A couple who subjected their children to years of “relentless, degrading” physical and emotional abuse and were caught when the victims handed secret recordings over to gardai have been jailed for a combined eight and a half years.
Handing down sentence at Castlebar Circuit Criminal Court today, Judge Sinéad McMullan said “immeasurable” trauma and damage had been inflicted on the six children, whom she praised for their “extraordinary bravery”.
Earlier this week, the court heard dozens of audio recordings taken secretly by one teenager of the parents hitting the children on an almost daily basis and screaming foul, demeaning language.
Judge McMullan said the couple were not only being sentenced for the harm they each inflicted, but for standing by and not intervening when the other parent inflicted cruelty.
The judge described as “chilling” the plans concocted by the parents if confronted by social workers to blame one toddler’s alleged autism as the reason he flinched whenever his father came near.
“There was no safe place for these children and no parental figure to protect them,” she said.
The man, aged in his fifties, was sentenced to six years and three months in prison with the final nine months suspended.
The woman, in her forties, was handed a sentence of three years and nine months, also with nine months suspended.
The six siblings were taken into care after the two eldest children walked into a garda station in the west of Ireland to report ongoing physical and emotional abuse by their parents.
The court heard these two children had planned to flee their home for some time and were afraid to go back to their parents.
None of the children showed any distress at being removed from their home into care, a prosecuting garda said.
The couple changed their pleas to guilty shortly after their trial began in May of this year.
The father pleaded guilty to four counts of child cruelty, while his wife admitted to two counts of child cruelty, out of a total of 13 offences committed between January 2018 and October 2021.
The children were aged between one and 17 years old when the abuse first came to light.
A total of 29 extracts from 188 phone recordings made in secret by the then 15-year-old girl were played in court.
In many of the recordings, toddlers aged one and three were heard sobbing in terror and whimpering as their mother or father slapped them repeatedly, often screaming abuse at them for not tidying their toys or going to sleep.
In one audio sample, a three-year-old was heard whispering “Mama mad at me” to his older sister who tried to quietly reassure him, while in the background the mother could be heard shrieking and slapping.
In another recording, the father was heard belittling and insulting his eldest daughter, telling her: “Remember that no one gives a shit about what your feelings are. The only reason we have to fucking put up with you is because you fucking live in the house.”
“Is it any fucking wonder you’ve no fucking friends, any decent person would steer a fucking mile away from you, moody little bitch,” the man also said to this same daughter.
He promised his children their “worst nightmares” and roared: “Do you know just how embarrassing it is to have kids who are fucking gobshites?”
He roared at his son in another recording: “Are you fucking on something, maybe you fucking should be, because you’re not right.”
A prosecuting garda told Pat Reynolds BL, prosecuting, that the recordings were a serious cause of concern.
Gardaí called to the house that day and found it extraordinarily neat and tidy, which they said in itself was concerning in a household of six children.
A list of names with assigned chores was on the table and a 10-year-old child was minding her three-year-old brother while the mother was out shopping with two other children.
When the mother returned home and was told of the allegations made by her eldest son and daughter, she called them “vindictive liars”.
One of the recordings included a 999 call made after the eldest son was beaten unconscious by his father.
The son later told gardaí that his father had collected him from his part-time job that day and when he got into the car, his father poked him in the eye and punched him in the face with a closed fist.
His nose was bleeding and as they drove home, his father assaulted him again and he fell in and out of consciousness.
He told gardaí that his father was “in control of the family” and that his mother “never said no” to him.
In that recording, the father could be heard saying: “He got a fucking life lesson” and “Poor fucking me, the victim.”
The father could then be heard telling the 999 call taker that his son had collapsed after he picked him up from work. “I lifted him up and I sort of tripped,” the father said.
The son was taken by ambulance to hospital and told paramedics that he had been assaulted by his father.
In a recording made in the home in the following days, the mother could be heard coaching her son about what to say and what not to say to the authorities.
