Sign a petition to create Jennie’s Law: A Domestic Abuse Register for Ireland here.
Jennifer Poole was covered in bruises. Jennie, as everyone called her, was always covered in bruises.
The star camogie player for Erin’s Isle GAA club in Finglas, she was dedicated on the pitch. The baby of the house, you heard her before you saw her.
She loved to laugh. If a party was starting to fade, Jennie would get up and start singing.
She was popular too, athletic, funny, gorgeous, of course she was popular. Her older brother Jason said for all her dynamic energy, she had a quiet side and kept a lot to herself.
This became more apparent when she told her parents she was pregnant at 16. The family were in shock. Jason, a teacher in the local school, thought her life was over, or at least on pause.
“It’s shocking, that your younger sister is pregnant, I was like; ‘That’s it. She’s not going to do the Leaving Cert. She’s going to be at home minding the baby.’
“But that was completely the opposite.”
Three weeks after Jennie gave birth to her daughter, she went back to school. She would get up through the night to feed her baby, and then at 7am she would get up and go to school, she’d come home to her baby and her homework.
“She was studying for her Leaving Cert, while being a great mother,” Jason said.
Jennie sat her Leaving Cert. She went on to take up a career in caring for others in a nursing home. She passed her diploma. She learned to drive and bought her own car.
At 20, she had her son. She was delighted.
Jennifer Poole
“There was nothing the kids didn’t want for and she was always making sure they always were looked after,’ Jason said.
“They always had the best of everything. At Christmas, the house would be full of toys, 10 times more than they ever asked for.”
Life continued, and when she was 22, she met Gavin Murphy through a neighbour. He had been living in Spain and returned at the start of the Covid19 pandemic.
It was good, until it wasn’t. It starts slow, coercive control usually does.
Gavin would say that Jennie’s friends and family didn’t like him. Which was true. Jason and Jennie’s other siblings thought he was cocky and rude.
He didn’t make an effort to speak and when he did it was to contradict someone else. He knew best. When it came to Jennie, he knew everything. She began to see her friends and family less.
Gavin would tell her to send the kids to her parents’ house, but she should stay and keep him company, they don’t like him anyway.
Jason says there were signs they missed, as a happy family who had never experienced domestic violence, they didn’t know what to look for. Jennie always had a story to cover up the other issue.
Her phone would go missing. The house key for her mother’s house disappeared. She couldn’t visit as easily.
It was lockdown so Jennie would make excuses that because of her job in the nursing home, she couldn’t visit as often. She didn’t want to expose anyone and make them sick.
Gavin Murphy didn’t work but he’d come with Jennifer to collect her wages.
Her family had no idea that Gavin Murphy controlled Jennie’s entire life. He belittled and beat her. Her young children told the family that Gavin locked them in a room or another time he “made my mammy sleep on the floor”. Jennie said they were confused.
There were hospital visits. Doctors couldn’t work out why Jennie was collapsing constantly, that’s why she had so many bruises. They considered fitting a heart monitor.
It came to a head eventually. A window was broken. A TV was smashed. Jennie told Jason and the rest of the family that she had ended her relationship.
“She told me she needed to get her priorities right now,” Jason said.
“It was a full honest conversation. I remember saying to her; ‘The kids are your number one priority, not him.’”
Jennie still didn’t tell anyone about the violence. She didn’t even criticise Gavin.
“She looked like she had been dragged through a bush for weeks. Like he had literally stripped her of everything, and she was exhausted,” Jason said.
It was April 17, 2021. The sun was shining and Jennie was taking the kids to the beach in Wexford. Gavin phoned and asked could he use her shower, his was broken. When he arrived, they argued and Jennie left, telling him to be gone when she came back.
An hour later, she returned to get swimming gear for her son.
Gavin Murphy was hiding behind the hall door when Jennie walked into her home. He stabbed her seven times. He cleaned the knife, jumped over the balcony and left.
Jennie was 24 when she died in her hallway. Her son heard everything from the stairs.
Gavin pled guilty, and was sentenced to life in prison. He had never lived in Spain. He had been serving a sentence in Mountjoy Prison before he met Jennie.
He had a history of violence against women and had previously been jailed for two years for attacking a former partner and her mother with a knife in 2015.
Jennie and her family had no idea. Jason found out at the sentencing.
“That’s what really hurts,” Jason said. “People knew and nobody ever told her that Gavin was dangerous. She never would’ve dated him.”
In England and Wales, Clare’s Law, also known as the Domestic Violence Disclosure Scheme, is a police policy giving you the right to know if your partner has an abusive past. There is no such scheme in Ireland.
Jason says this has to change. He is campaigning for the same scheme here, and for it to be named Jennie’s Law. He believes this legislation could have saved Jennie’s life. He believes any person should have the right to know if their partner has a violent past.
Legislation for the scheme made its way through the Oireachtas last year, but dissolved with the Dail. The new Minister for Justice Jim O’Callaghan said he believes that where a person is convicted of a serious criminal offence, there is “an obligation on the State to ensure that information is available”.
However, progress has stalled. Jason has not heard from Jim O’Callaghan since he became minister, and he fears the idea will disappear. No legislation has been brought to cabinet.
For the Poole family, their spark has disappeared.
“There’s days that you just don’t want to get out of bed,” Jason said.
“There’s days you think; if only things could have been different, if only she hadn’t been let down by the system.”
A few months after her mother was killed, Jennie’s daughter made her first communion. Her son will do the same this year. Jennie will miss both.
“Nothing is the same,” he said.
“We do things to keep memories. Christmas or Easter, Halloween, they’re the big things that Jennifer loved. We’ll go down, we’ll do up the grave, and the kids make cards, or they make gifts, but they struggle, they’ve lost their world.
“My parents are completely broken.”
Jason identified Jennifer’s body for the family, he will never be the same.
There were dozens of injuries, old and new on Jennie.
“There were something like 90 old wounds on her body that were still visible.
Bite marks on the back of her legs. She was living in fear, she was being tortured every day.”
Jennie was always covered in bruises.
You can call Women’s Aid on 1800 341 900 on a 24h Freephone Helpline.
You can also sign a petition by Jason Poole to create Jennie’s Law: A Domestic Abuse Register for Ireland here.
Statistics
35% of women in Ireland have now experienced psychological, physical and/or sexual abuse from an intimate partner.
In 2023, there were 28,638 contacts with Women’s Aid, 40,048 disclosures of abuse, including 35,570 disclosures of abuse against women and 4,478 disclosures of abuse against children.
One in four (25%) women in Ireland experienced sexual violence as an adult with a partner.
An Garda Síochána responded to over 65,000 domestic abuse incidents in 2024, which translates to an average of 1,250 incidents every week.
Since 1996, 275 women have died violently in the Republic of Ireland (up to 3rd March 2025).
63% were killed in their own homes.
55% were killed by a partner or ex (of the resolved cases).
Almost 9 in 10 women knew their killer.
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