BACKGROUND:The conviction of a man for rape of his son revealed the depravity in which six children lived and were abused for years, writes CAROL COULTER
A 52-YEAR-OLD man has been convicted of 47 charges of rape and sexual assault of his son over a three-year period. During the trial, which was subject to reporting restrictions, the jury heard that the son, now aged 20, had been orally and anally raped by his father from the age of 12 to 15, when he was taken into care.
What the jury could not be told was that the man’s wife was already serving a seven-year sentence for incest with another son, and for abuse and neglect of all six of their children.
During her trial just over a year ago, where the woman pleaded guilty to two counts of incest and abuse of her son and to charges of neglect of all her children, the court heard that the children were very obviously neglected. At school they had head lice “crawling down their faces”. They had been wearing shoes which were two sizes too small; they had been urinating on the walls and defecating in their underwear.
Last year also, evidence was given of efforts on the part of the health board, as it then was, to assist the family, but these did not lead to meaningful intervention until 2004, when the children were taken into care after one of the girls revealed she was being abused by her older brother. The judge said then: “These children were failed by everyone around them.”
The health board first became aware of the family in the early 1990s. There were reports of serious drunkenness on the part of both parents, and of the children being left alone. Anonymous letters were received alleging neglect of the children, drunkenness, prostitution on the part of the mother, and general lack of hygiene. The children’s school also reported its concerns.
There was evidence given of a number of case conferences starting in 1996, and of home helps assisting the family, who also received intermittent attention from social workers. However, the problems did not go away, and in September 2000 a voluntary co-parenting arrangement involving a relative was brokered by the health board.
Then came an intervention that effectively paralysed the health board for four more years. In October 2000 the mother went to the High Court seeking an injunction preventing the health board from removing the children from her care. Her application was made ex parte, so the health board was unaware of it until it received the order some days later.
While the mother was not represented in court, she told the Central Criminal Court earlier this month, as she gave evidence of seeing her husband rape their son, that she “had help” in drafting the affidavit on which she obtained the High Court order. She agreed with her husband’s defence counsel that this help came from “a right-wing organisation”.
While the affidavit lacked legal terminology, all the ingredients were there to persuade the court to grant the injunction. Among the statements in it were: “We have a good marriage” and “there has been no abuse”. She referred to a family placement schedule that she was being “forced to sign”.
No organisation was identified in either of the two criminal cases, though the name of Mina Bean Uí Chroibín was mentioned in court during the first one. She has no legal training, and her “organisation” was little more than a loose association of individuals.
The health board was immediately informed of the High Court order, but did not move promptly to have it vacated. This did not happen until May 2001, seven months later. Even then, the vacating of the order did not lead to effective intervention in the family.
What did happen, however, was that within days of the vacating of the High Court order, the father began sexually abusing the son. The first abuse took place, the court was told, in June 2001, and by the beginning of September, as the 12-year-old boy started secondary school, it had escalated into full-scale anal rape.
After a year of this abuse the boy started abusing a younger sister. In his evidence to the Central Criminal Court he admitted he raped one of his sisters in 2002, and continued to rape her, vaginally and anally, over “the next couple of years”. She was eight or nine when it began.
Meanwhile, as she admitted in January 2009 when pleading guilty to incest, the mother was abusing another son on dates between June and October 2004.
When the daughter revealed the abuse by her brother in 2004 the health board at last was galvanised into action, and he was removed from the family home in June. In September he revealed the abuse by his father, and in October 2004 an emergency care order was sought. By 2005 a permanent care order was obtained, enabling all the children to be taken into care.
It was nine years since the first care conference concerning this family, and well over a decade since the health board first received complaints about the conditions in which the children were living. How could they have grown up to be emotionally, physically and sexually abused under the eye of the health board?
The first case conference took place in the same year as the results of an inquiry into the death of another child, Kelly Fitzgerald, regarding abuse and neglect at the hands of her parents, was published.
A HSE inquiry into this latest case is ongoing, and can be finalised and published now that the criminal trial is over. Among the questions it must answer are why it took the health board four years, following the first case conference in 1996, to attempt meaningful intervention with this family.
When it did so, and this was met by a High Court injunction, why did it not immediately move to have this order vacated? When it did, seven months later, why did it not follow it up with decisive action to protect the children? Was it paralysed by fear of the “right-wing organisation” that had assisted in obtaining the injunction? Why did it take four more years, and the revelation of her rape by her brother on the part of one of the younger children, before anything was done?
By then, not only had the children endured appalling squalor and neglect for many years, but both parents had been systematically sexually abusing two of their children for years.