Mother sent to prison for horrific abuse of children

By Ann Healy

A 47-years-old mother was sentenced to 24 years in prison with the final 16 years suspended at Galway Circuit Criminal Court yesterday for the cruelty and neglect of eight of her children.

The woman, who may not be named in order to protect the identity of the children, pleaded guilty to eight sample charges of assaulting, ill-treating and neglecting the children in a manner likely to cause unnecessary suffering or injury to their health over a seven-year period from May, 2002 to June, 2009, contrary to Section 246 (1) and (2) of the Children’s Act, 2001. The charges relate to two of the woman’s sons and six of her daughters.

Detective Sergeant Kieran McNamara outlined a litany of physical abuse which the woman subjected her young children to.

On one occasion, she watched when her 14-years-old daughter was stabbed through the arm and then helped stitch the wound at home with a needle and thread so that the girl, who was regularly beaten and tortured along with her seven siblings, could not make a complaint to the authorities. The wound and stitches became infected, but she was not taken to hospital.

A doctor who examined the girl’s arm in 2009, when the children were eventually taken into care, “cringed” at the thought that the child was stitched without anaesthetic, Det Sgt McNamara said.

The mother regularly attached vicegrips to her children’s noses, ears and lips to punish them and on one occasion tied another daughter to a horse, whipping both the child and the horse so that it would bolt and hurt the child.

Another daughter was tied to a tree and whipped. Her mother laughed at her when she was eventually set free.

She regularly beat one of her sons very badly with whips and sticks in a bid to make him look disabled so that she could claim benefit for him.

In victim impact statements read to the court, one daughter said of her mother, “she was not a mother to me. She was an evil bitch.”

Imposing sentence, Judge Raymond Groarke said it was incredible that the abuse could go on for so many years with little or no intervention.

For more on this story, see the Galway City Tribune.