Judge: Parents ‘used teens as weapons’

The parents of two teenage girls from Rochestown in Cork before the juvenile court yesterday for assaults and violent disorder, were accused by the sentencing judge of using the girls as weapons in their own fight.

Judge Con O’Leary said the two teenagers were not victims of each other. Instead they were victims of their own parents.

In a stinging criticism of both sets of parents, the judge said: “They are behaving like children in High Infants, who unfortunately can do more damage. They are using their children as weapons.

“Both sets of parents are quite indignant that they are victims. They are incapable of seeing it any other way. Clearly, any difficulties are not going to be resolved in this court.

“In my sincere view, these girls were victims not of each other but of their parents, who raised them to stand up for themselves morally and physically and not to stand down in the face of aggression from another party.”

The judge said this kind of thinking by the parents prevailed to the point where their children found themselves prosecuted for engaging in criminal offences.

The teenagers, one aged 16 and the other 17, were both convicted of violent disorder where they engaged in an affray with others. They were each convicted of two assaults, one on each other, and a second assault on other parties in what was described as a melee in a housing estate.

It was claimed that one of them hit the other across the head with a glass at one stage in the incident, in Sep 2012.

Solicitors John Tait and Emmet Boyle emphasised the absence of previous convictions against the two girls. The judge dismissed all charges under the Probation of Offenders Act.