Galway Bay fm newsroom – A 39-year-old mother has gone on trial at Galway courthouse, charged with cruelty and neglect of eight of her children.
The woman, who cannot be named in order to protect the identity of the children, who are aged between 18 and 5, appeared before Galway Circuit Criminal Court.
She pleaded not guilty to 44 charges of child cruelty, by willfully assaulting, ill-treating, neglecting, or abandoning the children, or causing or allowing the children to be assaulted, ill-treated, neglected, or abandoned, between September 1st, 2006, and May 12, 2011.
Senior Prosecution Counsel Shane Costello, told the jury that 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.
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 and neglected them since 2006.
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 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.
HSE social workers turned up unannounced at the family home in May, 2011.
They became greatly concerned for the children’s welfare and they were taken into care.
Mr Costello said there would be specific instances where some of the children went without food and were neglected.
During Garda interview, the mother acknowledged she used physical force on the five older children, but she said it was no more than what was done to herself and she was just disciplining her children.
The trial continues today.
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