Sounds like the Corbetts have done an exemplary job of keeping the children safe from the media and the Martens. It must be so strange for the children, as far as they know, bad people go to jail, but even getting to trial is such a lengthly process these days. Plus there's the fact MM is a blonde white female American. Genetic lottery + home country advantage = institutionalised favouritism. Children don't know and shouldn't have to take all this into account. I can't imagine how to explain all this to a child, wouldn't even know where to start.
I've lurked on and off since I first heard of this case. I'm Irish but don't live there and what got me interested in the first place was, as has frequently came up in the threads, is the Martens sheer arrogance.
In Ireland, cremation is still rare, especially for Irish Catholics. I've been to enough Irish wakes and funerals to know they're typically a huge family gathering. But what did the Martens do in the aftermath? Try to arrange for a cremation, without JC's family there, seemingly informing them of it as a mere afterthought. Leave no trace of him, take the kids, assimilate them further into their family unit. What Molly wants, Molly gets. Accomodating her needs have became so normalised, contemplating the consequences has became alien, imo.
In their arrogance, they never counted on the organisational skills of the Corbetts. Tracey Lynch was on holiday at the time and cancelled it, to immediately organise getting JC and the children home. They seem to be good people. Just a quick glance at their facebooks reveal a history of interest in charitable causes. Meanwhile, the Martens send them the ambulance bill.
I remember this because reading about it got me interested in my home country for the first time in well over a decade.
My sister has a few things in common with MM. Both the only girl in a family with lots of brothers, spoilt rotten as a result, daddy's little princess, used to getting their own way, has disorders. There's an 18 year age gap between my sister and I and fortunately for us both, I was the trigger that got her the help she needed. She hated having a baby sister and tried to use me as an ashtray. These days she's kept on her meds, her kids are all university grads and we're not close but that is fine.
Molly had this ready-made family she could insert herself into, we already know through previous articles/threads she tried to pass off the youngest child as her own. Yet JC balked at the idea of letting her formally adopt the children. I can understand why - from a legal pov, that would forever destroy the ties between his children and their mother's family. That is adoption - new birth certs issued, officially their mother would've been just the birth mother and their mother's family irrelevant to them from that legal standpoint. He couldn't do that to his children and their extended family.
But for MM, his refusal ruined her illusion of a happy family unit. Used to getting her own way, this definately would've frayed the relationship. She had already made gains in isolating them from their bio family, assimilating them into her US family, encouraging the use of Grandpa and Seecu, her family replacing their own as cousins, uncles, etc. Even the clothing, such as the daughter wearing a t-shirt saying USA, the son taking up typical US sports. Throughout all this, she's kept up and reinforced that discard and replace attitude in regards to their Irish family through her facebook posts, project the idea that her family are the real victims, even other members of her family have got in on maintaining that act, with one family member referring to the children as her grand-niece & nephew. On the surface, it sounded nice that the Americans were treating them just like any other member of the family, but it seems a little sinister considering what we know now.
Yet I recall an article where the son told the Corbetts/Lynches the telephone numbers she'd tried to hide in their belongings and now he's asking why they're not in jail? Seems like even before JC was murdered, Molly's perfect narrative was going off script.
Regardless of what the verdict is or if there is an appeal, she can never bring the children back into that narrative. She will have to re-invent herself once more and come up with a new script.
