HOW MY SON BECAME A MONSTER
Tinder rapist Nevin’s father tells of trauma He took son to Denmark for ‘the best care’ Efforts to aid him hurt own relationship
THE father of Tinder rapist Patrick Nevin has told of his desperate attempts to stop his son turning into serial sex monster.
Nevin is now in custody waiting sentencing for sex attacks on three women in 11 days, just the latest in a history of depraved violence and brutal assaults on women.
And Pat Nevin Sr has made so many efforts to save the serial rapist that they put a strain on his own relationship.
He told the Irish Daily Mail how he moved his troubled son – then only nine years old – to Denmark where he would get ‘the best care’. He said: ‘Denmark
‘I tried my best with my son’
looks after its people very, very well. Young people have great facilities and care.’ However, instead of responding to the support he was offered, when Nevin Jr became a teenager, he raped a family friend and was deported back to Ireland.
Still his father refused to give up. He told the Mail that raising his son was ‘very difficult’ and that he had always hoped Denmark would be ‘a new beginning’.
When the teen was deported from Denmark, his father flew back to Ireland three or four times a year to see him – even after his son was jailed for seven years for a vicious attack on his own girlfriend.
‘I visited Pat in Wheatfield. My partner didn’t come back for those visits, she didn’t want to see him,’ he said. ‘And Pat’s mother didn’t want anything to do with him, she had her own life and she wanted to move on.’
Nevin Jr’s mother, Cynthia Owen, was herself the victim of a notorious rape and sexual assault by her father and his friends when she was a child. She gave birth aged just 11 at her Dalkey home and the baby was found dead in a laneway. She said her parents were responsible for killing the baby but the case has never been solved.
Mr Nevin Sr said his son had severe attention deficit hyperactivity disorder growing up in Dún Laoghaire, Co. Dublin, and his problems worsened after his parents broke up when he was very young. ‘He couldn’t sit down in school. He wasn’t interested but it turned out he was very intelligent. He was hyper, school was very difficult for him,’ he recalled.
While out for a walk on Dún Laoghaire pier one day, Mr Nevin Sr met a Danish woman – a Johnny Logan fan who’d come to Ireland to see where her hero grew up. They began dating and had a baby in Ireland, but she longed to be with her family in Denmark and he agreed they should move over.
Mr Nevin Sr said: ‘Pat was just nine years old at the time. He found it very difficult in the beginning in Denmark. He was very withdrawn when we first moved over there but he started to adjust. He had to learn Danish from scratch in school and speak to other students in Danish. That was very difficult but he learned the language quickly.’
Mr Nevin Sr said he believed the move to Denmark would prove the best option in tackling his son’s ‘strange’ behaviour. He said: ‘[In Denmark], young people have great facilities and care, they treat old people very well too. I was very impressed and I felt that Pat could get the best of care there.’
But as Nevin Jr moved into his teenage years, he became more erratic and viciously attacked a man while taking part in an antifascist rally.
He also viciously raped a friend’s mother in her own home.
‘He was a minor at the time,’ Mr Nevin Sr recalled. ‘It meant I couldn’t get full information on the case. But the Danish authorities deported him back to Ireland.’
The case had already put a major strain on Mr Nevin Sr’s relationship with his partner, who was a friend of the rape victim. This was added to when he decided to fly back to Ireland three or four times a year to try to help his son – even though she never came with him.
“Pat’s mother didn’t want anything to do with him, she had her own life and she wanted to move on”
Then, in 2010, Nevin Jr was caught prowling near Waterloo Road, Dublin, with two stun guns. Though he was given a suspended sentence, gardaí believed this was likely the prelude to a random sex assault.
It was after he was acquitted of sexually assaulting a student in June last year that his father spoke to the Mail. At the time, the rapist left court delivering a foul-mouthed rant that he had been ‘stitched up’ by gardaí; however, he had already faced a number of other allegations and officers believed he was a serial rapist. In November, he was convicted of sexual assault against another student, whom he had met on the dating app Tinder .
Last week, he pleaded guilty to separate sex attacks on two other women he’d met on Tinder.
In all, he has been convicted of sexually assaulting three women over 11 days. Mr Nevin Sr said: ‘I tried my best with my son. I always wanted to believe in him and believed that in Denmark he could find his way, but it wasn’t to be.’