A mother of seven has been jailed for 2½ years for the “very serious” neglect of six of her children over a four-year period.
An investigating garda previously told Dublin Circuit Criminal Court the house where six young children then lived was filthy and freezing cold. She described it as the “worst conditions I have ever witnessed”.
A 34-year-old woman pleaded guilty to a charge of child neglect on dates between 2016 and January 2020. The woman cannot be named to protect the children’s anonymity.
The court heard the six children, then aged between eight years old and 10 months, were taken into care in January 2020. The woman has since had another child.
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Judge Martin Nolan said the case was “close to the highest end of the range” for sentencing due to the “extreme neglect” of these six children over a four-year period.
“It seems to me that the children suffered very serious harm as a result of her neglect,” he said.
He accepted the woman was in a physically abusive relationship at the time of her offending. He said it seemed she has since “changed her life” and has a young child, to whom she is a “good mother”, with a new partner.
He said the court had, however, concluded a custodial sentence was required to punish the woman and for “general deterrence in relation to the care of children”.
As the sentence of 2½ years was imposed, the woman became distressed. She told the court she had “worked so hard” and was “so sorry”. “Please, judge, my baby is outside. Oh my god, I can’t lose my babies again.”
The second oldest child, now aged 12, told the court in his victim-impact statement that when he was five or six he had to take care of his younger siblings. He said there was hardly any food and recalled eating mouldy bread and drinking gone-off milk.
An investigating garda previously told Aoife McNickle, prosecuting, the family had come to Tusla’s notice before a complaint was made to gardaí in July 2019. The agency had various concerns, including about the absence of the older children from school, and the use of alcohol and drugs in the home.
Other services were also involved with the family, including a local GP, the public-health nurse and a dietitian as there were concerns the children were malnourished. However, there was no meaningful engagement by the woman with relevant services, the court heard.
After gardaí became involved in July 2019, a series of unannounced visits were made to the house which continued until January 2020 when the six children were taken into State care.
The investigating garda said she noticed a deterioration in the condition of the house during this seven-month period. It was the “worst conditions I have ever witnessed”, she told the court. She described the house as “freezing cold”, and in a “filthy condition”, with rubbish on the kitchen floor and in the back garden.
The upstairs of the house, including the bedrooms, was also filthy with a dirty mattress in the bath, rendering it unusable, and dirty clothes in the sink.
The court heard the children are in foster care and now doing well.
The woman has regular access visits with the three younger children, but not with three older ones, who do not want contact with her.
A victim-impact statement from the eldest child was handed to the court, but not read aloud. The second-oldest child (12) read his impact statement over video link. He said he was really scared and that his mother “never helped me”. He said he finds it hard to trust or talk to an adult. The boy said he stills gets very angry and scared, but has a “better life” now. “My life only started when I was seven,” he said, saying he would like the court to place his mother under house arrest so she could continue to care for her youngest child.
Defence counsel Fionnuala O’Sullivan said her client accepted full responsibility for her actions and that she failed completely and utterly in her parenting of the six children.
She asked the court to accept the woman was in a domestic violence situation at the time.
