FORMER GOVERNOR OF Mountjoy Prison John Lonergan has said the depiction of gangland and prison life in Love/Hate is a pretty fair reflection of reality.
Speaking to RTÉ’s Sean O’Rourke yesterday, he said he thought the drama was “pretty savage, but not very much removed” from the experience of a “very small number of people”.
However, he said the horrific anal rape of one of the show’s main characters, Fran, by fellow inmates was an “exaggeration”.
“From my experience over many, many years and my knowledge, generally — Love/Hate is pretty close to the bone in terms of the reality of life for a very small number of people, but a very significant number of people in the sense that people live that life and have to cope with it,” Lonergan said.
The prison scene —- I’ve certainly seen and experienced many prisoners getting very badly mutilated and beaten up.
While the former prison officer said he had never seen anything as extreme as the graphic rape scene, he was aware of an incident where a mop handle was broken and it was used to stab an inmate, inflicting “horrendous stomach injuries”.
He said that while beatings and and attacks had become a regular feature of prison life in recent years, what happened to Fran was not particularly realistic.
In scenes that shocked viewers and created a storm on social media, the gangster was cornered by other prisoners and held down, before being attacked with the broken end of a pool cue.
He was then left lying naked in a pool of his own blood.
“The incident was longer than would normally take place,” Lonergan said.
My experience would be that ten, fifteen, twenty seconds would be the maximum time it would take to inflict serious injury on someone.
He said the “amount of time they had, and that nobody came” to his aid was not an accurate portrayal of reality.
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