A woman who admitted making a number of hoax calls relating to an abandoned baby said she was lonely and depressed and just wanted someone to talk to, Dublin Circuit Criminal Court heard yesterday.
Ann Lynch, (36) originally from Coolock but now living in Blanchardstown, made several calls to gardaí in October 2003 when they were investigating a distressed call from another woman saying she had just abandoned a newborn baby boy behind a sofa in a vacant Ballymun flat.
The first woman had contacted the Samaritans on October 27th and gardaí made a public appeal for her to come forward with more information.
Lynch then rang gardaí in Ballymun the following day in a distressed state. She made seven calls to the station between 10.15pm and 10.43pm and sounded agitated and upset. When asked if she was ringing about the abandoned baby, she told a garda she was in the Ballymun towers with the baby but he was not breathing.
Gardaí immediately stepped up their investigation into the reports. They spent three days searching 3,000 homes in Ballymun, breaking into 750 boarded- up flats and dwellings in the process. The investigation cost about €75,000.
The woman who made the call that sparked the initial investigation was arrested on October 30th, but no charges were brought.
Yesterday Ms Justice Yvonne Murphy heard that Lynch had also made a number of hoax calls to gardaí in 2002, reporting a murder, a stabbing, a house fire and a caravan fire. She made 999 calls to Santry Garda station on July 18th, 2002, and five calls the following night. Most of the calls were silent.
Barrister Caroline Biggs said her client was ashamed, had pleaded guilty at the earliest possible opportunity and had fully co-operated with gardaí. She asked Ms Justice Murphy to consider a non-custodial option because of her client's difficult history.
She was the youngest in a family of eight and had learning difficulties. She had a history of abuse when she reached puberty and was "easy prey" because of her learning difficulties.
Lynch's siblings had rejected her, Ms Biggs said, and she had attended all her court appearances alone. Her mother, to whom she was very close, died in 2002 and left her a half share in a house worth €200,000. However, because of difficulties with her family, she had not received the benefit of this and lived in a caravan in her niece's garden.
Lynch told gardaí that she thought she might be suffering from depression because of the way she was living and she had been "jeered" in the restaurant where she worked because of her living arrangements.
Det Garda PJ Walsh said Ms Lynch told him she was not seeking media attention, "just a voice, someone to talk to".
Ms Biggs told the court that her client felt she had been treated as an imbecile all her life and "people think I'm stupid so I end up doing stupid things".
Ms Justice Murphy praised the sensitive Garda handling of Lynch's case and adjourned the case to May 31st, so she could receive a probation report and details of her attendance at the psychiatric clinic. She was "making no promises" on a noncustodial sentence.