'It's a rollercoaster you just can't get off': Kathleen Chada on husband's parole bid

Vivienne Clarke

“It's a rollercoaster you just can't get off,” is how Kathleen Chada has described the parole process she is now experiencing 13 years after her husband Sanjeev Chada killed their sons Eoghan and Ruairi.

The mother told Newstalk Breakfast with Anton Savage how she had met with the parole board in April. “I've done my part in it, but he's made his application.” The application for parole had been “a real trigger” for her.

“For me, it was very important, is very important that the parole board in particular, but others as well, are aware of not just what he did, but how he did it.”

Kathleen Chada said that she could not come to terms with what her former husband had done. “I'll be honest with you. You don't, you can't, because it almost feels like coming to terms is almost justifying it. So you learn to live with it, and that's what I've done.

“I've had to just learn to live with it. I don't accept it, but I do accept that there's nothing I can do about it. I can't change what happened. I certainly can't bring Eoghan and Ruairi back, unfortunately, and God knows I've spent a lot of time wishing that. 

“What has helped me is the support of family, friends, and community, but a really, really good psychologist, who just helped me. So I was able to reach out, and I am able to reach out, and I suppose quite grounded as a role, and quite practical in myself anyway. All of that did help, but you don't come to terms with it. You can't, there isn't anything that will ever, ever make me understand or, or accept in a way what he did.”

Kathleen Chada said she would like to see a system of minimum sentencing introduced, where a judge would be in a position at the time of a trial to impose a defined number of years before consideration for parole.

It could be 20, 25 or 30 years, “if that had been the case, you could park everything. You could actually go ‘right, that is in the future. That's something that I don't have to think about for now.

“Unfortunately, once the 12 years hits, it's about every two years when there is another application. I know that every two years he has the option to apply for parole and I'm assuming that he will do that.

“It is my belief that eventually he will actually be released. And I'm told officially that he will still be serving his sentence and that he'll be out on license whenever that time comes. But, if he's not actually behind bars, behind a locked door, then to me, he's got a freedom that he does not deserve.

“I don't understand how he can feel justified in applying for parole in the first place, to be honest.”

When asked if she dreaded the prospect of him being released, she said she did as at least at present she knew where he was.

“I have wondered if, if my own life would be at risk if he's out, he wanted to kill me at the time. At the moment, I'm very safe. I don't feel in any way threatened, but I will feel threatened if he's out because nobody can predict what will be in his mind. Nobody, including, and very much myself would have predicted that he would have done what he did. 

“So if he has the ability to hide that part of himself, it's always there.  The reality is, we don't know, none of us can ever know what he is capable of if he was out. So, the risk is always going to be there in my view.”