Mother and son engaged in ‘vulgar abuse’ of woman

A mother and her son from Cape Clear island off the coast of West Cork have spent a night in custody after being found guilty of harassing another islander over a period of almost two years in what a judge described as a long campaign of “sustained, deliberate, vulgar, and demeaning abuse”.

Skibbereen District Court heard that Helen O’Driscoll, aged 61, of 1 Clerke’s Lane in Skibbereen, and her son Shane, 31, of Lissamona on Cape Clear, began harassing the victim after Ms O’Driscoll’s husband, Fachtna, revealed in the early hours of New Year’s Day 2017 that he had fathered a child with the woman after an affair some years previously.