The woman who left a note for her "home alone" children saying "gone clubbing" is to be monitored by the probation and welfare service until October, a judge ordered yesterday. Last May, the 34-year-old south Dublin woman was given a three-month suspended jail sentence after she admitted leaving her three children without a suitable adult guardian on June 12th, 1998. She was also remanded until yesterday for a probation report. After reading it, Judge Thomas Edward O'Donnell remanded her for a further three months for an updated report.
Dublin District Court heard previously that gardai went to the woman's home and found a four-year-old girl crying in the front garden. The door of the house was answered by a 12-year-old boy. Behind a locked door in an unfurnished back room upstairs, Garda Ronan Murphy found a two-year-old boy crying uncontrollably. Garda Murphy spoke to the older boy who said his mother had gone out and left a note which read: "Gone clubbing, back later, look after [the names of the other two children]." The children were removed to Crumlin Children's Hospital and later that night the mother returned home and picked them up. The court heard she suffered from depression and was upset and ashamed by the matter.