Sinéad O’Connor’s tragic life: Childhood ‘torture,’ son’s death and 4 marriages
nypost.comdied Wednesday at age 56, hit headlines for her four failed marriages, her battle with bipolar disorder and the tragic 2022 death of her teenage son Shane.
But the “Nothing Compares 2 U” singer’s troubles began long before she shot to fame in the late 1980s, as she endured a childhood filled with abuse at the hands of her mother. “She ran a torture chamber,” O’Connor once tearfully told Dr.
Phil of her late mom, Johanna O’Grady. “My earliest memory, she’s telling me I shouldn’t have been born. She didn’t want me … She was a person who took delight, would smile in hurting you.”The songstress alleged that her mother’s physical and emotional abuse continued until she ran away from home at the age of 13.
However, O’Connor’s problems were just beginning. Two years later, the troubled teen was convicted of shoplifting and was subsequently forced to spend 18 months in an asylum for “fallen women.”“I have never — and probably will never — experience such panic and terror and agony over anything,” O’Connor recalled of the harrowing experience in an interview with Spin magazine.In 1985, when O’Connor was 18, her life took another tragic turn when her abusive mom died after losing control of her car on an icy road and crashing into a bus.
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