A HIGH COURT judge has given a seven-year sentence to a father who allowed his defenceless four-year-old son to be subjected to what was described in court as a “frightening” campaign of physical abuse.
Passing sentence on the man today at the Central Criminal Court, Mr Justice Paul McDermott also said the man misreported the boy’s “catastrophic” fatal injuries, which he added was a “shameful betrayal” of the child.
The child was found at a house in the southwest of the country on 13 March, 2021. He died three days later in hospital on 16 March in Dublin.
A post-mortem report revealed that the boy’s cause of death was traumatic head injury in association with blunt force trauma to the abdomen.
The 35-year-old defendant, who cannot be named for legal reasons, pleaded guilty last March to charges of endangerment, neglect and impeding the apprehension of the person who he knew or believed to have murdered the child.
The judge today sentenced the man to seven years in prison for assisting an offender and another seven years for endangerment of the child. He was also jailed for five years each on two counts of child cruelty.
The man’s sentences are to run concurrently and were back-dated to March 2024.
The man’s co-accused and former partner had pleaded guilty to the manslaughter of the boy, but this was not acceptable to the Director of Public Prosecutions. A date had not yet been fixed for the woman’s trial.
The judge said today that the man bears a very high level of criminal responsibility for failing to nurture and protect his son.
He highlighted that there was a “callousness” in how the child was treated by his father and said the defendant’s “deliberate disregard” for his son’s welfare was “extremely difficult to understand”.
He said the aggravating features of the offending was the age of the victim and described him to the court as “a small, defenceless four-year-old little boy” who had been “isolated in a continuously frightening situation”.
The judge also said that he was satisfied that there was “a clear and disturbing pattern of abuse” of the child, of which the boy’s father was aware.
He said the defendant had played a significant part in not only “hiding” the child, but also minimising those injuries.
He said the child was subjected to “frightening forms of chastising and assault” as well as being isolated from members of the family. He said outsiders were not allowed access to the boy, so they could not see his injuries.
The judge added: “He was even left on the basis of evidence found in his bedroom without the basic comforts of sheets and a duvet. This should have been a place of safety and comfort. Much occurred not only in his own home but worse in his bedroom which turned into a place of fear”.
He said the man tolerated, knew and allowed his son to be subjected to the abuse “culminating in his child’s death”.
He also said the man’s protection of his then partner from the consequence of what she did, and his protection of his own behaviour and inaction was part of the story of this “very sad case”.
“The assaults on the child which he tolerated and the treatment of the child are of the most appalling kind,” he continued.
The judge said those who were interviewed by gardaí had described the boy as a typical four-year-old who was “into everything” including playing and wrestling.
He said the boy was a “good mixer” with other children, didn’t find it difficult to talk and was “a happy, cheery little boy”.
Prosecuting lawyers today highlighted that the father, who has a previous conviction for violent disorder, initially told gardaí that his son had been “perfectly normal” when he left for work on the morning the boy was found with injuries, and gave an inaccurate account of events in five out of six interviews with detectives.
The defendant’s barrister Brian McInerney SC alongside Maria Brosnan BL told the court that his client had instructed him to “publicly state that he is ashamed of himself”.
The judge commented today that the boy, who slept in a steel framed bunk bed, was not provided with a ladder to access his upper bunk.
He also said the boy did not have sheets or a duvet on his bunk bed.
In a nearby bedside locked, gardaí found various remedies for pain including hot and cold packs, Arnica cream and steri strips. A waste bin in the bedroom contained an empty tube of Arnica cream.
The judge said he had received “a detailed and heart-wrenching” victim impact statement from the child’s mother.
The boy’s mother had previously described holding her son in her arms as his life support machine was turned off.
The woman, who gave a victim impact statement at the man’s sentence hearing last July, said that even at four years of age her “beautiful brown eyed boy” “had so much potential” and she could not wait to watch him grow but his life had been “robbed” from him.
The mother said when she walked into the hospital room, her “beautiful little child” was “hooked up to all wires”.
“His little head was 10 times bigger than normal, it was that swollen and he was black and blue,” she told the Central Criminal Court.
The woman said on the day of her son’s funeral, the boy’s father had stood up “in Holy God’s house and told everyone how much he loved [the boy] and that [the boy] was a superhero”. “How could he,” she added.
