A 16-year-old girl has expressed hope that other children who are subjected to physical abuse and cruelty from relatives will come forward after she saw her stepfather jailed for 18 months after he admitted beating the girl, forcing her to take cold showers and locking in her room for hours.
The girl, who is entitled to anonymity under the Children’s Act, told Cork Circuit Criminal Court that she was relieved when her 43-year-old stepfather pleaded guilty to child cruelty to her on various dates between 2013 and 2017, contrary to Section 246 (1) of the Children’s Act 2001.
While the accused, who can’t be named to protect the identity of the victim, pleaded guilty to a single offence, the girl told in her Victim Impact Statement how she was subjected to cruelty by him from the time he moved in with her mother, when she was three, until he left, when she was 14.
“From an early age, I can remember being physically slapped and screamed at by the accused. I remember being showered in cold water in the middle of the night and sometimes being showered with my clothes on,” she told the court.
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When she was very young, she used to have “a lot of meltdowns” as she became very stressed when there was any tension in the home that she shared with her mother her stepfather and siblings, and it was only afterwards that she was diagnosed with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, she said.
“During these meltdowns, I remember being slapped, roared at, and locked into my room with a nylon tied to the door and the banister to keep there for hours. My dinner would be dropped up and I would be locked up again,” she said.
The girl told how she felt excluded from her younger siblings who were her stepfather’s biological children, but she was always afraid to speak up to social workers whenever they used to visit their house as her stepfather “always put on a good show for them”.
“I felt neglected, lost and worthless at times. My childhood was a tough time for me, it has left me with a lot of issues which I am trying to deal with to this day,” said the girl, who expressed relief that her stepfather had pleaded guilty to the offence as she would have found testifying very stressful.
“I hope coming forward will help others and even protect others from this cruelty. I hope to forgive one day but now I do not, and I cannot. I would like to receive a genuine apology for the hardship and cruelty he has caused me,” said the girl, revealing she got great enjoyment from music and art.
Det Garda Craig Peterson of the Cork city Divisional Protective Services Unit, who investigated the case, said that when he arrested the stepfather for questioning about the complaint of cruelty, the man admitted he had slapped and roared at the girl and gave her cold showers as she had described.
He said that once the girl had come forward and made a statement of complaint against her stepfather, he had left the family home while he had entered an early plea to the charge of child cruelty, had no previous convictions and has not come to garda attention since his arrest.
Defence counsel, Jane Hyland SC pleaded for leniency, saying that her client had admitted physically assaulting the girl and he accepted that he had subjected her to cruelty while he apologised for his behaviour both at interview and to the girl in person before he left the family home.
She said that she was not seeking to understate the gravity of the offence, but he was a young man himself at the time and he was not well equipped to deal with what was a challenging situation and he reacted very badly to the girl’s meltdowns and dealt with them in completely the wrong way.
“He did not manage to deal with the situation as she should have ... he did apologise before he left the family home, but I am instructed to apologise again for his treatment of his stepdaughter when she was a small vulnerable child,” she said.
Ms Hyland said that a Probation Report on the accused showed that he was at a low risk of reoffending while his decision to plead guilty to the charge spared his victim from the trauma of having to give evidence in a trial and he had expressed a real and persistent remorse for his actions.
Judge Colin Daly noted that the man had admitted his culpability in what was a serious offence, subjecting a child to cruelty and an aggravating factor was the fact that he was acting in loco parentis to a child who was particularly vulnerable, both because of her age and her ADHD.
Yet another aggravating factor was the sustained period of time over which he had subjected the child to such cruel treatment, and he believed that such behaviour merited a headline sentence of three and a half years, but he would reduce it to two and a half years on foot of his guilty plea.
He said given the other mitigating factors including the fact the man had previously been of good character, was at low risk of reoffending, had co-operated with gardaí and expressed genuine remorse, he would suspend the last year, leaving the man with 18 months to serve in jail.
