Woman accused of abusing children insists she was a good mother

A woman who is on trial for beating and neglecting eight of her children over six years told gardaí she was a good mother who fed and cared for her children.

She said she saw nothing wrong with pouring washing- up liquid into their mouths to discipline them and would slap them with wooden spoons, a wooden back-scratcher or a leather belt.

“My mother washed my mouth out with soap and it did me no harm,” she told gardaí. “It was no more than what was done to me when I was a kid.”

The woman (39), who cannot be named to protect the identity of eight of her children, has pleaded not guilty at Galway Circuit Criminal Court to 44 charges of child cruelty and neglect between September 1st, 2006, and May 12th, 2011.

Memos of Garda interviews with the woman, which were taken in 2013 – two years after her children were taken into care – were read to the jury.

“Devastated”

In the first interview, she said she had returned home one day in May 2011 to find her children gone. “I was devastated. They meant everything to me. I had given myself a four-day break at the time and I came home to a house with no children. I left [her former partner] in charge of the kids and came home to no children. They were taken into care. It was down to him not taking care of them,” she said.

She denied allegations to gardaí by the six older children of their mother’s sustained physical abuse toward them over the preceding six years. The children, now aged between 10 and 19, have already given evidence by live video link.

The eldest girl told the jury her mother had once tried to drown her in the kitchen sink and that when she was 13, her mother caught her cutting her arm while self-harming, took the blade and showed her how to do it “correctly”.

“It’s absolutely disgusting to hear my daughter say that. She cut her own arm. She made that up,” the woman told gardaí when her daughter’s allegations were put to her.

Absent from home

The girl also recounted several instances where her mother was absent from home for days at a time and when she returned, often hungover, she would beat her and her siblings.

A taped interview, recorded in April 2012, of the eldest boy, now aged 15, was played to the jury. He claimed his mother had twice pushed him down the stairs and then got her then partner to lie to hospital staff about an injury to his wrist.

He also recalled being regularly hit across the back and arms by his mother with a wooden back scratcher and had permanent scars on his torso. “He is lying,” the woman said when gardaí put the allegations to her.

She denied all of the children’s other allegations during the four Garda interviews which were read into evidence.

The trial continues today when the woman is expected to give direct evidence to the court.