A judge has said he needs time to consider before sentencing a woman who neglected her two young children for years while inviting men into their home to abuse drugs with her.
Judge Dermot Sheehan noted the woman (42) pleaded guilty to the offence of child neglect contrary to section 246(1) of the Children’s Act 2001, and a probation report noted that she had accepted her guilt and was remorseful for the damage she had caused her children.
The Cork Circuit Criminal Court judge said he needs to consider these factors alongside the ”general issue of deterrence in terms of people who are in charge of children”.
The woman’s senior counsel, Elizabeth O’Connell, asked for leniency for her client, who has rehabilitated herself.
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“She now sees events through her daughters’ eyes. She accepts she was not emotionally available for them and that she cannot give them back the years that they lost, but she has accepted her guilt, and she has expressed her remorse and her shame,” said Ms O’Connell.
One of the woman’s daughters said she will always view her mother as a stranger because of how she neglected her and her younger sister in their Cork home between November 2021 and February 2023.
“I never thought I would be standing in a courtroom speaking about (how) the woman who gave birth to me destroyed my life. Mothers are supposed to love their children unconditionally, protect them, nurture them and guide them. My mother did none of those things,” the daughter said.
“I don’t think people understand what it’s like to grow up in a house where you never feel safe ... She chose drugs over me, strange men over me and violence over me.”
The woman sat and sobbed in the dock as the girl, who is entitled to anonymity under the Children’s Act, told how she lived in fear of one of her mother’s partners as she witnessed him punch his own mother almost unconscious in their kitchen and how he later assaulted her.
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“The night he choked me to the ground. I didn’t provoke him. I wasn’t even fighting him. I was just trying to protect my little sister,” the daughter said.
The girl told how she began self-harming when just eight years old and later attempted suicide.
Judge Sheehan adjourned the matter until May 14th for finalisation.