“Do not give the full information,” she said. “When you tell one of these people one thing, they pull the whole plug (…) the kids could be removed from our care.”
“Social workers are not your friends. Rule No. 1 – I don’t want to lose my kids,” she was also heard saying, before later shouting: “Cop on, you have been trained about this.”
Another daughter told gardaí that the boys were always flinching around their father “because they know they usually get hit around the head”.
She said their father told them, that if they were asked about the flinching by social workers, they were to say one of the boys always flinched “because he’s autistic”.
Each of the children made statements to gardaí detailing the abuse, with one girl saying she was hit every night if she didn’t go straight to sleep.
The three-year-old told gardaí that his mother didn’t like him and: “Daddy isn’t nice, Daddy hates me.”
In a victim impact statement read on his behalf by a garda, the eldest son said no child should have to go through what he went through.
“I spent my entire childhood walking on eggshells; the fear was constant of being hurt, blamed or just never being good enough. My parents made my life feel like a prison: they controlled me, neglected me, hurt me physically, mentally and emotionally”’ he said.
The now 21-year-old who is living under a new name asked the courts to understand that “it wasn’t just a series of bad decisions – it was a consistent pattern of abuse that robbed me of my childhood.”
He said the damage didn’t stop when the abuse stopped and that the trauma continues to affect how he sleeps and how he interacts with other people.
“If there’s one thing I can thank my parents for, it’s showing me how not to treat a child,” he said.
A foster mother for the second youngest child said he was a very sad, angry little boy when she met him at the age of three.
He suffered from night terrors and lashed out at school – kicking, screaming, headbutting and often had to be brought home.
He would call himself the worst boy in the world and said he was sad and angry because of his father hitting him and his mother not stopping it.
The foster mother noticed that the child’s behaviour would become a lot worse around access days with his parents, but said that once he stopped seeing his parents, there was a huge improvement and he is now a lot happier.
This woman described him as an “amazing, loving, clever boy” and said that showing him he is safe and loved has made a huge difference in his life.
The second eldest daughter told gardaí her father would use his open hand or his belt to assault them and that her mother was always looking for an argument and making sure she knew she was not wanted or loved.
She told gardaí that her food intake was monitored and her mother would make comments about her body, while her father threatened to kill her.
This girl, now aged 19, took to the stand and read out a statement in which she said her parents had acted with “poor judgement” but that she did not view them as a threat to her or her siblings.
She claimed she had been “influenced and guided by Tusla and gardaí” and as a result had “made the regrettable decision to alter and maintain a false narrative”.
When questioned about this by Judge McMullan, who took her through her statement to gardaí, the girl said that while her statement had not been fabricated, “a lot of things were an immature 15 year old’s perspective”.
Counsel for the father cited a psychologist’s report, which referenced that the man recognised that he should not have been hitting his children and appeared to gain “some insight” as to why he was in custody.
“This is a work in progress,” counsel added.
Neither of the parents have previous convictions.
The man has a solid work history and is currently being treated for a serious illness, the court heard.
He took to the stand and apologised to each of his children in turn “for any distress, harm or hurt” they had experienced through his actions.
He said his own childhood had “very clear discipline; if you did wrong, you were punished: spare the rod, spoil the child.”
“In today’s society it is illegal and I take full responsibility for that,” he said when asked about hitting children.
The man responded that he could not answer when counsel put it to him: “Do you accept that your actions would have been illegal in ‘those days’?”
Counsel for the mother said she was neglected as a child and experienced food deprivation when her father withheld his pay packet and her mother refused to buy food.
The court heard she was severely bullied at school and identifies as having obsessive-compulsive disorder.
Mitigating factors noted by Judge McMullan included the parents’ guilty pleas and the fact that they were showing some remorse.
The judge acknowledged that some of the victims remained conflicted and felt guilty about reporting the crimes and breaking up the family.
However, she said the children should be very proud for bringing to an end the abuse of their younger siblings, and expressed the wish that their strength and resilience would help them in the years ahead.