Paramedics and hospital staff had noted extensive old and new bruising all over the boy’s body, including around his eyes and ears.
When asked by doctors how the boy had sustained the bruising, the defendant said his son, who he claimed was “clumsy” and “hyperactive”, had fallen into a door two weeks previously.
The court was told medical staff in the hospital were of the view that the bruising was the result “of a non-accidental injury”.
The man had pleaded guilty to reporting the cause of his son’s injuries as an accidental fall to a garda station in the southwest of the country, with intent to impede the apprehension or prosecution of another person, knowing or believing them to be guilty of murdering the child or some other arrestable offence, on 24 March 2021.
He had also pleaded guilty to intentionally or recklessly endangering the child, by causing or permitting him to be placed or left in a situation that created a substantial risk to him of being a victim of serious harm, while being a person who had authority or control over the child, on 13 March 2021.
The defendant had further pleaded guilty to wilfully causing or procuring or allowing the child to be assaulted in a manner likely to cause him unnecessary suffering or injury to his health or seriously to affect his wellbeing, while being a person having custody, charge or care of the child, between 6 March and 12 March, 2021.
In addition, the man had also pleaded guilty to wilfully neglecting the child in a manner likely to cause him unnecessary suffering or injury to his health or seriously to affect his wellbeing by failing to provide adequate medical aid to him, while being a person having custody, charge or care of the child, on 13 March 2021.
Before delivering the sentence today, the judge said the child’s mother suffered from some mental health issues and had voluntarily given custody of the child to the boy’s father and his then partner.
He said the boy had been attending creche when he lived with his mother but that this had stopped after the new custody arrangements were put in place.
The judge said the child’s condition on the morning of 13 March had not been a centrally important matter for the defendant.
He said it was clear that the man knew what he was doing was wrong as he had taken active steps to conceal the boy’s injuries.
He said the defendant had continued to try to protect the main perpetrator of the offence even when emergency services sought his assistance that morning.
Earlier, Detective Garda Shane O’Neill agreed with defence counsel that the defendant had been in gainful employment and was arrested at work.
The defendant has 14 previous convictions, mainly for road traffic matters. He previously received a suspended sentence for violent disorder.
Referring to the offence of violent disorder, the garda said it involved a significant number of people involved in a public dispute in the midlands concerning “unhappy differences in an extended family”.
The detective agreed with prosecution counsel Anne Rowland SC that the defendant had given no assistance to gardaí in a voluntary interview on 24 March, 2021.
She said the defendant had described his child as “having been perfectly normal” when he left for work that morning.
The defendant was subsequently interviewed by gardaí on six occasions in August 2021 and gave an inaccurate description of events in the first five interviews, she said.
The detective agreed with the prosecutor that the pathologist’s report had described a laceration on the child’s liver as one of the causes of his death.
In mitigation, counsel called the case a “most unfortunate and tragic” one. He said the loss of any life is a tragedy but particularly the life of a young child.
The defence barrister said in terms of remorse or acceptance of responsibility the “most profound acknowledgement” that can be made is for a defendant to stand in the court before the public and media and “utter the word guilty”.
“That is the most profound acceptance of responsibility as it is a public admission of wrongdoing and acceptance of guilt. The accused does not in any way resile from his guilty pleas; he acknowledges those,” he added.
Referring to the man’s psychological report, counsel said a doctor found the defendant had a dependent personality and was unassertive in close relationships, which tended to be co-dependent. “That is significant in the context of this case,” he added.
Referring to the defendant relying on others in his relationships and taking their view as opposed to his own, the judge remarked that this did not detract from the fact that the man was the child’s father and had fundamental obligations, which he did not fulfil and had betrayed.
Counsel said he was instructed by his client to tell the court that the accused cannot believe he had acted in the way he did and had sought to distance himself from the reality of that through shame and guilt.
“He hopes by his guilty pleas and acceptance of wrongdoing that will go someway in acknowledging his behaviour, which was wholly unwarranted and criminal in nature and wholly unacceptable in terms of his relationship with his son. He acknowledges he has to live with that burden on his life every day,” he said.
Finally, the lawyer said that his client had also instructed him to publicly state that he is ashamed of himself and “does not see that leaving at this stage”.
The judge extended his sincere sympathies to the child’s mother and the extended family.
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