The father of a teenager who died in a fall from a cruise ship after being served alcohol wants someone held accountable, he tells Kathy Sheridan
No one knows precisely how or when 15-year-old Lynsey O'Brien died. She probably drowned and it was probably sometime around 2am on January 15th.
The only indisputable facts are that she had been served enough alcohol in about 90 minutes to make her extremely drunk and that within minutes of being put to bed by her parents, she fell overboard from the balcony of the cabin she shared with her sisters on the Italian-registered cruise ship, Costa Magica, sailing out of Fort Lauderdale, Florida.
Her parents, Paul and Sandra, who live in Terenure in Dublin, only know details of her alcohol intake because in the four nightmarish days on board the ship after Lynsey's disappearance, Paul threatened that he would have to be "carried off the ship" unless the bar receipts were handed over to him.
These show that Lynsey and a friend ordered their first drink at 22.27 on January 4th and had a fresh round on average every 17 minutes. They began with two "Sex on the Beach" cocktails (each made up of an ounce of vodka and schnapps) costing $14.95 (€12.28); at 22.43, they had two "Woo Woos" (2oz of vodka plus schnapps) at $13.80 (€11.34); at 23.34, a vodka mixer at $5.75 (€4.72); at 23.54, another vodka mixer and an extra shot of vodka costing $8.63 (€7.09); and 15 minutes later, two more Woo Woos plus a liqueur costing $18.98 (€15.59).
The gap between 22.43 and 23.34 was filled, reportedly, by a round of two large vodka shots, on the house.
Meanwhile, Lynsey's parents, Sandra and Paul, were finishing up dinner with their party, a 30-strong mix of old and trusted friends, some dating back to childhood in Walkinstown and Ballyfermot. The group ranged from grandparents to babies, and included seven teenagers.
Of their four children, Sandra was most concerned about the safety of their boy, Dean, aged eight. She also kept 11-year-old Imelda in sight and had been warned by a friend to keep an eye out for older men who preyed on young girls on cruise ships and she even swatted one away at one stage. That night, she says wryly, she kept 17-year-old Kelly with her. "She was the one I was worried about."
Usually, after dinner, the group broke up for a smoke and re-grouped and it was then that Kelly went off to find Lynsey and her friend. Kelly found them in a small bar off the main pool area, where Lynsey had apparently been engaged in conversation for much of the time with one particular, middle-aged barman, and shepherded them back to their parents.
The O'Briens immediately complained to a senior officer, explaining that their daughter was only 15 and should never have been served alcohol. Lynsey was quiet but upright. They bought bottles of water and made her drink some, before going down to their cabins. They watched her take off her boots and the jewelled Gucci watch they had given her for Christmas (which Paul now wears), and Sandra warned her repeatedly that she would deal with her tomorrow. Paul kissed Lynsey goodnight and the couple retired to their cabin next door.
NO ONE KNOWS exactly what happened next. "I was still in my dress when we heard the children shouting," says Sandra. "It could only have been 60 seconds later." They assume that once Lynsey lay down, she got what their close friend, Jim Lawless, calls "spinning room syndrome" and felt sick. She would have had to cross the room past her young sister's bed to get to the bathroom, so as her single bed was the one closest to the balcony exit, it is assumed that she chose to go outside to be sick.
Reports that she was swinging from balcony to balcony are dismissed as ridiculous by Sandra; it would have been physically impossible since they are made of glass, she says. They believe that to reach over the chest-high balcony to be sick, she would have had to step up on to the railing or step onto one of the chairs that were there.
They've heard all the rumours about her threatening to jump and have been forced to address them. Their faces crumple while Jim Lawless explains that her body struck a lifeboat on the way down. Had she intended to jump, he surmises, she would probably have jumped clear.
According to the O'Briens, it took the ship 15 minutes to turn around once the alarm was raised. While they huddled together in shock and terror, they assumed boats had been launched in a rescue attempt. But as far as the O'Briens know no speedboat was launched. They claim that when a lifeboat was dropped five hours later, it was to retrieve the marker buoys. In their view, the cruise ship was never on a rescue mission, it was always about recovery "from the first minute", although they were only about 20 miles off the Mexican coast in calm and warm seas.
But they can only surmise. Unlike a fatal incident in normal jurisdictions, there has been no open investigation - and certainly no report made available to them. The FBI claims to have no role because Lynsey was not a US citizen and because there is no body, there can be no inquest.
"I thought I was getting on an American ship with American laws," says Paul. "I let my guard down for once in my life with my child and she died."
THEY KNOW NOW that although the ship sailed from a US port, the incident occurred in international waters, where investigation and reporting depend effectively on the goodwill of the cruise ship operators. According to US congressman Christopher Shays, quoted in the Miami Herald, "the effective reach of US authority depends on the willingness and ability of cruise ship operators to make security a visible priority, recognise and report incidents, preserve evidence and conduct thorough on-board investigations". He added: "Good luck to passengers wishing to understand their rights at sea."
