Sinead O'Connor Sinéad Marie Bernadette O'Connor (born 8 December 1966) is an Irish singer-song writer. Sinéad O'Connor was born in Glenageary Dublin and was named after Sinéad de Valera, wife of Irish President Éamon de Valera and mother of the doctor presiding over the delivery, and Saint Bernadette of Lourdes. She is the middle of five children, sister to Joseph, Eimear, John, and Eoin. Joseph O'Connor is a novelist. Her parents are Sean O'Connor, a structural engineer later turned barrister, and Marie O'Connor. The couple married young and had a troubled relationship, separating when Sinéad was eight. The three eldest children went to live with their mother, where O'Connor claims they were subjected to frequent physical abuse. Her song "Fire on Babylon" is about the effects of her own child abuse, and she has consistently advocated on behalf of abused children. Sean O'Connor's efforts to secure custody of his children in a country which routinely gave custody to the mother and prohibited divorce motivated him to become chairman of the Divorce Action Group and a prominent public spokesman. At one point, he even debated his own wife on the subject on a radio show.

Sinead O'Connor and Bipolar Disorder

In 1979, O'Connor left her mother and went to live with her father and his new wife. However, her shoplifting and truancy led to her being placed in a reform school at age 15, the Grianán Training Centre run by the Sisters of Our Lady of Charity. In some ways, she thrived there, especially in writing and music, but she also chafed under the imposed conformity. Unruly students there were sometimes sent to sleep in the adjoining nursing home, an experience of which she later commented, "I have never — and probably will never — experience such panic and terror and agony over anything."

One of the volunteers at Grianan was the sister of Paul Byrne, drummer for the band In Tua Nua, who heard O'Connor singing "Evergreen" by Barbra Streisand. She recorded a song with them called "Take My Hand" but they felt that at 15, she was too young to join the band.

In 1983, her father sent her to Newtown School, an exclusive Quaker boarding school in Waterford, an institution with a much more permissive atmosphere than Grianan. With the help and encouragement of her Irish language teacher, Joseph Falvey, she recorded a four-song demo, with two covers and two of her own songs which would later appear on her first album.

Through an ad she placed in Hot Press in the summer of 1984, she met Columb Farrelly. Together they recruited a few other members and formed a band called Ton Ton Macoute, named for the ruthless Haitian secret police. (A 1991 biography incorrectly claimed this name refers to Haitian zombies.) In the autumn, the band moved to Waterford briefly while O'Connor attended Newtown, but she soon dropped out of school and followed them to Dublin, where their performances received positive reviews. Their sound was inspired by Farrelly's interest in witchcraft, mysticism, and world music, though most observers thought O'Connor's singing and stage presence was the band's driving force.

On 10 February 1985, O'Connor's mother was killed in a car accident. O'Connor was devastated despite her strained relationship with her mother. Soon afterward she left the band, which stayed together despite O'Connor's statements to the contrary in later interviews, and moved to London.

O'Connor has been married twice. Her first marriage was to John Reynolds, a record producer and musician who co-produced several of her albums, including Universal Mother. They split up on good terms and continue to work together. Her second marriage was to journalist Nicholas Sommerlad in 2002.

O'Connor also previously dated Red Hot Chili Peppers frontman Anthony Kiedis; the band's song "I Could Have Lied" was reportedly written about his sudden break up with O'Connor. However, in recent times she has claimed that they never dated, and that they were merely friends.

In a 2000 interview in Curve, O'Connor outed herself as a lesbian, "I'm a dyke ... although I haven't been very open about that and throughout most of my life I've gone out with blokes because I haven't necessarily been terribly comfortable about being a big lesbian mule. But I actually am a dyke." However, soon after in an interview in The Independent, she stated, "I believe it was overcompensating of me to declare myself a lesbian. It was not a publicity stunt. I was trying to make someone else feel better. And have subsequently caused pain for myself. I am not in a box of any description." In a magazine article and in a programme on RTÉ (Ryan Confidential, broadcast on RTÉ on 29 May 2003), she stated that while most of her sexual relationships had been with men, she has had three relationships with women. In a May 2005 issue of Entertainment Weekly, she stated, "I'm three-quarters heterosexual, a quarter gay. I lean a bit more towards the hairy blokes".

She has four children: a son, Jake Reynolds, by her first husband; a daughter, Brigidine Róisíne Waters, born early 1996, by The Irish Times columnist John Waters; another son, Shane, born 6 March 2004, whose father is Irish folk musician and record producer Dónal Lunny; and her fourth child, Yeshua Francis Neil, born on 19 December 2006 whose father is her former partner Frank Bonadio. O'Connor formally announced to Paul Martin in the Irish Daily Mirror that the two had broken up as of the weekend of 17 February 2007, citing difficulties between Bonadio and his former wife, singer Mary Coughlan.

On an 4 October 2007 broadcast of The Oprah Winfrey Show, O'Connor disclosed that she had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder four years earlier, and had attempted suicide on her 33rd birthday.

Sinéad O'Connor. (2009, October 23). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 23:57, October 24, 2009, from http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Sin%C3%A9ad_O%27Connor&oldid=321664384

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