MARY CARR
IN CONTRAST to his first Irish court appearance when he blew kisses and waved at the massed ranks of friends and relatives, David Drumm cut a downcast and solitary figure last week. Sitting in the dock waiting for his sentence, there was no-one to give him a friendly nod and from the set of his shoulders to his jaded demeanour he looked like the loneliest man on earth.
His wife Lorraine who was often visible during his failed US bankruptcy case, was absent, as were his grown-up daughters. If any of his seven siblings, or indeed the 48 relatives who testified to their mutual ties during his bail hearing in Dublin, were present they went under the radar.
Drumm’s counsel Brendan Grehan declared his client had refused character testimonies for fear of further eroding the privacy of his nearest and dearest. He seemed to suggest the fact that Drumm was going it alone was the final act of gallantry from a man who refused to be the source of any more pain to his family.
Of course, there could be other reasons why he spurned the familial support that even hardened criminals rely on in their hour of need. Unlike his Anglo cronies John Bowe and Seán FitzPatrick whose wives accompanied them to court, and in the former’s case visited him in jail, the once invincible financial wizard might be too proud to allow his loved ones have a ringside seat at his downfall. He may want them to continue thinking of him as the cocky dynamo who believed he could beat the system rather than the shell of a man who beat a hasty retreat from court.
Sad and all as it is to contemplate, it’s also plausible Drumm’s wife has cut him off at this juncture, or at least is biding her time to see how she copes with his incarceration. Drumm’s careworn appearance betrays the toll of the last decade. But Lorraine must also have suffered, witnessing the fall of the man she previously called the ‘love of my life’ and ‘my and my daughters’ rock’.
In her ultimately futile correspondence to the US courts, pleading that her husband be allowed bail while awaiting extradition, she painted a picture of a close family and David as a beloved father figure. ‘They have as deep a bond with their dad as any daughter could hope for – in fact he probably has a better relationship with them than I do. They confide everything in him,’ she wrote. Lorraine’s dread at the prospect of their prolonged separation was as tangible as the strength of her ties to America. But the picture of domestic bliss she set out was in contrast to her evidence, in his failed bankruptcy bid, the year before, when she recalled how she received €876,000 from him in cash from 2008 as she feared her marriage was falling apart.
As the global financial panic took hold and her husband worked every hour God gave, Lorraine admitted her focus was solely on the financial welfare of herself and her two daughters. Her marriage was going through a ‘really, really tough time’, she said and she ‘was imagining life without him’.
Rightly or wrongly, the image Lorraine created of herself was of a hardheaded matriarch who wasn’t about to give up the good life because the finance markets were in chaos. It seemed to say a lot about her that despite fears her husband might ‘drop dead of a heart attack’, her first impulse was not to urge him to take it easy, but to shake him down for cash.
When he was extradited, Drumm’s solicitor said Lorraine was selling the Boston house before coming home to stand by her man. The news came as a surprise as it was thought the Drumms saw their future in the US and that she might stay to keep the home fires burning.
That now seems to be what she is doing. She was not in court to hear the guilty verdict as apparently she was at their daughter’s graduation. She let her husband face his fate alone, perhaps in accordance with his wishes but at a huge cost to her because surely most loving wives would want to be around on such a critical day.
As Drumm languishes in jail, he must have many regrets, not least of which may be his wife and family were nowhere to be seen when he most needed them.