Mother gets seven years in jail for abuse of children

SENTENCE:A WOMAN was told yesterday that she had destroyed the lives of her six children who "from the moment they were born knew nothing but cruelty and neglect".

Judge Miriam Reynolds sentenced her to a total of seven years in prison on charges of incest, sexual assault, ill-treatment and neglect of her children.

The judge, who also placed the accused on the Sex Offenders Register, pointed out that this was the first known case of a woman having been convicted of incest, and that in imposing sentence she was bound by legislation which was 101 years old – the Punishment of Incest Act 1908.

Under the Act,a man coming before the court on this charge would face life in prison but the maximum sentence for a woman was seven years, she said. Women should be treated equally before the law, she added.

The way the legislation was drafted showed it had not even been contemplated by society at the time that a woman could be the perpetrator or instigator of incest, the judge said.

Imposing sentence at Roscommon Circuit Court, she said that any possibility of a normal and happy life had been stolen from the six children at the centre of the case, by “the woman who calls herself their mother”.

She pointed out that even now “these poor children were clinging to the hope” that their mother might get her act together and that they could go home.

She told the 40-year-old woman that she had “cast a long and dark shadow” over the lives of her children.

The court heard harrowing evidence of how the woman had forced one son to have sex with her when he was just 13 years old and she was 36. The judge also heard the children – who were shunned at school because they smelled bad and had lice and fleas – were forced to live in squalor in a freezing, filthy home, overrun with mice and rats, where there was often no food underwear rubbish was dumped in every room.

Judge Reynolds said she did not know how the children could cope in the future, given what they had endured. “Six lives have been destroyed. There is no other way of putting it.”

She said they felt guilty, as if they had done something wrong. “I want to assure them they did not,” she stressed.

The judge pointed out that even at this stage, she was being informed that one of the teenage children, who had contemplated suicide, might harm herself if her mother was imprisoned.

This child was not responsible for her mother’s actions, she stressed. It was difficult for this girl and for all the children, the judge added, because the person that they had expected to nurture, look after and protect them had in fact been their abuser.

The woman’s counsel, Bernard Madden SC, had pointed out that a victim impact report suggested that one of the woman’s daughters had very mixed emotions about her mother and that she longed to be with her.

This child felt she was being punished by being put in care. She had been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder and had talked about wanting to kill herself.

Mr Madden expressed concern that if the child’s mother was sentenced, it could be a precipitating factor “in her doing something she should not do”.

Before imposing sentence the judge said she was taking into account the fact that the mother had pleaded guilty, thus saving her children who had been through so much from the added trauma of having to give evidence .

That would have been “an appalling vista” given that some of the children were still of tender years.

Describing this as a “final act of mercy” by the mother, the judge said it was perhaps “the only act of kindness she ever bestowed on them since they were born”.

As their mother, the woman had “a very particular position of trust” in the household, but the trust had been shattered.

“There was violence. She had dominion over them,” Judge Reynolds said.

It was “beyond comprehension” that a mother could have gone to her son’s bedroom and forced him to have sex with her, she added.

Mr Madden had told the court that his client accepted responsibility for her actions and wanted to apologise to her children for her failures and for her role in destroying their lives.

She accepted she had done irreparable harm to the children she bore.

Her biggest regret was the loss of her children and the fact that they must hold her in contempt, given what she had done and what she had allowed to happen to them.

She was sentenced to six years in prison on each of the two incest charges.

Two sentences of seven years were imposed on the charges of sexual assault on her son – which carry a maximum sentence of 14 years.

Des Dockerey, counsel for the State, pointed out that three of the offences of wilful neglect and ill-treatment of her children were committed before the Children’s Act 2001 came into force, and therefore the maximum sentence was two years.

Three further counts of neglect were dated from 2002 to 2004 and carried a maximum penalty of seven years.

Judge Reynolds imposed sentences of 18 months each for the three earlier charges and of six years each for the three later neglect charges. All sentences are to run concurrently from yesterday.