SOCIAL WORKERS believe that a mother who subjected her children to incest and serious neglect received support from “a Catholic right-wing organisation” when she got a High Court injunction in 2000 to stop the children from being placed in the care of relatives.
Roscommon Circuit Court yesterday heard horrific details about the plight of the six children who, despite coming to the notice of social workers in 1996, were not into taken into care until 2004.
One of the children was sexually abused by his mother, while all of the family were forced to live in filthy conditions without adequate food, clothing or heating.
Judge Miriam Reynolds asked why eight years elapsed during which social workers and home helps regularly visited the home before the children were removed from “what seems to have been an awful household”.
Tadgh Guider, a social work team leader, said there was concern about the family but the mother became involved with “a Catholic right-wing organisation” which provided her with financial support in her successful bid to get a High Court injunction. He said after this court case there was a certain amount of caution about how to approach the family.
Mr Guider said efforts would have been made to talk to the children and to neighbours in order to build up the case for getting a care order.
After a brief adjournment granted to allow health officials to get details of the High Court order, the judge was told that a voluntary arrangement had been brokered in September 2000 which would have allowed the children to be placed in the care of relatives. But then, in a “bolt from the blue” in October, the mother had gone to the High Court and got an order restraining the then Western Health Board from placing the children in the care of relatives.
Paddy Gannon, a childcare manager, said he was contacted by a woman called Mina Bean Uí Chroibín around the time of the application and she said that it was support the family needed, not intrusive action by the health board. He had no evidence that she was involved in the court application but he suspected it.
One of the children read a victim impact statement to the court about the terrible effect his mother’s action had on his life. He said he never had a childhood and always felt different to other children. He could never forgive her for what she had done.
The woman has pleaded guilty to two counts of incest committed in June 2004 and on a date unknown between July and October 2004. She has also pleaded guilty to two charges of sexual abuse against this son on the same dates and to neglecting and ill treating each of her six children from 1998 to 2004 .