‘I can’t live like this’: Desperate parents ask courts to protect them from aggressive adult children

“I don’t make this choice lightly, but I can’t live like this. There is somebody going to be murdered.”

These are the words of a desperate father to a judge seeking interim barring orders against two adult sons with serious mental health conditions. This was after he was forced to flee his home when his sons went “berserk” and assaulted him.

In another case, a mother said her adult daughter brandished a kitchen knife at her after smashing up the sittingroom. “She said it was to stab me to death so I can feel the pain she is in,” said the mother.

Asking for a protection, rather than a barring order, the woman said her daughter had suicidal ideation and she did not want her made homeless. “I absolutely love every bone in her body,” she said.

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They are just two examples of distressed parents seeking protection from adult children who have come before the emergency domestic violence court in Dolphin House, the redbrick Victorian building in Temple Bar in Dublin city centre.

Addiction, mental health issues and the housing crisis are contributory factors in such applications, says the president of the District Court, Judge Paul Kelly. “It is multifaceted but there are people stuck in awful situations,” he said.

“Sometimes adult kids addicted to drugs are trying to intimidate their parents into giving them money. If they don’t get it, they kick off and start smashing the place up. That would be quite common.”

Mental health issues feature a lot, he said.

“Adults with diagnosed or undiagnosed mental health issues are volatile and parents get to the stage where they cannot handle it. They might have been able to handle it 10 years earlier but now they are older, maybe a little bit more frightened.”

The lockdowns during the Covid-19 pandemic may have contributed to mental health deterioration in some cases, he said.

A more recent factor in domestic violence applications was the housing crisis, the judge said.

“Young people are cooped up in the house with the parents, they might have expected to be moving out, but they can’t, that gives rise to tensions and rows,” he said.

The recent appointment of 10 additional District Court judges means five family courts have been operating in Dolphin House since last October, including the designated court for emergency ex parte – where only one side is represented – applications under the Domestic Violence Act.

Before October, Dolphin House had three or four courts, and sometimes just two, operating. Five courts had made “a big difference” in reducing time for dealing with cases, Judge Kelly said.

“There is still a long way to go, still areas where there are unacceptably long waiting periods and backlogs,” he said.

In 2023 Dolphin House family court office processed 3,027 ex parte protection order applications of which 2,756 were granted. This was an increase on the 2022 figure of 2,819 applications, with 2,555 granted.

A protection order, an interim safety order, restrains threatening or violent behaviour for three months. The case then returns to court which, having heard both sides, may lift the order or grant a safety order for a specific period.

Interim barring orders require proof of an immediate risk to the applicant’s safety. Of 851 ex parte applications last year for interim barring orders, 354 were granted. While that was a small drop on the 867 interim barring order applications in 2022, more orders – 390 – were granted. Such orders last eight days. When returned to court, both sides are entitled to be heard and the order may be lifted or a barring order, for a maximum three years, may be granted.

The numbers apply to all applicants for protection orders and interim barring orders, including women, and some men, seeking orders against their spouses or partners.

Most applicants in the emergency domestic violence court represent themselves, providing sworn written and some oral information to the judge who decides whether it meets the legal threshold for the order. The number of applications varies but has run up to 40 in a single day.

Judge Gerard Furlong, who sits almost daily in the emergency domestic violence court, said a designated court ensured speedy hearings. “Without it, people could be hanging around all day to get their applications heard,” he said.

He has dealt with many parents, and grandparents, seeking orders. “They think they are the only ones with a child like this, that is sad,” he said.

“I can’t take it any more,” is a constant refrain he hears, he said. The main contributor, in his view, is drugs, followed by mental health issues which he believes are, in many cases, drug induced. The housing crisis was a factor because adult children were in the home longer than previously, he said.

Some applicants were told by gardaí to come to the domestic violence court after suffering serious assaults when there should instead be prosecutions of those responsible, he said.

