She was named Sinéad after Sinéad de Valera, the mom of the physician who presided over her supply (Éamon de Valera, Jnr.), and Bernadette in honour of Saint Bernadette of Lourdes. ^{She was the third of 5 youngsters; an older brother is the novelist Joseph O’Connor Her dad and mom had been John Oliver “Seán” O’Connor, a structural engineer later turned barrister  and chairperson of the Divorce Motion Group, and Johanna Marie O’Grady (1939–1985), who married in 1960 on the Church of Our Woman of Good Counsel, Drimnagh, Dublin. She attended Dominican School Sion Hill faculty in Blackrock, County Dublin.}

In her 2021 memoir, Rememberings, O’Connor wrote that she was usually overwhelmed by her mom, who additionally taught her to steal from the assortment plate at Mass and from charity tins. ^{In 1979, at age 13, O’Connor went to dwell along with her father, who had lately returned to Eire after marrying Viola Margaret Suiter (née Prepare dinner) in Alexandria, Virginia, United States, in 1976.[26]}

On the age of 15, following her acts of shoplifting and truancy, O’Connor was positioned for 18 months in a Magdalene asylum, the Grianán Coaching Centre in Drumcondra, ^{which was run by the Order of Our Woman of Charity.  She thrived in sure facets, notably within the improvement of her writing and music, however she chafed underneath the imposed conformity of the asylum, regardless of being given freedoms not granted to the opposite ladies, akin to attending an outdoor faculty and being allowed to hearken to music, write songs, and so forth. For punishment, O’Connor described how “in the event you had been unhealthy, they despatched you upstairs to sleep within the outdated people’ house. You’re in there within the pitch black, you may odor the shit and the puke and all the pieces, and these outdated girls are moaning of their sleep  … I’ve by no means—and doubtless won’t ever—expertise such panic and terror and agony over something.” She later attended Maryfield School in Drumcondra, and Newtown College in Waterford for fifth and sixth yr as a boarder, however didn’t sit the Leaving Certificates in 1985.}

On 10 February 1985, when O’Connor was 18, her mom died in a automobile accident, aged 45, after dropping management of her automobile on an icy highway in Ballybrack and crashing right into a bus. ^{In June 1993, O’Connor wrote a public letter in The Irish Instances wherein she requested folks to “cease hurting” her: “If solely I can battle off the voices of my dad and mom / and collect a way of shallowness / Then I’ll be capable of REALLY sing …” The letter repeated accusations of abuse by her dad and mom as a toddler which O’Connor had made in interviews. Her brother Joseph defended their father to the newspaper however agreed relating to their mom’s “excessive and violent abuse, each emotional and bodily”. That month, Sinéad stated: “Our household could be very tousled. We are able to’t talk with one another. We’re all in agony. I for one am in agony.”}

This shared music  was taken from the album ‘I Do Not Need What I Haven’t Acquired’

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