A 42-year-old woman put her head in her hands and wept as she avoided a custodial sentence after she admitted neglecting her two children to the point that they ended up malnourished.
The woman, who cannot be named to protect the identities of her children, had pleaded guilty to ill-treating the girls in a manner likely to cause them unnecessary suffering or injury to their health or seriously affect their wellbeing between November 2nd, 2021 and February 26th, 2023.
On Wednesday at Cork Circuit Criminal Court, Judge Dermot Sheehan recalled the evidence that he had heard from the investigating garda that gardaí had been called to the woman’s house where they found the woman intoxicated on alcohol and drugs and the children malnourished.
He recalled the victim impact statements given by the two girls which he described as “powerful and revealing a real sense of betrayal by their mother” in which they spoke about their neglect as their mother brought violent drug addicts into the house rather than look after them.
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One girl told how she never “thought I would be standing in a courtroom speaking about [how] the woman who gave birth to me destroyed my life. Mothers are supposed to love their children, unconditionally, protect them, nurture and guide them. My mother did none of those things.
“I don’t think people understand what it’s like to grow up in a house where you never feel safe. You don’t know if the person who supposedly loves you will be kind one minute or cruel the next. My mother didn’t just fail me. She betrayed me in ways no child should ever have to experience.
“She chose drugs over me, strange men over me and violence over me. She let her random hook-ups and one-week relationships into the house like they had a right to be there, like I was just some background noise in her life. She never once thought about me.”
The other girl said her mother’s behaviour had taken a huge toll on her mental health and because of her mother’s drinking, she became very paranoid when she saw people drinking in public while she was also afraid of men because so many of them had come into their home.
“Growing up with my mom, there were a lot of ups and downs, one day she would tell me she loved me, and the next day she would say the complete opposite ... I was manipulated by her in so many ways, and I learned early on if my mom wasn’t happy, I wasn’t allowed to be happy.”
Defence counsel Elizabeth O’Connell SC had pleaded for leniency, saying her client had pleaded guilty, had no significant previous convictions and was genuinely remorseful for her behaviour and she had rehabilitated herself by going on drug and alcohol treatment courses.
Judge Sheehan said the woman had chosen to indulge in her addiction rather than look after her children, to the point that they were malnourished and had no concept of personal hygiene, and she had exposed her children to physical violence from the men she had invited home.
However, he noted she had no previous convictions and had not come to Garda attention since, had accepted responsibility and apologised for her actions and had made serious efforts at rehabilitation while a probation report found she was at a moderate risk of reoffending.
He said he believed the appropriate headline sentence was one of four years but taking mitigating factors such as her guilty plea, remorse and rehabilitation into account he would reduce it to 2½ years which he would suspend in its entirety because she had no previous convictions.
