False-claims woman given a year to continue treatment

A woman who made false claims to gardaí of murder, shooting, stabbing, house fires, and of being with an abandoned baby has been given a year to continue treatment for her compulsive behaviour before being sentenced.

Ann Lynch (aged 37) with a current address at Fortlawn Avenue, and who formerly lived in a caravan at Whitestown Avenue, Blanchardstown had a history of ringing the ‘999’ emergency number.

Sergeant Michael Drew told Dublin Circuit Criminal Court she made 99 silent calls "with heavy breathing" on one night alone.

Lynch, described by Ms Caroline Biggs BL, her defence counsel, as "a fruit and nut case", pleaded guilty to a series of charges of making a false statement causing apprehension that persons and property might be damaged; false reports causing inconvenience; and to wastage of garda resources, on various dates between February 2002 and October 2003.

Judge Yvonne Murphy told Ms Biggs that her client was facing a lengthy sentence given the nature of the charges against her.

Judge Murphy praised how gardaí had handled the situation and noted that Lynch had wasted a large amount of gardai time.

She said she was adjourning the sentence hearing to July 13, 2006 on condition that Lynch continued treatment for her compulsive addiction under the Probation and Welfare Services and that she did not come to garda attention in the meantime.

Mr Desmond Zaidan BL, prosecuting, said at an earlier hearing that she rang Santry garda station in the early hours of July 17, 2002 to report a murder that never occurred and made the 99 silent phone calls the same day. She made five more silent phone calls to the same station the following morning.

Detective Garda Kevin Walsh told Mr Anthony Hunt BL that Lynch was not the woman who originally made the widely reported false claim on October 27, 2003 that she had abandoned a baby in Ballymun but came onto the scene a day later.

Det Gda Walsh said Lynch rang Ballymun garda station seven times on the evening of October 28, 2003 when the investigation into the case of the alleged abandoned baby was in full-swing.

She claimed she was ringing from one of the Ballymun tower-blocks and while crying and sounding very upset on the phone she also told gardai that "the child is not breathing".

When the calls were later traced to her she denied she had been trying to gain media attention but agreed she was lonely and depressed and that her behaviour might have been "a call for help".

Sgt Drew said the first recorded phone call by Lynch to 999 was on February 24, 2002 when she claimed there had been a shooting at an address in Raheny.

She placed her second such call on June 14, 2002 when she said there had been a stabbing at another house on the same street in Raheny where she claimed the shooting had occurred. She rang the fire brigade on July 15, 2002 falsely reporting that a caravan was on fire at a Raheny address.

Sgt Drew said that on August 11, 2002 she rang the Dublin Fire Brigade again to report an alleged house fire in the same area in Raheny. Gardai and firemen were dispatched to all the locations she specified, causing waste of manpower and incurring unnecessary expenses.

Sgt Drew agreed with Ms Biggs that Lynch made no attempt to disguise her voice during the calls and that she sounded intoxicated.

Ms Biggs submitted to Judge Murphy that Lynch’s behaviour in these cases could best be described as that of "a fruit and nut case".

Ms Biggs said Lynch had "a low level of intellectual functioning" and her life had been "falling apart" when she made the phone calls. Both her parents were dead and she had been experiencing problems with claiming a substantial inheritance her mother had left her.