Clarissa’s Cause: Mother gets permission to exhume remains of her daughter drowned by father

“Today I was granted the licence to exhume Clarissa. After nine years I will be able to take Rissa home! This has been a really long time coming. It’s a day for celebration. A heartfelt thank you to everyone who has helped to shape this into reality. You’ve no idea what this means to me and my family.” 

In April of last year, Ms Saunders met a $50,000 (€45,479) fundraising target to have the remains of her child exhumed and transferred to the US for burial.

The story of her plans to exhume the body of her daughter first broke in the Irish Examiner.

Ms Saunders, who lives in Houston in Texas, said nine years ago "in a fog of grief and shock", she permitted Clarissa to be buried "with the father she loved, but who took her life from her".

Ms Saunders was just 26 when her husband Martin, 50, drowned their daughter Clarissa McCarthy at Audley Cove in West Cork on March 5, 2013.

Three days later, father and daughter shared a single coffin at a requiem Mass at St Mary's Church in Schull. They were laid to rest in an adjacent graveyard.

In a suicide note left for Ms Saunders, Mr McCarthy wrote: "If you can take Clarissa to America I can take Clarissa to Heaven.” 

He told her her family would be dead by the time she read the letter.

“You can now get on with the rest of your life as mine and Clarissa's is about to end. By the time you will get to read this letter I and Clarissa will be in Heaven. You did not realise how much I loved you. I could not see my daughter being raised up by a stepfather,” he wrote.

Ms Saunders set up the GoFundMe page to pay for legal counsel in order to apply for the remains of her daughter to be exhumed. The money will also pay for the exhumation and transfer costs to the US.

All funds not used in the process to exhume Clarissa will equally be donated to Edel House in Cork, which supports victims of domestic violence and Cork University Maternity Hospital Neonatal Unit.

Ms Saunders said when tragedy struck she believed Mr McCarthy had taken a snap decision. However, subsequent information indicated there was a degree of planning to his actions.

"I really can't say that I feel I will ever be able to forgive him. I feel like he used his daughter as a sword to stab me in the heart with. And I think that is very very wrong.

"I think that the expectation that I had that I bury Clarissa so quickly was... it just wasn't fair. Clarissa and her father died on a Tuesday and they were buried on a Friday.

"In that small space of time I had to decide what happened to this little girl who was my world.

"The first thought that struck me in the shock that I was in was that I didn't want her to be alone. At the time I didn't know just how planned out Martin had gone.

"The totality of the steps he took to ensure that if it wasn't that day he had the steps in place to carry out his end game another day."

The pair met when she was a teenager and studying in Ireland. Cracks in the relationship between the couple began to emerge six months after their marriage in the summer of 2006.

Ms Saunders said her husband got into legal battles over land and became fixated on them.

She felt family life was non-existent as Mr McCarthy was "obsessed" with his legal issues and his work as a farmer. Ms Saunders says she and Clarissa were "forgotten about”. 

The couple sought marriage counselling and made every effort to turn their relationship around. On the night of the tragedy, Ms Saunders had arranged to meet someone to talk about accessing legal aid to end her marriage.

She told Mr McCarthy she was going to dinner with a friend. The pair had discussed the disintegration of their relationship and Ms Saunders had brought up the subject of divorce.

Poignantly, Ms Saunders said some of her happiest times with Clarissa were on the beach where she drowned.

Ms Saunders, who has remarried and has two children, said she was trying to learn to live with the tragic loss of Clarissa. She wants to live and not allow the tragedy to "consume her".

An inquest into the deaths in 2014 heard from assistant State pathologist Dr Margaret Bolster, who said that both Mr McCarthy, who was found to have a blood alcohol concentration of 204mgs per 100ml, and Clarissa had died from acute cardiorespiratory failure due to drowning. She found no evidence of physical restraint.

Coroner for West Cork Frank O'Connell returned verdicts that both Mr McCarthy and Clarissa died from cardiorespiratory failure due to drowning and that in the case of Mr McCarthy it was self-inflicted while in the case of Clarissa, she was taken into the water, became unconscious and drowned.

The inquest in Bantry, Co Cork, heard a major land and sea search was launched for the duo when a note addressed to Ms Saunders was discovered in the milking parlour on March 5. The note was in Mr McCarthy's handwriting.

Mr O'Connell, who read the note, said it was clear why serious concerns over the safety of the duo were raised as the farmer was "explicit" in the note about his intentions.

The inquest was contentious. It became heated when Mr O’Connell said Mr McCarthy may have held his daughter underwater, with some objections from persons present.

Mr McCarthy had changed his will before his death and excluded his wife from inheriting major assets.