Woman to appeal conviction for abuse and neglect of her own child

The 46-year-old Cork native was convicted by a jury in June 2022 of willful neglect of the child between September 2010 to June 2015

The Criminal Courts of Justice, at Anglesea Street, Cork. In December 2022, the Central Criminal Court heard that the woman, who has “very limited cognitive functioning”, does not accept the verdicts of the jury, who unanimously convicted her. Picture: Larry Cummins

A woman who received a fully suspended sentence for the neglect, sexual assault, and exploitation of her own toddler son has launched a bid to overturn her conviction.

The 46-year-old Cork native, who cannot be named in order to protect the identity of the victim, was convicted by a jury in June 2022 of willful neglect of the child between September 2010 to June 2015 — when the boy was between one and four-and-a-half years old. She was also found guilty of sexual assault and sexual exploitation of the child on a date unknown between September 2013 and June 2015.

In December 2022, the Central Criminal Court heard that the woman, who has “very limited cognitive functioning”, does not accept the verdicts of the jury, who unanimously convicted her.

At the trial, Detective Sergeant Clare Corcoran told Lorcan Staines SC, prosecuting, that in 2004 the defendant married a man and they had seven children together but that all seven were ultimately taken into care.

The victim was aged just under five when he went into foster care and has since been taken into State institutional care until he is an adult.

The child was found to be unable to dress himself or to sit in a chair, the trial heard. The trial was also told that the boy behaved more like a child of two or three years old, was unable to use a knife and fork and ate by stuffing food into his mouth. He also ate out of bins.

The boy was found to have no understanding of personal boundaries and was not toilet-trained. In late 2017, the child made disclosures to his then foster mother of sexual assault by both his mother and father.

Trial judge Ms Justice Karen O’Connor had noted the contents of an assessment carried out by forensic psychologist Dr Patrick Randall, who said the woman had experienced significant childhood trauma. In his report, Dr Randall assessed the woman's risk of sexual reoffending as low.

Ms Justice O'Connor sentenced the woman to three years’ imprisonment, backdating it by six-and-a-half months for time already served in custody. The judge then suspended the remainder of the sentence for two years on condition the woman comply with probation and therapeutic services.

The child's father, who was the designated primary carer, was charged and prosecuted for more serious sexual offending, but died in custody before he could be brought to trial.

At the trial, the boy described both his parents being present when his mother molested him, forcing him to commit sex acts upon her. The woman did not accept the child was sexually abused and in evidence she named her husband as her own father and claimed that she was conceived in the back of a Garda car.

Defence counsel Ronan Munro said that his client was addicted to heroin, but that she had stabilised her drug-use with methadone.

“My client is traumatised. She has never had a loving, intimate relationship from childhood onwards,” Mr Munro told the court. The court heard that as a child in 1989, the woman reported being sexually abused by her own father and uncle who she said abducted her from social services to do so.

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