A woman who beat her three-year-old daughter for wetting the bed so badly that she died in hospital two days later has been jailed for four years.
Monika Paczkowska (34) of Fountain Court, Tralee, pleaded guilty last week to the wilful ill treatment of her daughter, Sefora Kycwak in a manner likely to cause injury or suffering at Killeen Woods, Tralee on August 2nd and 3rd, 2005.
A charge of manslaughter was withdrawn by the State.
Postmortem reports handed in last week were read Judge Carroll Moran at the sentencing hearing in the Central Criminal Court in Tralee. They detailed how the child had suffered an element of “rotational” as well as direct impact injuries and had sustained a multiplicity of bruises consistent with multiple blows or forceful slaps.
The combination of findings meant the 70 separate injures suffered by the child were not accidental and not compatible with a fall, the reports said.
The court heard that Paczskowska, a Roma, had arrived in Ireland from Poland in 2000 as an asylum seeker and had been granted Irish born citizen status in 2002. She had a difficult life and had five children by three different fathers at the time of the incident.
All children were now in foster care. The father of Sefora, was violent towards her. The father was in Poland for a wedding at the time of the incident.
She was raped by four men at the age of 14, the judge noted. She was at some risk of self-harm. She did not have previous convictions, Judge Moran noted
Other mitigating factors included that she had pleaded guilty, the attack on the child was not pre-mediated and she was a foreigner and was isolated and had suffered a degree of opprobrium.
However, Judge Carroll Moran described assault on the “defenceless” child as “savage” and said the severity of the attack resulted in a completely unnecessary loss of life.
He said the cruelty count to which Maczkowska had pleaded guilty carried a maximum penalty of seven years imprisonment.
He imposed a sentence of four years, backdated to October 26th last to take into account the total time spent in custody, including time spent before she absconded in 2006 and being held in the UK under European arrest for a period warrant last year.
He refused leave to appeal.