A woman has been found not guilty of a raft of child exploitation, child sexual assault and child cruelty charges relating to her young daughter in Donegal.
WARNING: Some readers may find some graphic content in the following report upsetting
The woman exhaled and wept as she was cleared of the offence at a trial heard before Judge Jonathan Dunphy over 10 days at a special sitting of Letterkenny Circuit Court.
On the 10th day of the trial on Thursday, a jury of seven men and four women acquitted the accused on all 19 charges accusing her of a series of vile acts against her daughter. The incidents were alleged to have taken place while the girl was aged between three and five.
On 12 charges of the sexual exploitation of a child and six charges of sexually assaulting a child, the jury reached unanimous verdicts while on a charge of child cruelty the woman was found not guilty on a 10-1 majority.
The jury deliberated for over four hours before reaching the verdicts after evidence was heard from 14 witnesses at Letterkenny courthouse.
The complex case involved in the region of disclosure that amounted to around 17,500 pages.
Neither the name of the accused nor the location of the alleged offences can be reported in order to protect the identity of the children involved in the case.
The woman, who is aged in her 40s, sat in the dock as the verdicts were delivered.
Her young daughter was also present in court, in the company of a carer, when the jury’s decision was announced .
A male accused, also aged in his 40s, pleaded guilty to a charge of child cruelty when he was re-arraigned on October 23, 2024 having previously pleaded not guilty. The man will be sentenced next year.
In February of this year, a jury was discharged on the tenth day of an initial trial in the matter after issues of disclosure over files in the possession of Tusla were raised. It was claimed, after the prosecution’s case was closed, that there were allegations made relating to foster carers which were included among a batch of files not disclosed.
At that time, Judge Dunphy called the timing of the matter being raised as ‘deplorable’ as the trial was in its fourth week and involved such a young complainant.
The case was subsequently put into a new sitting. The woman was charged with 12 counts of the sexual exploitation of a child. She also faced six counts of sexual assaulting a child. A further charge of child cruelty was levelled against the woman.
The court heard accusations that items including hair grips, leaves, nerf bullets and doggie biscuits were inserted into the young girl’s private parts.
The child cruelty charge covered an amalgam of behaviour the child was allegedly exposed to, including that her mother slapped her, taught her to masturbate, encouraged her to masturbate and encouraged her to play a sexually suggestive game.
“She (the child) felt that she couldn’t say no,” prosecuting barrister Ms Patricia McLaughlin SC said.
The allegations against the woman came to light when the girl wrote “Mammy did it” on a piece of paper in November 2019.
Ms McLaughlin said the girl was “steadfast in the allegations that she makes” and was aware of the gravity of what she alleged.
Ms McLaughlin submitted that a foster carer testified to being absolutely adamant that the girl would not tell “big lies”.
“These people had her in their care and they refused to accept the proposition that she was the type of child to tell lies,” she said, adding that the child’s evidence was replete with examples of her truthfulness.
Ms McLaughlin said the girl referred to “the private thing” in relation to a certain action while certain details were also given in relation to acts between the young girl and her brother.
Ms McLaughlin argued that the actions of the children in the case was “learned behaviour”.
“The behaviour of the children to one another was highly sexualised and multi-faceted,” Ms McLaughlin said. “This was not a normal relationship”
Details of the depraved behaviour were given in court, including a “doggy game” where the defendant was accused of putting a dog lead tightly around the child while in her underwear.
“Because she pretended that I was a dog . . . even though we already had a dog,” the girl told investigators. The girl said she didn’t like doing it and while her mammy said she had to do it, it made her “sad”.
The girl said that she was sore all over her whole body as her “whole body was sad”.
The woman was represented by Mr Garnet Orange SC and Ms Patricia McCallum BL, instructed by solicitor Ms Catherine Boner. The prosecution was led by Ms Patricia McLaughlin SC, with Mr Donal Keane BL, instructed by State Solicitor for Donegal, Mr Kieran Dillon.
