35-year-old defendant jailed for child cruelty and endangerment

This report is a localnews.ie summary based on public court reporting and records; sources are listed below.

The 35-year-old defendant was jailed for seven years for child cruelty, endangerment and assisting an offender at the Central Criminal Court on 11 October 2024.

The concurrent terms were seven years for assisting an offender, seven years for endangerment and five years on each of two child cruelty counts; all were backdated to March 2024.

The judge said the father allowed his four-year-old son to endure a frightening pattern of abuse and misreported his fatal injuries as an accidental fall.

The boy was found at a house in the southwest on 13 March 2021 and died in a Dublin hospital three days later.

The boy’s mother told the court she had held him as his life support machine was turned off.