Finlay calls on DPP to appeal term for neglect

Children’s charity head Fergus Finlay has called on the DPP to appeal the suspended four-year jail term given to a mother who neglected her seven children, because of its “undue leniency”.

On Monday, at Ennis Circuit Court, Judge Carroll Moran suspended the sentence for seven years on the 38-year-old woman, whose eldest daughter described her in court as cruel and evil.

The abuse took place over a nine-year period.

Mr Finlay, the Barnardos CEO, said yesterday: “We would ask the DPP to consider appealing the sentence on grounds of undue leniency. Cases of neglect must be seen as having a profound negative impact on children throughout their lives, similar to other types of abuse.

“Our thoughts are with these children who have been deprived of their childhood due to woeful neglect. It is imperative now that a good care plan is in place to help the children come to terms with what has happened to them.”

ISPCC advocacy manager Mary Nicholson said: “The sentence is quite lenient and it should be probably looked at.”

The DPP has three weeks in which to appeal the sentence which would be appealed on the grounds of undue leniency.

Ms Nicholson described as “horrific” the neglect suffered by the children from 2001 to 2010.

“Generally speaking, children in neglect are left in these situations for far too long before something is done,” she said.

“Everyone has to step up to make that children in these situations are better protected.”

In the case, Judge Moran said the woman “had deprived her children of a childhood which will have long-lasting consequences for them”. He said the woman had committed the “unnatural crime” of neglecting her own children.

All of the children are in care and Judge Moran said that when the four youngest were placed in foster care, “their foster-mother said that the four were very frightened, dirty, malnourished children. They did not know how to eat at the table, didn’t know how to use cutlery and were not toilet trained”.

Judge Moran said: “Everything in the home was driven by the parents’ urge for alcohol and the children were under threat and strict instructions not to speak to social workers.”

In the case, the woman’s eldest child — now aged 17 — described in the witness box her mother as “vermin”. The girl, while 8, had to act as a surrogate mother to her newborn sister after the baby was abandoned by their mother.

The woman pleaded guilty to neglect and ill-treatment of five girls and two boys at different periods from Mar 2001 to Jul 2010.

Opting not to jail the woman, Judge Moran said: “It seems to be because of her attempts to address her alcohol problem and inadequacies as a parent, and her plea of guilty, in these exceptional circumstances, notwithstanding the awful description of how she treated her children that it would not be right to impose an immediate custodial sentence.”