The trial of a mother who faces charges of cruelty and neglect towards eight of her children over a six-year period has collapsed due to technical difficulties at Galway courthouse.
It was discovered late on Wednesday evening that a live video link facility, which was used to allow a child give evidence from another room in the courthouse that afternoon, was not recording her evidence to the trial.
Judge Karen O’Connor explained to the jury on Thursday morning that, by law, evidence heard by video-link “shall” be recorded, but unfortunately, in this case, she said, this did not occur in relation to the girl’s evidence on Wednesday afternoon.
Judge O’Connor said she had no alternative but to discharge the jury “with regret”.
She told jurors a new trial will begin with a new jury in due course.
Judge O’Connor then listed the case for trial on January 12th.
The woman, who cannot be named in order to protect the identity of the children, pleaded not guilty to 44 charges before Galway Circuit Criminal Court.
The charges include child cruelty by wilfully assaulting, ill-treating, neglecting, or abandoning the children, or causing or allowing the children to be assaulted, ill-treated, neglected, or abandoned, in a manner likely to cause unnecessary suffering or injury to their health or well-being.
The offences, contrary to section 246 (1) and (2) of the Children Act 2001, are said to have occurred on dates between September 1st, 2006, and May 12th, 2011.
Shane Costelloe SC, prosecuting, told the jury on Wednesday some of the children would be giving their evidence for the prosecution by either live videolink from a separate room in the courthouse or, in the case of the younger ones, by previously taped interviews with specially-trained Garda interviewers.
Physical abuse
Mr Costelloe said it would be the prosecution case that after the children were taken into care in May 2011, and were placed with foster parents, they began to tell of how their mother physically abused them over the years.
They recounted stories of how she used to assault them with wooden spoons, a leather belt and a bamboo back-scratcher, and hit their heads off the furniture. She would also pour washing-up liquid down their throats if they said a bad word.
Two of the boys recalled their mother threw them out of her car one day because they were messing and had spilled icecream in the back seat. They said she then drove the car at them and they had to jump up on a hedge to avoid being hit.
The eldest child gave evidence by videolink telling the court “she was not a proper mother”.
“She abandoned her children,” the girl said. The girl said that when her mother started drinking sessions in the house it would always end in violence for the children. “There would be violence towards me too. My mother came home from a concert once very drunk ... her partner told her I said a bad word and my mother dragged me off the couch by my hair. She dragged me into the kitchen and put my face down into the sink.
“She started to choke me and she began filling the sink with water to drown me - just because of one word,” the girl said.
She recalled her mother leaving the home to go drinking around the time of her 14th birthday. She said the mother returned home the next day and slapped her across the face while saying “that is your birthday present”.