Court hears dozens of secret recordings of parents abusing their children

TWO TEENAGERS WHO fled their home to report parental abuse gave gardaí over 180 secret audio recordings of their father and mother hitting or screaming at them or their siblings, a court has heard.

The six siblings were all taken into care after the two eldest children walked into a garda station in the west of Ireland to report ongoing physical and emotional abuse by their parents.

Their parents will be sentenced this Friday at Castlebar Circuit Court, after they admitted to multiple offences of child cruelty committed between January 2018 and October 2021.

The defendants – a man in his fifties and woman in her forties – changed their pleas to guilty shortly after their trial started in May this year.

The father pleaded guilty to four sample counts of cruelty, while his wife admitted two counts of cruelty to their children out of a total of 13 counts on the indictment.

At their sentencing hearing over two days this week, the court heard that the children were aged between one and 17 when the abuse was first reported, and are now aged between six and 21.

A total of 29 extracts from 188 phone recordings made in secret by the then 15-year-old girl were played in court, where one or both parents were heard roaring abuse, threatening and hitting their children.

In many of the recordings, children aged one and three can be heard crying and whimpering as their mother or father slaps them repeatedly and screams abuse at them for not tidying their room or for not going asleep.

In another recording, the father is heard belittling and insulting his eldest daughter.

“Remember that no-one gives a shit about what your feelings are. The only reason we have to fucking put up with you is because you fucking live in the house,” he was heard saying in one recording.

The man could also be heard saying to his daughter:

Is it any fucking wonder you’ve no fucking friends, any decent person would steer a fucking mile away from you, moody little bitch.

A prosecuting garda told prosecuting barrister Pat Reynolds that the recordings were a serious cause of concern and that the two children were afraid to return home to their parents after going to gardai.

Gardaí called to the house that day and found it extraordinarily neat and tidy, which they said in itself was a cause of concern in a household of six children.

A list of names with assigned chores was on the table and a 10-year-old girl was minding her three-year-old brother while the mother was out shopping with two other children.

When the mother returned home and was told of the allegations made by her eldest son and daughter, she called her children “vindictive liars”.

Over the following 24 hours, all the children were placed in emergency care. Gardai said none of the children were upset leaving the house.

One of the recordings included a 999 call made after the eldest son was beaten unconscious by his father.

The son later told gardaí that his father had collected him from his part-time job that day and when he got into the car, his father poked him in the eye and punched him in the face with a closed fist.

His nose was bleeding and as they drove home, his father assaulted him again and he fell in and out of consciousness.

He told gardaí that his father was “in control of the family” and that his mother “never said no” to him.

His sister also gave evidence of that day, saying she started recording after her brother arrived home unconscious.

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In that recording, the father could be heard saying: “He got a fucking life lesson” and “Poor fucking me, the victim”.

The father was heard telling the 999 emergency responder that his son had collapsed after he picked him up from work. “I lifted him up and I sort of tripped,” the father claimed.

The son was taken by ambulance to hospital and told paramedics that he had been assaulted by his father.

In a recording made in the home in the following days, the mother could be heard coaching her son about what to say and what not to say to the authorities.

“Do not give the full information,” she said. “When you tell one of these people one thing, they pull the whole plug…The kids could be removed from our care.

“Social workers are not your friends. Rule No. 1: I don’t want to lose my kids,” she was heard saying, then later shouting: “Cop on, you have been trained about this.”

Victim impact statement

In a victim impact statement read on his behalf by a prosecuting garda, the eldest son said no child should have to go through what he went through.

“I spent my entire childhood walking on eggshells; the fear was constant of being hurt, blamed or just never being good enough. My parents made my life feel like a prison: they controlled me, neglected me, hurt me physically, mentally and emotionally,” he said.

The now 21-year-old, who is living under a new name, asked the court to understand that “it wasn’t just a series of bad decisions – it was a consistent pattern of abuse that robbed me of my childhood.”

He said the damage didn’t stop when the abuse stopped and that the trauma continues to affect how he sleeps and how he interacts with other people.

The young man’s statement added:

If there’s one thing I can thank my parents for, it’s showing me how not to treat a child.

A foster mother for the second youngest child said he was a very sad, angry little boy when she met him at the age of three.

He suffered from night terrors and lashed out at school – kicking, screaming and head-butting – and often had to be brought home.

He would call himself the worst boy in the world and said he was sad and angry because of his father hitting him and his mother not stopping it.

The foster mother noticed that the child’s behaviour would become a lot worse around access days with his parents, but said that once he stopped seeing his parents, there was a huge improvement and he is now a lot happier.

This woman described him as an “amazing, loving, clever boy: and said that showing him he is safe and loved has made a huge difference in his life.

The second eldest daughter told gardaí her father would use his open hand or his belt to assault them and that her mother was always looking for an argument and making sure she knew she was not wanted or loved.

She told gardaí that her food intake was monitored and her mother would make comments about her body, while her father threatened to kill her.

This young woman, now aged 19, took to the stand and read out a statement in which she said her parents had acted with “poor judgement” but that she did not view them as a threat to her or her siblings.

She claimed she had been “influenced and guided by Tusla and gardaí” and as a result had “made the regrettable decision to alter and maintain a false narrative”.

When questioned about this by Judge Sinead McMullan, who took her through her statement to gardaí, the girl said while her statement had not been fabricated, “a lot of things were an immature 15 year old’s perspective”.

Judge McMullan adjourned the case for finalisation this Friday.