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Irish Times
25-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Irish Times
Natasha review: Moving insight into brutal personal experience that became a national lightning rod
In Ireland, there is the unstated assumption and, indeed expectation, that people, women especially, will keep their heads down, eyes to the floor – no matter what injustices they have suffered. But Natasha O'Brien did not receive the memo and spoke out after she was brutally assaulted in Limerick in 2022 and her attacker received a suspended sentence. Her case caused a national outcry and was regarded as one more sign of official indifference towards an epidemic of violence against women. This being Ireland, people also have something to say about a woman who used her voice, and O'Brien received a lot of hatred online, as she reveals in Kathleen Harris's compellingly meditative and dreamlike Natasha (RTÉ One, Wednesday, 9.35pm). A moving and thought-provoking documentary, Natasha sets itself the difficult challenge of reporting in a straightforward fashion on the assault on O'Brien by former Defence Forces member Cathal Crotty and the Director of Public Prosecution's subsequent appeal against the lenient sentence, while also capturing O'Brien's state of mind. [ 'The systems need to be gutted': Natasha O'Brien leads rally for justice at Dáil Opens in new window ] Harris's strategy is to figuratively sit at O'Brien's shoulder and to capture the rush of emotions – positive and negative – as her case becomes a national lightning rod. It's a disorientating experience – as it was for O'Brien, who, being human, has her moments of doubt and cries the day after Crotty receives a two-year jail term on appeal. READ MORE Natasha opens with O'Brien recalling a childhood trauma: 'I was swimming in the sea, a wave took me under. I was helplessly accepting I was being pulled under. There was nothing I could do.' That experience seems to have foreshadowed the assault she suffered at the hands of Crotty after she and a friend intervened as he and a number of other men yelled homophobic abuse at another passerby. 'The last thing he said before [he] started punching me was, 'Oh, you're a dirty lesbian'. That first punch just hooked me, it was so powerful. They kept coming: right hook after right hook,' O'Brien recalls. Her injuries were extensive: bruising all over the legs, arms and back, a broken nose – and a concussion that left her at high risk of a potentially fatal brain bleed. But despite speaking out about the leniency of the sentence, O'Brien explains that she does not always see her moral strength as a positive – maybe it would be easier if she just let things go. 'I spent time wishing I was different,' she says. 'I don't make my life easy by keeping my head up and speaking my mind. It doesn't make my life easy, and it never has.' As director, Harris skilfully teases out O'Brien's relationship with her parents, who separated when she was a child. Her father, Joe, is stoically supportive, but sparks fly between O'Brien and her mother, Anne. 'We speak less, we hardly speak at all,' says her mother. Gender violence has reached epidemic proportions the support group Women's Aid said recently, and those statistics mirror the experience of O'Brien, Meav McLoughlin-Doyle and Bláthnaid Raleigh , who talk about surviving physical assault and sexual violence. 'My ex-husband will get six years,' says McLoughlin-Doyle. 'The trauma of what happened to myself and my children will last a lifetime.' As is only correct, Natasha makes for sober viewing. But there is tremendous poignancy in the final scene of O'Brien and her mother at the beach, staring out to sea. It would be trite to say that O'Brien has achieved closure, and the film does not seek to impose that narrative on her. But there is empathy and togetherness between daughter and mother, and after all the physical and emotional pain O'Brien has suffered and the treatment she went through at the hands of the justice system, it is tremendously heartening to see her looking to the future with hope. Natasha can be streamed on RTÉ Player
Times
22-06-2025
- Times
‘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. • Cast convicts out of army, urges Natasha O'Brien '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.' • It's time for men to speak out about the savagery against women 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
