When Judge Kinder asked O’Brien if she supported the recommended dispositions for Sean Mulveyhill and Kayla Narey, she paused for several seconds before nodding.
Phoebe Prince's mother, Anne O'Brien, listens to the proceedings in Hampshire Superior Court Wednesday.NORTHAMPTON – The courtroom held its collective breath as Anne O’Brien described the last time she embraced her daughter, Phoebe Prince, in the crematorium a few days after the 15-year-old hanged herself.
“I lifted the lid of the coffin and held her for the very last time,” O’Brien told Hampshire Superior Court Judge C. Jeffrey Kinder. “My little girl, so very full of life, was now so cold.”
For those wondering why O’Brien has kept her silence throughout the 16 months following her daughter’s suicide, her halting, tension-packed statement during dispositions for two of the six students charged with bullying Prince suggests there are some things mothers just don’t want to talk about. O’Brien nonethless broke that silence Wednesday in Hampshire Superior Court, giving the world a glimpse into the pain and grief she’s been holding in her heart since Jan. 14, 2010, when Phoebe hanged herself with a scarf in their South Hadley home.
As the Phoebe Prince story grew to global proportions over the past year, O’Brien has been neither seen nor heard from. The suicides of Prince and 11-year-old Carl Walker-Hoover of Springfield put the international spotlight on the subject of bullying. But while Sirdeaner L. Walker, Carl’s mother, has met with presidents and governors to help publicize the issue, O’Brien has kept to herself. On the rare occasion a family member has spoken publicly on Prince and the issues surrounding her, it has been O’Brien’s sister, Eileen Moore, who has usually done the talking. Jeremy Prince, O’Brien’s husband, has also spoken out several times from his home in Ireland.
While Moore mingled with reporters prior to the court appearances Wednesday of Sean Mulveyhill and Kayla Narey, O’Brien remained sequestered in the victim-witness room of the courthouse. When she emerged she was flanked by Elizabeth Dunphy Farris, who prosecuted the cases until she left the Northwestern office last year, and a victim-witness advocate. She looked visibly distraught when prosecutor Steven E. Gagne invited her to go before the bench and make her victim’s statement.
“It’s nearly impossible to measure the impact of Phoebe’s death on our lives,” O’Brien began.
Phoebe PrinceShe described her daughter as “beautiful, gregarious and kind-hearted” and listed some of Phoebe’s joys in life. These included the letters of Henry VIII to Anne Boleyn, reading with her parents and discussing literature with her mother. Those joys have all vanished.
“My kitchen table is a very quiet place to be these days,” O’Brien said.
O’Brien described trips to France in which Phoebe would run excitedly around markets, returning with her arms full of fruits and vegetables, a big smile on her face. A trip to France would only bring sadness now, O’Brien said.
Although she consented to the deals that resulted in probation for Narey and Mulveyhill, O’Brien deplored their treatment of her daughter. Mulveyhill had been charged with statutory rape for sleeping with the under-age Prince. That count was dropped when he pleaded guilty to criminal harassment, but it was not forgotten by O’Brien.
“I was lied to about the nature of the relationship,” she said, calling Mulveyhill a predator. If she had know he’d been sleeping with Phoebe, O’Brien said, “he would have been forbidden to see her.”
O’Brien cited Phoebe’s final text message, in which she referred to the pain and humiliation she had suffered at the hands of Mulveyhill and her other tormentors on the day of her death.
“It was one final nail in my coffin,” O’Brien said, quoting the message. “I can’t take much more. It would be easier if he handed me a noose.”
O’Brien also referred to a meeting between her daughter and Narey in which Prince said she didn’t know Narey and Mulveyhill were dating and apologized for getting between them.
“Phoebe found the courage and compassion to seek out Kayla Narey and apologize,” O’Brien said. “(Narey) had the opportunity to be a true leader and put a stop (to the bullying). But she was too weak of character to match Phoebe’s courage.”
When Kinder asked O’Brien if she supported the recommended dispositions for Mulveyhill and Narey, she paused for several seconds before nodding. Afterwards, O’Brien disappeared again into the victim-witness room, rejecting requests for a copy of her statement. The swarm of media then went to a different part of the courthouse for a statement by Gagne. When he appeared 15 minutes later, Gagne had little to say except that he was unable to answer questions. By the time reporters made it back to the lobby outside the victim-witness room, O’Brien was gone.