A couple in the west of Ireland has been sentenced for multiple counts of child neglect after a court heard details of squalid, filthy conditions endured by their two young autistic children.
The 40-year-old father was jailed for 18 months while his wife (37) got a suspended sentence in what a judge described as a ‘heartbreaking case’ at Castlebar Circuit Court yesterday/THURSDAY.
The court heard social workers became physically sick from the smells and sights in the family’s home, including animal faeces on floors and walls, beds covered in dried vomit and flies everywhere.
The man and woman pleaded guilty to two counts each of wilful neglect of their two children on dates between September 2020 and September 2021.
The girl was aged between five and six while her younger brother was two to three years’ old during the period of the offending.
A local school and crèche raised concerns about the children’s welfare and referred the matter to Tusla.
After a visit by social workers in September 2021, the children were taken into foster care where they are doing well, the court heard.
The man was sentenced to two and a half years in prison with one year suspended, while the woman was handed a fully-suspended sentence of two years, suspended for four years.
Garda Conor Guckian told Pat Reynolds BL, prosecuting, staff at the little girl’s school said she was regularly late or missed days, and often arrived at school with no food and with filthy clothes and fingernails.
The child sometimes came to school with no jumpers or socks, or with shoes on the wrong feet, and complained of being cold, hungry and tired.
The girl’s clothing was described as ‘filthy dirty’, sometimes soiled with dirt and black stains or smelling strongly of urine.
She would regularly soil her clothes in school and after such an accident, the dirty clothes were left in her schoolbag for days.
A staff member was physically ill when she opened the girl’s schoolbag and a swarm of flies came out. The bag smelled of soiled clothes and food mould, with dog hairs all over it, the court heard.
Teachers in the school would bring clothes from their own homes for the child, who told them she had ‘creepy crawlies’ in her bed that made her itchy. She was covered with small, black flies.
On one occasion the girl told teachers her Dad spanked her when she did a poo in her pants.
The girl’s mother became extremely rude, aggressive and dismissive when staff tried to talk to her, the court heard.
Teaching at the school moved online during the Covid lockdown in January 2021, and staff said there was very little engagement from the family through the Seesaw app.
Staff from the little boy’s crèche also reported that his clothes were dirty and said he was not being washed. He was described as very withdrawn and timid and not hitting developmental goals.
In September 2021, a social worker visited the family’s house and said afterwards she had ‘never seen anything like it’. She had to walk out to stop getting physically sick.
There was faeces all over the floor and on a bedroom wall, a smell of rubbish, no clean floor or counter space, flies everywhere and beds covered in stains and dried vomit.
Social workers said the house was a health hazard.
The two children were placed immediately into foster care and were subsequently diagnosed with autism.
During interviews with child specialists, the children said their parents had spanked them ‘very hard’.
The girl said she was locked in her room while the boy said he was ‘kept in the puppy dog cage’.
They said their father had told them ‘there was no Christmas’, and using Lego figurines, they simulated physical abuse.
Both parents were arrested and made no comment when interviewed twice by gardaí, but the woman denied any allegation of child neglect.
In his ruling, Judge Eoin Garavan said it was a case of ‘heroes and failures’, praising the school and crèche workers who had rallied around the children, fed and clothed them.
‘They did the right thing and came across as particularly kind. Without them, the children may have been in a worse position,’ said the judge.
He also described the foster parents as heroes, noting that the children shown great behavioural improvement.
Judge Garavan said there was a ‘clear failure’ by Tusla, who had been made aware of the family in 2017 but had neglected to continue to provide supervision.
He acknowledged that the family had moved address and said that perhaps ‘through no fault of their own’, Tusla were very constrained in Covid times and ‘things slipped’.
‘Nobody joined up the dots. Supervision was literally being done through a kitchen window,’ said the judge.
He also criticised Tusla for sending the woman to a psychoanalyst for low-cost counselling in a ‘budget-saving exercise’ which the court heard had been completely inadequate for her needs.
Judge Garavan agreed with a report by a clinical psychologist into the mother which said she urgently required ‘treatment rather than punishment’.
The judge also agreed with defence counsel Catherine White SC, that the parents were unable to care for themselves, let alone their children.
The court heard that the couple pleaded early and that the man told gardaí he was sorry for his actions.
‘I know I failed the children massively by allowing it to get to this stage and it’s embarrassing and not fair to the children,’ he told gardaí.
The man also said he had become ‘more of a carer than a husband’ to his wife, who suffers from significant mental health issues including PTSD, ADHD, depression and hoarding disorder.
The man has no previous convictions while the woman has two previous for minor driving offences.
The clinical psychologist’s report described the woman’s adverse childhood experience of abuse and trauma, and said ‘neglect is not intentional where a parent has significant mental health issues’.
Counsel said the two parents are distraught and have apologised to their children.
They have been assessed as being at low risk of reoffending, since the children are no longer in their care.
The court heard that the parents were struggling financially and sometimes walked the two or three miles to school because they could not afford diesel.
It also emerged that the father, who was commuting long distances to work long hours, was earning €38,000.
Dr Laura Byrne BL, defending the father, said the photos taken of the family’s house show ‘chaos, crisis and people who weren’t coping’.
Judge Garavan said dogs and animals were allowed free reign in the house and were ‘treated significantly better than this couples’ children.’
He said the father felt ‘blindsided and lost’ but that the children ‘took second place in his minding of his wife – and that should not have been the way.’
Judge Garavan agreed with a request from the defence to adjourn the man’s sentence until the end of March, to allow them time to sort out accommodation.