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‘Natasha O'Brien had courage to ruffle feathers and be difficult'
Kathleen Harris, the documentary maker, first heard the name Natasha O'Brien in June last year, when the young woman stood outside Limerick circuit criminal court to speak against the lenient sentence that her attacker had been given. On May 24, 2022, O'Brien had been brutally beaten unconscious by Cathal Crotty, who was then an active-duty member of the Irish Defence Forces. The now-retired Judge Tom O'Donnell imposed a fully suspended three-year sentence on Crotty, and his sentencing remarks were roundly criticised as he took into account the impact that a custodial sentence would have on the 22-year-old's army career.
O'Brien, however, did not go quietly. The subsequent public outcry sparked a wave of protests across the country in support of her, and she became an inadvertent spokeswoman and activist for victims of gender-based violence. Now, her quest for justice is being told in Natasha, a documentary directed by Harris.
'Like a lot of people in the country, I was shocked to see the story,' she recalls. 'I saw Natasha in the news like everyone else, and was very surprised to see how outspoken she was. We see footage of victims going in and out of court, but we don't often hear them speaking the way that Natasha spoke. So she caught my attention.'
The American-born film-maker was approached by the producers Elaine Stenson and Stephen McCormack. They brought her on board to document the impact that the assault had on O'Brien's life, as well as the appeal against Crotty's sentence, which was heard in January and resulted in him being jailed for two years.
'I'm very drawn to stories about women and about activists, and it was a story that I thought was important,' Harris says. 'When I met Natasha, she was so keen to do a film. She saw it as an opportunity. And she kept saying to me, 'Kathleen, I want to be vulnerable. You need to push me to be vulnerable. I want this to be raw, I want people to see everything, I want to let it all hang out.' That was her attitude.'
The film was originally envisaged as an investigation of the criminal justice system in Ireland, but soon morphed into something more personal. For Stenson, the associate producer and driving force behind the documentary, O'Brien's charisma dictated that shift. 'Natasha annoys people,' Stenson says. 'She doesn't apologise. That upsets people. It upsets people when a woman demands attention and keeps demanding attention.'
Harris, a former Irish Times video journalist, has form in such projects, having previously directed the documentaries Birdsong and Growing Up at the End of the World — both of which wove personal stories together with wider themes, including environmental activism and climate activism.
At the film's core are the reverberations that the assault and its aftermath had on O'Brien's life, particularly on her relationship with her mother, Anne, which became visibly strained at points.
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'Those scenes are hard to watch,' Harris admits. 'There is a lot of pain there, but they were willing to put that out there and allow it to be on camera, and we tried to be as delicate with it as we could. It is difficult to watch, but I think it also lets us see how some of this stuff plays out between loved ones.
'At one point in the film, Natasha explicitly talks about the ripple effect of violence and of trauma — she even mentions the taxpayers who had to pay for her medical bills. This isn't something we think about. We think that a victim of crime is the face on the news, but there's a long shadow there,' Harris adds.
'I've worked in news for years,' Stenson says, 'and there are some stories that need to be told in something more than three minutes, and some people who need to be on a bigger screen.
'Natasha is a tough woman but she also has her vulnerabilities. She wants to tell her story but doing so is a form of retraumatisation. Natasha thought that she was going to die during that attack, and in making this documentary we had to ask her to relive that, over and over.'
In one especially striking scene O'Brien meets two other victims of gender-based violence, Maev McLoughlin Doyle and Bláthnaid Raleigh, and they discuss the fallout from their respective cases. It portrays them not just as one-dimensional 'victims' but as women who continue to feel the ramifications of their trauma in their everyday lives. It also illustrates how lacking the system is when it comes to supporting victims. At various points, a frustrated O'Brien is seen on the phone begging the director of public prosecutions for an update on the forthcoming appeal and complaining about how she is learning information about her case from the media.
Despite its largely personal focus, the film does touch upon the legal system and explores the process of restorative justice, which allows the victim to have a conversation with the perpetrator in the hope of gaining closure and potentially reducing the risk of them reoffending. Although it has proven success rates, it is a rarely used option in Ireland.
'We do talk in the film about how you never get to address the perpetrator when you're a victim,' Harris says. 'You never get to actually say to the person, 'This is what you did to me,' and you don't get to ask them questions — and they also don't have to explain themselves or apologise. Those are all things that are critical to moving beyond trauma.'
Restorative justice is offered in less than 1 per cent of cases in Ireland, she says, but points out that O'Brien was not sure if it was something she would have wanted. 'Like she says in the film, it would have been daunting because you sit across from the person who did this thing to you, but as she also said, going through the court system was daunting as well.'
Tackling such a complex story has had an impact on Harris's life too, including affording her a new empathy for her relationship with her mother, because 'in part, this is a film that is about a mother and a daughter'.
'I'd also say that the film was meant to be a celebration of women, and of women like Natasha in particular — who stick their head above the parapet, who have that courage to speak out and ruffle feathers and be 'difficult'. I think I did a lot more of that when I was younger, but as I've gotten older I've stayed quiet more. So I think, going forward, when there are moments I see something that's not quite right or not OK, I will think of Natasha and her courage.'
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Harris says she hopes people who see the film are inspired by O'Brien. 'I hope other victims and other women see it and think, 'OK, she could do that; I can do it too' — if it's right for them, of course. And I think she'll make people feel not so alone going through that process, and that they're not a weirdo for feeling all these weird, contradictory, messy emotions in the wake of something horrible that happened to them.'
Stenson agrees. 'Natasha is going to be on our screens again this week. And that's going to annoy people again. Natasha is unfiltered, so unashamedly herself. You don't know what she is going to say next. She doesn't care what you think of her. And that's what makes her so remarkable.'
Natasha airs on RTE1 on Wednesday, June 25, at 9.35pm
