WASHINGTON — Irish singer-songwriter Sinead O’Connor has been found safe after posting what appeared to be a suicide note on Facebook Sunday.
The Irish Examiner reports that police have found O’Connor in Dublin “safe and sound” and that she is receiving medical assistance.
The singer, 48, has been plagued by mental health issues since she was reportedly diagnosed with bipolar disorder in the early 2000s. She threatened suicide in a similar manner in 2011.
In a blistering post Sunday, she accused her family of “a horrific set of betrayals,” referencing what seems to be an ongoing custody battle over her younger children, and an apparent hysterectomy.
“There is only so much any woman can be expected to bear. What was done to me this week was appalling cruelty,” she wrote.
“The last two nights finished me off. I have taken an overdose,” she continued. “There is no other way to get respect. I am not at home, I’m at a hotel, somewhere in ireland, under another name.
If I wasn’t posting this, my kids and family wouldn’t even find out.”
She insists her family wouldn’t care anyway. “I’m invisible. I don’t matter a shred to anyone. No one has come near me. I’ve died a million times already with the pain of it,” she wrote. “But my family don’t value me at all. They wouldn’t know if I was dead until weeks from now if I wasn’t [expletive] informing them now.”
In July, she reported that she was canceling all performances for the rest of the year to take care of her son, who had been “suffering from a life threatening medical condition” since March 2015. She has not said what is ailing her son, or which of her two younger sons is suffering. She also referenced her own medical issues and a coming hysterectomy.
“It is the type of condition my child will definitely survive, if correct care is taken and is supervised by myself. Otherwise there is no guarantee. That is the plain truth,” she wrote then.
“Needless to say, this has been and remains a severe family crisis. Like any mother, I have been up all day and night every day and night since I found out my child is suffering.”
O’Connor has led a colorful if not controversial career since she exploded into the mainstream in 1990 with the cover of Prince’s “Nothing Compares 2 U.” A vocal advocate for women and children, and an arch critic of the Catholic Church, she created a media firestorm during her 1990 Saturday Night Live appearance when she tore up a picture of the Pope in a protest against child sex abuse. Later, she was ordained a priest in the Catholic Orthodox church.
She has been married four times and is reportedly still married to her fourth husband, whom she refers to in a more positive light in Sunday’s Facebook post. She has four children — ages 29, 19, 11, and 8 — with four men. Her oldest son, Jake, and his wife announced the birth of a daughter this summer.