Many parents seek a protection order, not an interim barring order, to give a “last chance” to their adult child, he said.

“I have seen that work; the parents come back and report the kid went for rehab or therapy, but some parents sadly have to come back for a barring order,” said Judge Furlong.

A minority of cases involved adult children with brain injuries, he said. “That goes to other ills in society, not enough services for these people,” he said.

Some cases involve parents being threatened by drug dealers over debts of their adult children.

“That is usually accompanied by violence by the adult child. The house is broken up, any bit of property the parents have is stolen and sold for drugs,” he said.

“I had a parent in here recently who gave €10,000 of their savings to a dealer; it still wasn’t enough. There seems to be little Garda appetite to go after the dealers, these parents are in fear.”

He is very concerned about the impact on younger children in the home of witnessing this behaviour. “It becomes the new norm and you have a dysfunctional generation,” he said.

District Court Judge Stephanie Coggins said protection order applications by parents against adult children were rare in the 1990s but had become a regular feature in family courts across the country.

Applicants are not confined to one socio-economic group, and mental health issues, she believes, are the “driving factor”. “Mental health difficulties and the very considerable lack of services to address them is the issue of our time,” she said.

Drug addiction is never far away and the effect of cannabis use, she believes, may be underestimated. Housing is “a big issue” – young people are unable to buy or rent and that has a big impact on families, especially if the home is small.

From a legal practitioner perspective, barrister Helena Kelly has seen applications for protection orders and interim barring orders increase in her six years in family law practice, including by parents against their adult children.

“[Protection orders] can work to address unacceptable behaviour, the son or daughter gets a fright and adjournments may be granted until the bigger issues are sorted out,” she said.

Some applicants were dealing with more serious situations, including elderly parents caring for adults with mental health conditions and disabilities exhibiting violent and aggressive behaviour, she said.

“The HSE can bring applications on behalf of people in these situations but it often falls back on families, and people fall into the cracks.”

The lack of housing, including supported accommodation, was part of the problem, she said.

Guilt, shame and feeling like they are a bad father or mother are some of the barriers to seeking help, especially from gardaí or courts

—  Andrea McDermott, Men's Aid

Women’s Aid, which supported 868 women who accessed its full-time drop-in service in Dolphin House last year, is seeing increasing numbers of protection order applications by parents.

“We have dealt with elderly parents, some in their 80s, seeking orders against adults in their 40s who have serious mental health issues, some combined with addiction,” said Women’s Aid services manager, Eavan Ward.

“When the parents come to court, it’s a last resort, they can’t take it any more. But there just aren’t the services to help them or the adult children.”

Some cases involved untreated addictions with parents suffering emotional and psychological abuse, violence and threats if they do not give their adult children money, she said.

“The women we see have sometimes suffered a serious assault and that is why they are here,” said Ms Ward. “The lack of housing is a huge issue, parents are reluctant to put their adult kids on the street, they have nowhere to go.”

Men’s Aid, which provides support services to men experiencing domestic violence, reports a similar pattern of more parents seeking protection.

“We have seen an increase of this since 2020 and during this housing crisis where more and more adult children are residing with their parents,” said Andrea McDermott, the charity’s clinical manager.

“The types of abuse disclosed to Men’s Aid have been taking money, taking their parents’ bank cards, robbing from them and selling items belonging to them, having inappropriate friends to the home, often taking over the home, taking drugs in the home, taking their medication or selling their medication, coercively controlling them, physically abusing them.”

Addiction and mental health factors were the main reasons for obtaining a protection order but most parents struggled with having to seek one against their adult child, she said.

“Guilt, shame and feeling like they are a bad father or mother are some of the barriers to seeking help, especially from gardaí or courts,” she said.

Fear of making their child homeless or putting them on the streets to perhaps sink further into their drug or alcohol addiction will often keep parents from seeking a barring order “and keep them in often dangerous situations”.

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