monaghan. Pamela Drynan, the director, said the correspondence was sent before they began making the documentary.
“He wanted to come back [to Ireland] and piece together a new sense of the story, after having learnt to talk again. I just felt there was something there as a filmmaker I could address; him telling his own story, when there had been a possibility he would never talk again or even wake up from the coma,” said Drynan.
“He’s an openly gay man and also religious. He had this idea of forgiveness.”