Co Waterford woman convicted of cruelty to son

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

A Co Waterford-based woman was convicted of cruelty to her son following a seven-week trial at the Central Criminal Court. She was acquitted on two charges of sexual assault. The proceedings were reported on 23 May 2016.

In the same trial, the boy’s father was convicted on 20 May 2016 of nine counts of raping the boy from the time he was six years old, and of cruelty. He was acquitted on nine charges of sexual assault. The parents originally faced 82 charges, but 60 were dropped towards the end of the trial after legal issues arose.

Mr Justice Robert Eagar remanded the woman in custody for sentencing in July after gardaí objected to bail, saying she no longer had ties to Ireland and all her immediate family lived outside the country. The father was remanded in custody on 20 May 2016, also for sentencing in July.

The boy gave evidence by videolink from a specialised treatment unit in the UK. He said his father had raped, beaten and threatened him, that he had been forced to have sex with his mother and that he had been locked in a box.

John O'Kelly, defending the mother, called the allegation that the boy was forced to have sex with her “simply unbelievable” and questioned his reliability.

Lawyers for the father said he believed social workers had brainwashed the boy after he entered care in 2011. Defence barrister Colman Cody said there could be a kernel of truth in this because social workers had failed to tell gardaí about a retraction. The boy later said he had retracted the allegations because he did not want to go through a court case.

Prosecuting counsel Pauline Walley said the boy’s evidence was sometimes inconsistent, but this could reflect attempts to block things out and the difficulty of remembering events from half his lifetime earlier. She urged jurors to judge the case on the evidence.