A teenage boy, who is in State care having been removed from a “house of horrors”, has spent up to €30,000 in the past year, Dublin District Childcare Court heard on Wednesday.
Judge John Campbell was told that social workers do not know where the boy got the money, but fear his father, who is being sought by gardaí in relation to alleged domestic violence, may have lodged it into his account.
Alternatively, the court heard, the boy may be being “groomed” by criminals or being used as a “money mule”.
The boy is one of several siblings removed from a home in the Dublin area after the authorities were prompted to visit after one of the children attempted suicide. The same court last week heard the home described as a “house of horrors”.
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On visiting the house, authorities found locks on internal doors, neglect of children and other factors that led to fears the children’s mother had been severely restricted in her movements for many years, possibly more than a decade and a half. The woman was in court on Wednesday, with support.
David Stafford, solicitor for the children’s guardian ad litem – an independent person appointed by the court to represent the voice of the child – said it was assumed the money had come from the father, “but we don’t know that”.
Mr Stafford said the guardian ad litem wanted to know the name of the account holder who was sending the boy money, but this was difficult to ascertain.
There were “very concerning” reports about the boy, the court was told. He had been seen in the company of four older men by staff at his care placement and there were concerns one may be his father, a man who had hit his children “a lot” around the head.
A Tusla staff member said the father had been “leaving voicemails on the Tusla office phone”, asking social workers to “call back urgently”. When they called back, his phone was off.
He was “trying to control the narrative and find out information about his children”, the judge heard.
The court, which was hearing applications from Tusla to extend the children’s interim care orders, was told there was a continued lack of an aftercare plan for the oldest child, who turns 18 later this month.
“We have no care plan ... we have no provision for where she is going to live,” Mr Stafford said.
The judge was told Tusla and the HSE had identified an onward placement for her about which there had been “good reviews”, but both parties wanted to do “due diligence” and await further checks, given the girl has “such a high level of needs”.
Both the HSE and Tusla appreciated “the clock is ticking” and that the girl “needs an answer”, the judge was told.
