Family traumatised after stranger approaches girls

A Cootehill family say their children are “traumatised” after a man made a suspicious approach to their two young girls as they innocently waited for the school bus near their home back in February.

Almost three months on and gardaí say the investigation is still “ongoing”.

In the time since the Boyles have been left to pick up the pieces of a family life now changed irrevocably. Not only have they had to reassess security around their home, the place where as a family they’re “suppose to feel safest”, but they’ve also had to contend with gossip doubting the veracity of this unsettling experience.

Mum Tanya and husband PJ Boyle say they aren’t naive. They’re aware not every stranger who approaches a child has sinister intentions, and there can often be a misinterpretation or misunderstanding. However, in this particular case, they’re convinced that what occurred less than 100 yards from their front door visited with potentially disturbing intentions.

The morning of Tuesday, February 7, started like most others. Uniforms neatly pressed and laid out, hair brushed, cereal, a peck on the cheek, and the girls waved off from the door.

From CCTV, running five minutes fast, the Boyles timestamp their children - four and eight years old - leaving at 8:45am, for a bus to arrive between five and 10 minutes later.

All morning the girls begged their mum to let them “go out to play” early.

“They like their wee five minutes playing before the bus comes. ‘What time is it Mr Wolf?’, that’s the game they were playing,” remembers Tanya.

There were roadworks on the main R192 Cootehill to Shercock road that day, with a stop-go system in place.

“From the cameras, we can see the road went quiet for about three minutes. But in those three minutes someone approaches, but we can’t see who,” Tanya explains.

The person, Tanya and PJ believe, came from an area referred to as the “back road”, keeping close to the hedgerow and “out of sight” of any neighbouring properties.

The eldest girl later told her principal, then her parents, and later the gardaí, that she’d heard a car door “bang”, followed by “footsteps running down the lane”.

“Scared”, she hid her little sister behind a neighbour’s wall.

The person who appeared kept his “eyes closed”, and was carrying a “stick”, which he “hit off the ground saying ‘help me, help me’, like he was blind. All she could remember then was him opening his eyes, and she knew he wasn’t blind,” states PJ.

His daughter also says that the man wore a ski-type mask with only “two holes for the eyes and one for the mouth”.

PJ believes whoever was involved had their intentions “well planned out”.

Tanya goes so far as to describe it as “calculated”.

When the man realised he couldn’t immediately lure the eldest sister, he began offering her “sweets”.

“Luckily”, Tanya says, the couple had the “stranger danger” talk with their daughters and the man left, but not before getting “angry”.

“He started saying ‘I can’t get them, I can’t f**king get them’, as if he was talking to someone else,” Tanya tells the Celt.

“Was there someone else waiting in the car as well?” asks PJ. “Was there an earpiece involved?”

The first Tanya learned of the incident was when the girls’ school principal called her that morning. Childcare worker Tanya then immediately rang PJ.

Landscaper PJ had only just returned to his job following paternity leave and, up until then, stood with his daughters waving them onto the bus each morning.

“What annoys me the most is someone might have been watching us, watching them, and maybe said to themselves ‘daddy’s not about, now’s our chance’. I was so annoyed.”

PJ felt “helpless” too.

“The thoughts that anyone could’ve seen us on the news later looking for them girls, and Tanya not sleeping at night with worry. The tears there would’ve been. It doesn’t bear thinking about. You can’t imagine.”

Gardaí in Cavan, meanwhile, confirmed: ‘[They] are investigating a report of an alleged suspicious approach to two children on 7th of February 2023 in Cootehill, Co. Cavan. Investigations are ongoing.’

The Boyles confirm that gardaí met them at their home later that day.

The eldest girl was unwavering in her responses, and in a follow-up interview with specially trained gardaí.

The day after gardaí also mounted a checkpoint along the R192 quizzing motorists as they passed.

In particular gardaí asked about the movements of a large black saloon type car, which the little girl was able to identify to her parents as an “Audi A4” but better fits the description of an Audi A5.

But the Boyles can’t understand why the appeal wasn’t circulated more widely.

“Why not ask for dash cam? That’s what the shout out at that time should’ve been for,” suggests Tanya. “If a tractor goes missing, or a trailer is stolen, that’s the first thing the guards ask for. There’s an appeal put out and information is looked for. It’s up on Facebook, on social media. Everyone reads it, everyone shares it. That’s how word gets around.”

That it didn’t happen, the Boyles feel, created a vacuum into which misinformation and scepticism has crept.

“We didn’t know this person’s intent. They could have then gone off that morning and attempted to approach another child. There are multiple children every day on these roads and across Cavan waiting for buses,” says Tanya, who believes such a warning is even more essential now in the carefree summer holiday months.

“My children are traumatised,” adds Tanya. “There’s been nightmares, coming home early from school or parties. We can’t leave them outside on their own now playing without them asking if we’re watching, to make sure they’re safe. That was never the case before.”

As parents, Tanya and PJ are scared too. “I took it upon myself to put the post out there because I felt nothing was being done to highlight what happened, nothing to warn other families with young children living in the area,” states Tanya.

Looking ahead, the Boyles would like if gardaí were more vocal in such incidents. “If someone robs a shop, there’ll be an appeal for witnesses straight away. Someone tried to abduct my children,” says Tanya, a tremble in her voice. “I believe my daughter when she tells us what she saw.”

PJ says the couple are “proud” of their eldest daughter and how she reacted, to protect her little sister.

“She was brilliant. It could’ve been a whole different outcome,” says PJ who finds himself haunted by the ‘what ifs’. “What did that person want? What if he had’ve got them? What if the bus didn’t come on time?” he asks.

Tanya says it has left her whole family feeling very “vulnerable”.

“This is where we live, where our children are suppose to feel safest. That’s the scary part, and what eats me up the most. If this happened out and about some place, like a shopping centre, you’d avoid going back there. You can’t avoid your home.”

There has been nothing by way of emotional support offered either, another thing the Boyles believe authorities should be conscious about going forward. For weeks after their eldest daughter complained of a “sore belly”, something her parents put down to anxiety.

“Going over statements, time and time again, and each time it’s replaying this experience over and over again in their heads. It’s traumatising,” says Tanya.

“You’d think there’d be something there, but there doesn’t ever seem to be anything out there for the victims of crime.”