Ann Lovett

In the run-up to the 2018 Irish abortion referendum the case was again remembered.  After publishing an extensive piece in March 2018 retracing the facts of the case, on 5 May 2018 the Irish Times carried a detailed interview with Richard “Ricky” McDonnell, Ann Lovett's former boyfriend, coming forward for the first time and discussing the circumstances of their lives and their relationship. McDonnell stated that he first met Ann when he was 15 years old in her father's pub, The Copper Pot. She was 13 years old. They began a sexual relationship after she turned 14.

In National Archives of Ireland documents released in December 2014, a letter was revealed written by the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Armagh to poet Christopher Daybell which claimed Lovett's "sad death reflects more on her immaturity than on any lack of Christian charity".

In the afternoon of Tuesday, 31 January 1984 in Granard, County Longford, fifteen-year-old Ann Lovett left her Catholic Cnoc Mhuire Secondary School and made her way to a Grotto dedicated to the Virgin Mary at the top of her small hometown in the Irish midlands. It was here beneath the statue of Our Lady, that she gave birth, alone, to her infant son.

On Saturday night, 4 February 1984, Ireland's most popular television show was coming to an end, when the host read this headline from the next day's Sunday Tribune newspaper: "Girl, 15, Dies Giving Birth In A Field".

According to McDonnell, their close and loving relationship had foundered when Lovett had found it difficult to continue, after she had come to him one night in late April 1983, apparently having suffered a serious assault and beating. He told the Irish Times that Ann appeared to be distressed, showing him her thighs, which were marked with bruises and scrapes. Lovett then pleaded with McDonnell not to tell anybody. He asked Ann repeatedly if she had been raped, to which she did not reply.

Ann Lovett (6 April 1968 – 31 January 1984) was a 15-year-old schoolgirl from Granard, County Longford, Ireland who died giving birth beside a grotto on 31 January 1984. Her baby son died at the same time and the story of her death played a huge part in a seminal national debate on women giving birth outside marriage.

McDonnell alleged that Granard priest, Fr Quinn, upon learning of the letter, demanded to read it, and then told McDonnell to burn it because it would destroy the town if its contents became known. According to Mcdonnell, another letter written by Ann, which was unaddressed, had also been found among her things, its opening line described by one of Ann's friend who had read it as “If I’m not dead by the 31st of January, I’m going to kill myself anyway”.