Father abducted girl at Christmas

A garda search was put into effect on Christmas Day after the abduction of a two-year-old girl by her father, who had been given a supervised access visit.

The child was brought to the car park of a pub on the outskirts of Cork City for the supervised access.

However, the girl’s father put her in his van and drove away, in contravention of the access arrangement that had been put in place by court order.

The mother called gardaí. Inspector John Deasy told Cork District Court that gardaí searched for the child throughout Christmas Day and the following morning.

There was a concern that the child’s father might have been planning to take her out of the country.

The defendant was located at 11pm on Christmas night but he did not have the child and refused to tell gardaí where she was.

“He was very uncooperative and refused to assist gardaí in relation to the location of the child,” said Insp Deasy.

The following day, December 26, 2014, he was about to be brought before a special sitting of Cork District Court and it was only at 10am that he gave gardaí the information about where the child was. She was located unharmed and brought back to her mother.

The father pleaded guilty to refusing to give the infant to her mother where custody of the child had been determined by the court.

Judge Olann Kelleher imposed a four-month suspended jail sentence.

Donal Daly, defence solicitor, said the accused had already suffered two-fold as a result of his actions, even before the sentence was imposed.

Firstly, he had ended up with even more restricted access to the child. Secondly, he had been on a suspended jail sentence of two years from another court. Because this offence put him in breach of the terms of that suspension, he had the suspension revoked. He had that two-year term imposed in full. Yesterday’s four-month sentence will run concurrently with that.