Roscommon Woman + Incest/Neglect Case

She and her husband were originally charged over 2 years ago. Wonder if he is going to be in court soon too? They were on €100 bail for 2 years !!!!
 
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irishlinks said:
She and her husband were originally charged over 2 years ago. Wonder if he is going to be in court soon too? They were on €100 bail for 2 years !!!!
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Fifteen months ago. It can take a very long time to bring a prosecution to completion (a matter that bothers me, but is not the issue here).

It looks as if no harm resulted from the remand. The woman was separated from the children; clearly she turned up in court when required to. I would interpret the fact that the husband was not prosecuted further was that investigations did not produce any evidence against him (although it is possible that his case is not over yet).
 
Oh I didn't know there was a husband involved.. initial reports didn't mention one so I assumed he was absent.

She pleaded guilty.. and he not guilty.. how could he not be responsible in some ways for the neglect if he was around too?
 
Its a troubling case, on many levels.

Why have the media steered away from the "right wing catholic organisation" that took the court case originally? Why wasn't a spokesperson from that group interviewed and asked what the hell they were playing at?

I can understand (but not condone) the fact that teachers stood back from making an intervention. Don't forget that the school manager would have been the local parish priest, and the perception that the catholic establishment was against interference may have scared off the teachers.

What about the local publican though? If the woman was in the pub every night, was nobody wondering who was taking care of her children?

Its all very well to blame the social workers, but there are questions to be asked of a lot of other people as well.

Its very sad, that something like this can still happen and that people are unwilling or afraid to intervene.
 
If the social workers were calling twice a week then this was clearly known by the locals.
They must surely have been liasing with the school.... If a principal suspects abuse then they report it to the social workers who were already involved since the birth of the first child...

If the locals knew that social workers were involved then exactly what else were they supposed to do? Who do you call next?
Apart from the excellent suggestion by brianne to go to Joe Duffy.

the whole thing is awful and it is by no means confined to a single case in rural roscommon
 
I guess the publican might have thought that the husband was at home? Its hard to know. Surely others could have seen this. Do the HSE employ blind people to do this job?
 
The whole situation is just sickening. It makes you despair of human nature and wonder what it is that makes some people behave in a way that is so far away from what would be considered right.

I wish I had an answer, but I don't.

Homer
 
If publicans in Ireland reported every mother in the pub getting drunk late at night - they would be ringing social services all the time. You can't blame the publican.

If we all reported every mother out drinking regularly - or every dirty looking child , or children we thought were living in bad conditions - we would have social services calling to plenty of houses and caravans all over the country. MAybe we should?

Lots of people in this country - have an attitude of "let them get on with it" and turning a blind eye. WHich isn't helped by the examples given by politicians taking bribes or forgetting where certain lodgements of money came from - or directors of banks getting dodgy loans.
The same attitudes contribute to many other problems in this country like underage drinking, drug dealing, provisional licence holders driving on their own , benefit fraud, - none as bad as what happened to these kids - but maybe we all see these things going on and do nothing.
I can remember a thread here last year about kids getting verbally abused by a parent in a shop - many many people replied that it was OK and that reporting it to anyone was not the right way to react.
Maybe we all (I include myself) need to stop minding our own business and start minding other peoples?
 
Where is the father or fathers of these children, surely he holds equal responsibility but no fingers have yet been pointed.
I agree with many other posters that this level of abuse and neglect could have continued for so long and nobody shouted stop
 
Publicans in general are a fairly knowledgeable bunch ........ especially when it comes to regular punters. Ireland is not Australia. Most people out the country know quite a lot, or could find out, about anyone in a ten mile radius. And I think your assumption that this kind of behaviour is endemic in this country shows your mindset. I'm talking here about 'mothers' and not the general public.
 
I don't understand the sentencing in this case. Judge Reynolds said she would be dealing with the sentencing of the woman with legislation that dates back to 1908.
She pointed out that the maximum sentence she can hand down under this legislation is a term of seven years in prison.
'Had this being a case of a male person being convicted - a much longer sentence would be allowed under more recently amended legislation. A man convicted of incest can be jailed up to a maximum of a life sentence,' she said.
The combined sentences ( I think there was about six different convictions ) handed down to this women totalled about 48 years but the individual sentences are to run concurrently. Judge Reynolds clearly felt that 7 years was too light a sentence so why didn't she make the sentences (or some of them ) run consecutively to get around the dated legislation . I've never agreed with concurrent sentencing and surely if ever there was a case that merited consecutive sentencing then this is it.
 
Was it a rural place or a town? Where in Roscommon was it? Some parts of Roscommon are quite remote, but if this happened in a town it is even more disgraceful -- you couldn't miss this if it was next door to you in an urban location, or could you?
 
Whilst I agree with most of what you say, even some bad families can be better for children rather than state care. In this particular case obviously not.
Could someone please tell me what was the aim of the Catholic organisation's involvement and where they get funding from, I've never heard of them. Even so I don't understand why the Health Board didn't appeal the High Court case.
 
Judge Reynolds clearly felt that 7 years was too light a sentence so why didn't she make the sentences (or some of them ) run consecutively to get around the dated legislation
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I agree, I didn't understand this part either. She made a point of saying that 7 years wasn't long enough... so why not give more when she could have.

Was it a rural place or a town? Where in Roscommon was it? Some parts of Roscommon are quite remote, but if this happened in a town it is even more disgraceful -- you couldn't miss this if it was next door to you in an urban location, or could you?
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I now believe it to be around Castlerea. I live in Roscommon, in a fairly remote part, and yet there are still lots of pubs, shops and other services around. Surely people couldn't have missed this. People around here know everyone else's business!

Could someone please tell me what was the aim of the Catholic organisation's involvement and where they get funding from, I've never heard of them. Even so I don't understand why the Health Board didn't appeal the High Court case
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I agree with this. I dunno how this organisation got away with it, and how come the HSE didn't follow up on this when they KNEW what was going on.
 

They did appeal it in May 2001 but it failed. The question is what did it do after that. It appears it didn't apply for a childcare order after this date until action was taken in 2004.
 
The HSE were quick to look for a scapegoat and others were quick to use this case to push their own agendas, the facts of the case notwithstanding. The State have let this family down badly.
 
Sunny said:
They did appeal it in May 2001 but it failed. The question is what did it do after that. It appears it didn't apply for a childcare order after this date until action was taken in 2004.
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Do you know the grounds of the appeal and why it failed? Surely such a high profile case would have hit the headlines?
 
Just thought of something else, presumable the children can now sue the State/HSE for not doing their job properly or sue the Catholic organisation and ultimately (I don't know) the Catholic church. Which all neatly ties in to the current Bishop controversy when they didn't follow their own guidelines. I do hope that the children are getting all the love and attention and psychiatric care they now need, it's distressing to hear that the kids are in 3 separate foster homes, I know 6 children is a lot but I hope they won't be turfed out as each reaches 18 (I know one child is currently 19) as the state I think is not obliged after 18, (or is it 16) to look after children. This is very distressing that we do not seem to have moved on in relation to children in 2009.
 
Loads of these cases are brought before the High Court every year - that is the HSE/Health Board wanting to place children in Foster Care due to neglect or ill treatment and they will never make the headlines.
The reason this one was picked up by the media is the charge of incest/sexual abuse which only came to light after the children where placed in care.
I also heard yesterday evening that there is more to come - similar charges to be brought against the father of one of the children within the next couple of weeks. This would explain the lack of attention the media have given to the fathers of these children!

I am also disgusted by this case - we as a society and the authorities have let these children down badly!
 
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