Church worker left brain damaged by attack
The murder of John Monckton has revived neighbours' memories of an earlier savage assault which left a church worker brain-damaged.
It happened in February last year at the local Roman Catholic church, only yards from the Moncktons' Chelsea home.
Robin McCartney was the sacristan at Our Most Holy Redeemer of St Thomas More, looking after the candles and linen.
According to local residents, he had befriended a drug addict who came to the crypt and attempted to steal from the collection box. Mr McCartney was badly beaten about the head and strangled.
He spent 10 days in a coma and never fully recovered his mental capacities.
Writer Vanya Lambert and her late husband, Michael, had befriended Mr McCartney, who was in his fifties. "He was a divine, sweet, gentle person," she said today.
"He wouldn't have hurt a fly. He was such a slight man a breath of wind could have knocked him over.
"He used to come over for dinner or a drink about once a week and had Christmas dinner with us the year before he was attacked.
"He was on his own, his family were back in Ireland, so I think he thought of this as a sort of home from home. He would water our garden when we went away.
"He was a man of immense compassion. He made you feel you were the only person that mattered. He had a special relationship with a lot of the congregation."
Mr McCartney recovered consciousness and was allowed home to his flat near the church. It soon became obvious, however, that he was not able to look after himself.
"He turned up at church in his pyjamas," said Mrs Lambert. "To go back to the sacristy after it had been spattered with his blood only a few weeks earlier - it took a lot of courage."
But the damage to Mr McCartney's brain was more severe than earlier thought and it was decided he should be permanently cared for at a rest home in Wimbledon.
Police arrested the man responsible for the attack and officers were keen to prosecute. But Mr McCartney did not want to press charges against his attacker and no further action was taken.
"Robin had a sunniness, a kind of light that came from the inside," said Mrs Lambert. "That was the shock - that somebody would do this to him, of all people."
