AN 11-YEAR-OLD-boy who found his dying brother moments after he was shot in a gangland murder has missed more than a third of his school hours over a four-year period, a court heard yesterday.
The evidence was given at Limerick District Court where the National Educational Board prosecuted the boy’s parents for failing to send him and his sister to school.
The court heard that the children suffered a tragic family bereavement when their older brother was shot dead outside the family home in Limerick and that they had suffered extreme traumatic stress since.
The boy’s father said his son “is not the same child” since the murder and that he had held his brother’s dying body when he was just 11 years old. He said his children, who are now aged 13 and 15, had missed school because of stress and because they were being bullied by those responsible for their brother’s death.
A board representative told the court that the 15-year-old girl, who is due to sit her Junior Certificate this summer, missed more than half of school over a three-year period.
The witness explained that the prosecutions, which were taken under the National Education and Welfare Act 2000, followed many years of involvement with the children’s parents, which had started before the murder. She added that the board took these prosecutions as “a last resort”.
The court heard that the boy missed 59 out of 183 school days two years before his brother’s death and 57 days in the school year prior to the murder.
His sister missed 87 out of 167 school days in the year before her brother’s murder and has missed more than half of the current year.
Judge Tom O’Donnell said the people who stood to lose the most in this case “are the children themselves”, who were missing out on the opportunity of a decent education. The judge said he accepted they had suffered a horrific and traumatic loss but said there appeared to be a consistent problem of school absence stretching back three years before the violent death. He adjourned the case until July 9th.
In a separate case taken by the board yesterday, the court heard claims that a nine-year-old girl has missed extended periods of school because her house is overrun with rats. The girl’s mother said the girl missed eight weeks of one school year because of viral infections she picked up from rats urinating on her bed in their two-bedroom council home.
Judge O’Donnell adjourned the case seeking more evidence.