A boy trapped in intolerable cruelty
But the young teenager at the centre of the west of Ireland abuse case had nowhere to run to, nobody to turn to; nowhere he was safe from harm.
His tormentors reigned over the family home while the wider family, his teachers, social workers, gardaí and the community at large were powerless or thought it was some one else’s responsibility.
“I never had a childhood,” the now 20-year-old told the Central Criminal Court in an emotional victim impact statement.
“The feeling of lying awake at night, afraid to go asleep, afraid to stay awake, waiting for him to come to my room and abuse me was terrifying. I had no choice but to let him do it.
“He used to sleep on the couch in the sitting room, all the time watching telly ’til all hours.
“It was easy for him to come down to my bed unnoticed and abuse me. The pain was terrible but he didn’t care. I asked him to stop, asked him not to do it, even tried to stop him but he just hit me.”
The boy’s childhood and teenage years were characterised by pain, fear, threats and untold emotional and physical neglect.
Yesterday, after weeks of unspeakable courage and determination, the young man watched his father being sentenced to prison for 14 years after he was found guilty at the Central Criminal Court of 47 charges of sexual abuse and rape.
Earlier this year, his mother was sentenced to seven years imprisonment after she pleaded guilty to incest with another of her sons and the cruelty and neglect of all of her six children. The boy in court yesterday was her eldest son. The woman gave evidence against her husband, from whom she is now separated, claiming she had witnessed him raping this son.
During the trial, Aileen Donnelly, for the DPP, claimed it was “unsurprising” that his mother, who knew her son was being raped by her husband, had done nothing to report the matter as “any semblance of parental propriety was absent in this house”.
Hunger was a feature of their early childhood, the court was told by the boy, and their home was always “a mess”.
During the mother’s trial, the court heard even more. All six children were terribly neglected. The house was icy cold, over-run with mice and rats, the children had head lice “crawling down their faces” and they wore shoes two sizes too small, urinated on walls and went to the toilet in their underwear. School was another nightmare and just served to heighten their isolation as they were shunned by other children who claimed they stank.
The children first came to the attention of social workers in 1996 when anonymous letters started to arrive at the health board offices about drunkenness, the children being regularly left alone, prostitution and neglect. Home-helps were drafted in and social workers were in and out of the house on a weekly basis.
The children were all warned to act as if everything was hunky-dory and, somehow, the charade stumbled on. However, in 2000, the then health board decided the children would be better off in care but the mother went to the High Court seeking an injunction preventing the removal of the children from her care.
It emerged during her trial, a right wing organisation helped her to draw up the affidavit which made much of the couple’s “good marriage” and her being forced to sign over her children.
However, it wasn’t until eight months later, May 2001, that the health board vacated the order. Within weeks the father began sexually assaulting his eldest son culminating by the end of the school summer holidays, in regular anal rape.
It was also around this time that the mother began to force another one of her sons to have sex with her. This depraved carousel of incest carried on for another three years until one of the daughters made an allegation of abuse, followed quickly by an allegation by her brother that his father was raping him.
In October 2004, a permanent care order was sought so that all the children could be taken into care. It was obtained.
David Goldberg, for the defence in the father’s case, alleged it was the failure of the health board to pursue this case that “led to this tragic result”.
Fine Gael’s Alan Shatter called for a commission of investigation to be set up in the aftermath of the mother’s sentencing.
“The shocking and disturbing revelations of neglect and physical and sexual abuse tragically suffered by six children and the scandalous failure of the [health authorities] to effectively intervene at an early stage, once more reveal the gross inadequacies and dysfunctional nature of our child protection services,” he said.
Labour Party spokesperson on children, Jan O’Sullivan, said the children at the centre of the case were let down by institutions of the state.
“We had all hoped that the appropriate lessons had been learned from previous cases that emerged during the 1990s, but here is yet another instance where children were let down by the institutions of the state and exposed to unspeakable neglect and abuse,” said Ms O’Sullivan.
“Whatever legal, constitutional or institutional action that is required, must now be taken to ensure that children are never again left in such a situation,” she added.
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