Girl remanded over drunken attack on gardaí

A teenage girl, who has been in care since she was aged one, has been remanded on continuing bail pending sentence for attacking two gardaí following a drinking binge.

The Dublin teen (aged 16) had pleaded guilty at the Children's Court last month to two counts of assaulting gardai on a date last April. Her case had been adjourned until today for a probation report on her to be furnished to the court.

Judge Smyth noted that the teen, who was accompanied to her case by a care worker, had not come to garda attention recently. He adjourned the case for five weeks for an updated report from the Probation and Welfare Service which is supervising her progress.

Garda Maire Cahalan of Ballymun station had told Judge Smyth that she had been dealing with a group of youths including the accused who was drunk. “She became aggressive and struck out at me, punched me in the face, kicked and punched me,” she said.

Garda Cahalan had said the girl called her “a f****** whore and prostitute” and was then arrested. However, she continued to act aggressively and another garda was kicked in her groin and to her legs.

The court had also heard that the teen, “on the night in question had a large amount of alcohol taken” and “does not remember it in its entirety.”

Her mother had a heroin addiction problem and at the age of one the defendant had been taken into care. Since then she had been “in a variety of placements and homeless.”

The girl, who resides in a care home has two prior convictions for assault, had a “sporadic education” but has recently started a training course.

In September, she had been placed on probation for assaulting a 26-year-old Australian woman, on Dublin's Moore Street, on October 27 last year. In that case, the court had been told earlier that she then had been “roaming the streets” and using hostel accommodation, when she attacked the woman.

“The accused pushed her and knocked her to the ground, while the other person took her bag,” the court had been told in that prosecution.