A violent teenage girl who has emotional, educational and psychiatric problems was detained for a month yesterday on her 61st criminal conviction.
The 16-year-old from Tallaght has enormous personal problems which she developed after her parents separated. She has been arrested constantly for drunkenness, abuse of gardaí and for violently resisting arrest.
She already had 41 convictions, 30 of which resulted in her detention in September. However, she was then released on appeal and committed a series of offences for which she was in the Dublin Children's Court yesterday.
Judge Bridget Reilly was told the girl admitted her offences, including being drunk and disorderly, breach of the peace, disorderly conduct in a Garda station, refusing to comply with a garda's direction to leave an area in case she would cause a breach of the peace, assaulting gardaí, criminal damage and theft.
She had been constantly arrested late at night in the city centre from which she had been barred.
On March 22nd last, she was found extremely drunk and barely able to stand. She became aggressive and abusive to a garda.
On October 8th she was arrested outside a children's disco for being drunk and disorderly. She was then taken to Tallaght Garda station where she attacked a female officer and pulled clumps of her hair out.
On October 14th she was found drunk falling in front of cars travelling on O'Connell Street. A member of the public had reported her to a garda for snatching a mobile phone. As with other arrests she resisted and struggled violently with the arresting gardaí.
In another incident, on October 30th, she walked into Tallaght Garda station and created a disturbance before putting up another struggle. She was also arrested on O'Connell Street on November 19th after screaming abuse at passers-by. She was repeatedly asked to leave the area, but was there an hour later harassing members of the public.
Two days previously she was arrested at Bachelor's Walk for the theft of a mobile phone.
Last Tuesday she was arrested for causing criminal damage at the Dublin Children's courthouse, where graffiti was engraved on an outside wall.
Garda Fionnuala Monaghan told Judge Reilly that on December 19th on Dame Street, while she was dealing with a disorderly youth, the girl attacked her, screaming abusive comments. The garda was kicked on her leg.
The girl's father said he was against his daughter being released from the earlier detention. When his wife left him, he had to give up work to look after his children. He also said the health board agencies had done little to help her at a young age when she needed it most.
Volumes of reports on the girl's psychiatric and educational difficulties were handed into court for the judge's inspection.
After studying the extensive reports, Judge Reilly described her as a "vulnerable young woman in need of a lot of help".
Referring to the girl's problems she said: "It did not arise overnight. There had been difficulties in her family background going back a number of years."
The girl was given a series of one-month detention orders, to run concurrently, in Oberstown Girls' Centre.
The court had been told that because of her age and the institution's sentencing regime, they could not take her for longer than one month.
The Children's Court is limited in its detention orders for under 17s and restricted to imposing either one-month or two-year terms.
However, Oberstown's policy is not to take 16-year-olds for longer than a month, the court heard.