Mother goes on trial facing 44 counts of child abuse

A mother has gone on trial charged with cruelty and neglect of eight of her children over a six-year period.

The woman, aged 39, who cannot be named in order to protect the identity of the children, now aged between 5 and 19, has pleaded not guilty before Galway Circuit Criminal Court to 44 charges of child cruelty.

The charges relate to wilfully assaulting, ill-treating, neglecting, or abandoning the children, or causing or allowing the children to be assaulted, ill-treated, neglected, or abandoned, in a manner likely to cause unnecessary suffering or injury to the children’s health or seriously affect their wellbeing.

The incidents are alleged to have taken place at various locations on dates between September 1, 2006, and May 12, 2011, contrary to section 246 (1) and (2) of the Children Act 2001.

Shane Costello, prosecuting, told the jury yesterday that the woman was charged with 44 counts of child abuse.

One of her daughters, he said, would give evidence of how her mother caught her self-harming and showed her how to do it properly, while other children would tell of how their mother poured washing-up liquid down their throats to reprimand them.

The children, Mr Costello said, were taken into care in May 2011, following an unannounced house visit by HSE staff.

Social workers had been dealing with the family since 2006, and were alarmed to find the mother absent from the family home and strangers present, who were in no fit state to look after the children, the court heard.

After the children were placed with various foster parents, they began “to recount a narrative of violence within the family home”, explaining how their mother had physically abused them, Mr Costello said, adding that they were never returned to the mother.

Two of the boys would recount how their mother threw them out of her car one day because they had spilled ice cream in the back seat, said Mr Costello. They said she then drove the car at them and they had to jump out of the way to avoid being hit.

Mr Costello said the mother was subsequently charged with the offences before the court. During garda interviews, she accepted she had used physical violence on some occasions but she asserted it was not at all above reasonable chastisement. She denied the other allegations.

The trial continues.