Mr Orange said that the woman was so emphatic in her denial that she was almost sick in a basket as she was “horrified at the allegations being made”. “She is absolutely adamant.”
Judge Dunphy described the woman’s reaction to the charges being put to her as “visceral”.
The female accused first came to the attention of social services when she was what Mr Orange described as “a battered wife, let’s call a spade a spade”.
She was, Mr Orange said, subjected to ongoing violence in the family home and alcohol seemed to have been in the background as a factor.
The court heard that, despite a barring order being granted against the father, he returned to the family home, including being hidden in the boot of a car to get to the location on an occasion.
The two children were taken into care in May 2016 after Tusla became involved. Their mother was permitted to supervised one-hour visitation each week thereafter.
“This was supposed to be a short-term placement for some time frame to allow their mother to get back on her feet. Yet, without any explanation, they are still with social services, all of these years later,” Mr Orange said.
“Tusla got involved with a view to giving respite to a battered wife to get her own head sorted. Perhaps they were justified in taking the extraordinary steps of taking the children out of the family home. A year later, they were still there. Two years later, they were still there and at this stage no-one was making any allegation of any sexually inappropriate behaviour. It was two and a half years later before the suggestion of this depraved sexual behaviour came up.
“What was going on and why was Tusla intervening in this way?”
Ms McLaughlin said that an “unspeakably sad feature” of the case was that the siblings were ultimately separated.
Mr Orange told the jury that Tusla “weren’t making much of it” until a name was mentioned. “For a very long period of time, people weren’t making that big a deal of it . . . That changed when she started to talk about the private thing and then started to name names.”
The defence barrister said An Garda Siochana held a “clarification meeting” in June, 2018, but nothing happened until the young girl wrote the name of her mother on a piece of paper. There was, the court heard, no specialised interview with the complainant until the disclosure regarding her mother.
Mr Orange said the girl’s evidence “raises far more questions than it answers” and told the jury members that the young girl was “demonstrably wrong” with the evidence she had given.
He said that there was “disparity” and “fairly gross inconsistency” between naming someone who might have done this to identifying the accused as the person who carried out the act.
On the supervised access, which was the subject of some allegations, Mr Orange pointed out that social workers gave evidence that nothing untoward was observed during access.
“A personal observation and it may be hard, but you saw the demeanour of the Tusla witnesses,” Mr Orange told the jury in his closing remarks, “is it any wonder that (the girl) decided that she was done with her access to her mother.
“The prosecution want to run the line that ‘aww, well look certain things were ignited by Tusla, therefore what (the girl) says must be true. You have the evidence that they were paying close attention and they were listening out for things.”
Earlier, Ms McLaughlin told the jury: “The fact that a social worker didn’t observe anything, doesn’t mean that it didn’t happen.”
Mr Orange sought a corroboration warning over this point, telling Judge Dunphy that the girl was “either lying or simply wrong”. The trial Judge said the complainant’s evidence could be tested in full.
Mr Orange said: “She was probably aware from the time she was seven years of age that the behaviour she engaged in was tweaking the adult concerns.” Mr Orange suggested that the items alleged to have been used by the accused may have resembled other items around the household.
“That appears to be her truth,” Mr Orange said. “Just because it is her truth doesn’t mean that it is actually true. You will come to a conclusion that it was a bit mad. It was real for the complainant, but it just doesn’t add up.”
After the verdict was passed, Judge Dunphy thanked the jury for their time, effort and attention to detail.
“This has been a difficult case to say the least,” he said before formally discharging the woman from the allegations in the indictment.
If you have been affected by any of the issues mentioned in this article, you can reach out for support through the following organisations.
Teen-Line Ireland 1800 833 634
Samaritans 116 123 or email jo@samaritans.org
Childline 1800 66 66 66
Pieta House 1800 247 247 or text HELP to 51444
Text About It – text HELLO to 50808
Aware 1800 80 48 48
