A painful journey Parents of bank robber come to Bangor from Ireland to seek help for jailed son

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BANGOR – The parents of the Irishman who last fall robbed a bank at gunpoint near the Bangor Mall want the community to know that their son is not a criminal even though he committed a crime.

They also believe that any sentence should include medical treatment for whatever caused him to point a gun at bank tellers and demand that they fill a mess bag with cash.

Michael and Mary Clarke traveled last week from their home in Kilrush, County Clare, in western Ireland, to see their son Niall G. Clarke for the first time in more than a year. After visiting him Sunday in Portland, where he is being held at the Cumberland County Jail, the couple traveled to Bangor to meet with their son’s court-appointed attorney.

They apologized to the community for their son’s crime, which has baffled them and those who knew the award-winning 2002 Trinity College graduate, who majored in computer science and helped launch a software company in his senior year.

Niall Clarke, 26, pleaded guilty earlier this month to the Oct. 4 armed robbery of the Bank of America branch on Bangor Mall Boulevard. He faces up to 25 years in prison on the armed robbery charge and a mandatory minimum consecutive sentence of seven years for brandishing a weapon. Under federal sentencing guidelines, he most likely will spend close to 10 years in prison.

“Niall is not a criminal,” his father, Michael Clarke, 49, said Wednesday as he and his wife met with the Bangor Daily News in a downtown hotel. “We know he did commit a crime, but Niall himself as a person is not a criminal. Why he committed that crime, I can’t exactly say, but it’s due to some character change in Niall that needs to be addressed for his own good.

“He needs help,” he continued. “I honestly believe that a federal prison sentence is not the answer for somebody like Niall. It’s an awful waste of talent and life to put him away for something that was completely out of character.”

The couple also said that as far as they knew their son did not have a substance abuse problem.

Niall Clarke is the second of the couple’s four children – two boys and two girls ages 18 to 27. His father works as an operating technician at a power plant, and his mother runs a bed-and-breakfast inn from their home.

The family moved to Kilrush, a town of 2,500 between Galway and Killarney, in 1987 when Niall Clarke was 7. From an early age, he excelled in science and math, his parents said, but when the family got its first computer in the early 1990s the boy seemed to have found his niche.

“He showed a tremendous ability at and interest in computers,” Michael Clarke said. “He loved the challenge of trying to get knowledge about computers. He was just way ahead of everybody else in school, so he helped his friends at school and even taught the teachers.”

The teenager competed in track and field events, bicycled and played rugby. In high school, he took honors courses in math, chemistry and physics, earning 575 points out of 600 in each subject, according to his transcript. Recruiters at Trinity College of Dublin, considered to be the Harvard or Yale of Ireland, sought him out.

In college, he excelled at computer science and served two internships at computer firms in the United States in 1999 and 2001, according to his parents. In his senior year, Niall Clarke won two national prizes, and he began working at LeCayla Technologies, a computer firm in Dublin, after graduation.

“All four years, there were no problems at Trinity,” Michael Clarke said Wednesday. “The professors’ reports all were excellent.”

It was after graduation that their son gradually began to change.

Niall Clarke told his parents that sitting at the computer caused stress in his back and that he was burned out after focusing so intensely on school and work.

At the time, burnout made sense to his mother.

“It seemed like that to us because he was always such a high achiever,” said Mary Clarke, 47. “He pushed himself 110 percent.”

His parents agreed that he needed to take a break from work for a while, so he set off for India.

“I think Niall recognized a change in himself,” his father said. “We thought that if he went away, it would help him recognize that change.”

But that decision turned out to be the beginning of his very gradual withdrawal from family and friends. He returned a year later more uneasy and uncomfortable with himself, his parents said. They thought a four-month stint of substitute teaching at the local school would be the answer, but in 2004 he left home again, this time to wander South America.

“He was desperately, desperately trying to fit in and get his life back together,” Michael Clarke said.

Niall Clarke returned home in November 2005. He seemed more uneasy, more anxious and uncomfortable with himself than ever. He refused to use a computer or the Internet, and he showed no interest in things that had been so much a part of his life the previous decade.

“He couldn’t stay still,” his father said.

Since their son’s graduation from college, his parents had encouraged him to seek a psychiatrist’s help to see whether there might be a medical reason for the changes in him. The more they pushed him, Michael Clarke said, the more he resisted.

Shortly before Christmas 2005, he left home again and cut off all communication with his family.

“I continued to hope that the old Niall would just walk back in,” Mary Clarke said, breaking into tears.

The couple learned of their son’s arrest last November when Niall Clarke’s older sister typed his name into various Web search engines. She was shocked to find that her brother had been arrested for the armed robbery of a bank in the United States.

Michelle Clarke, 27, visited her brother in November.

She reported back to her parents that her brother was evasive about why he’d been living in Maine and why he’d committed the crime.

Her father said he and his wife had found him the same way during their visit earlier this week, but their son seemed glad to see them.

“He has received us warmly,” Michael Clarke said. “He looks in very good health physically, but we see he’s very frightened of the future. … We didn’t probe. We want to rebuild our relationship.”

For his parents’ visit, Niall Clarke apparently shaved his beard and had his long hair cut short – the way he wore it during his college days.

“He looks like the Niall in the photo” published when he won prizes at Trinity, Mary Clarke said.

Despite that visit, they are at a loss to explain their son’s actions.

To their knowledge, he had not handled a gun before the robbery. He did not hunt or target-shoot growing up, and the family never had a gun in the home.

They also understand that their family is not the only one that has been hurt by their son’s actions.

“On behalf of the family, we’re terribly upset that this happened in this community,” Michael Clarke said. “We’re obviously delighted that nobody got hurt. On behalf of the family, we want to apologize.”

Mary Clarke continued her husband’s thought as he was overcome with emotion. “We want to apologize to everybody affected by this, especially the people he pointed the gun at,” she said.

The Clarkes are scheduled to return to Ireland early next week.

They plan to be back in Bangor for their son’s sentencing, which has not been scheduled.

In the meantime, they will continue to do what they have done for the past three years: love and nurture their son while urging him and the U.S. justice system to find out why the student with such a promising future will spend much of the next decade behind bars.