"It was supposed to be a holiday ship," says Paul O'Brien, trying to explain why parents didn't feel it necessary to keep their children within sight at all times. Cruise ships encourage families to engage in various activities being run concurrently on board, appropriate to their age and interests.
Prominent notices on the sailing tickets and around the ship warn alcohol will not be served to those under 21. As cash does not change hands on board, each passenger has a charge card, designed to alert bar staff that the individual signing the bill is under 21.
In theory, it should be the perfect ID system. In practice, every teenager in the O'Brien travelling party was served alcohol without the consent or knowledge of their parents. Two days after Lynsey's disappearance, a woman in the group was able to order alcohol in the name of her two-and-a-half-year-old daughter.
Paul O'Brien contrasts this with the sophisticated security surrounding the ship's cash casino with its numerous vigilant floor staff and ubiquitous cameras. It's one of the reasons why, although the barman serving Lynsey was later sacked, the O'Briens regard him only as the scapegoat of Carnival Corporation (owners of Costa Magica).
A spokeswoman for its subsidiary company, Costa Cruises, could not be contacted in Florida yesterday.
An additionally disturbing feature of this tragedy is that the O'Briens feel they have to justify their role as parents. A viewer responded to a Sky News report on the tragedy with a text asking "where were the parents?"
"You won't meet two more protective parents," says Jim Lawless, who describes nights in Dublin when the O'Briens left events early or meals unfinished to sit outside the Wesley disco waiting for their older daughter Kelly and how they always insist on having their children collected and delivered.
Paul O'Brien shows this reporter around their multi-million euro home in Terenure to demonstrate how it was geared to the children and their friends, with their own large, superbly equipped lounging room, leading to a patio fitted with surround-sound systems and, further in, a full-sized snooker table in a room painted to resemble a Mediterranean terrace.
On Saturdays, father and daughters went horseriding; on Wednesdays, the family dined out together.
The whole family spent up to seven weeks of the summer in their Spanish holiday home and their Easters, Christmases and long weekends were almost always taken away, says Sandra, all with the objective of keeping their children occupied and off the streets.
Sandra, quiet-spoken and clear-sighted, mentions that in the nearly 18 years since Kelly's birth, she and Paul took just two breaks together without the children.
THEY WERE CHILDHOOD sweethearts. As a successful young hairdresser in Walkinstown in 1982, she was able to lend him the £600 that, with his father's help, was the seed money for the window manufacturing business he started in a small shed.
That business, now based at Nangor Road, Clondalkin, provided the springboard for the property development that has made Paul O'Brien, at 42, a wealthy man. Since the late 1980s, he has been accumulating, and lately restoring and renovating, property in partnership with Lawless. A house on Anglesea Road, Dublin 4, bought and renovated by the partnership, achieved a record price of €3.1 million before Christmas.
The problem for Carnival Corporation is that Paul O'Brien is in a position to give up the day job and devote his hyper energy to making someone accountable for his daughter's death.
"The only time I get angry with people is when they disrespect me," he says, "and the ship has disrespected me". His friends tell stories about a do-er and whip-fast decision-maker, who thinks nothing of making work calls at 7am or on a Sunday.
"He was always like that", says Sandra, "now he's like that but with grief added on." It's how they are surviving, she says quietly, talking of sleepless nights and uneaten meals, while patting Daisy the puppy, which she acquired to bring life and distraction to the household after the tragedy.
Outside the window, a piece of the large, beautifully landscaped garden under a blossoming cherry has been ear-marked as Lynsey's memorial garden. There have been funeral services of course. There was a "burial at sea" on board ship, three days after Lynsey's death, when a priest celebrated Mass attended by white-suited ship's officers and the family dropped floral wreaths and single roses into the sea. At Paul's request, an on-board singer sang Tears in Heaven, a song written by Eric Clapton after the loss of his young boy. And at home, there was a funeral Mass.
But the presence in the living-room of a small, heart-shaped, black granite gravestone, engraved with Lynsey's name, alongside a framed loving letter to her father in girly handwriting, points up the absence of a grave.
They are announcing a $250,000 (€205,000) reward to anyone who helps to recover Lynsey's body. It's a forlorn hope, they know, but it's another way of surviving.
Paul has recorded some of his thoughts in the flysheet of a book called A Broken Heart Still Beats: After Your Child Dies. They are a cry of rage against alcohol and the destruction it wreaks on families and society.
He and Sandra always enjoyed a beer, he says, and still do, but he pours vitriol on the politicians who do nothing about underage drinking and on those who focused their attention on smoking when, he says, "it is alcohol that destroys families . . . My daughter would be here now if she had not been served alcohol."
If something isn't done, he says, "I'm going to have to chain myself to Imelda until she's 20."