'What they did was savage' - Parents jailed for child cruelty that left their daughter disabled

A mother and father who engaged in the “savage” abuse of their daughter, “destroyed” her and left her with a catastrophic brain injury, have been jailed for 14 years.

Dublin Circuit Criminal Court heard the couple believed the girl was possessed by an evil spirit and that they inflicted “wanton cruelty” on her as a result.

The then nine-year-old girl was regularly punched, beaten with a belt and a stick, choked, bitten and badly burned all over her body at the hands of her parents, whose other children testified against them at trial last year.

The girl is now in a care centre and can no longer walk, talk or sit independently since the brain injury.

Her 39-year-old father and 37-year-old mother were each convicted by a jury of two counts of assault causing serious harm and three counts of child cruelty at the family home in Dublin on dates between June 28 and July 2, 2019.

The jury returned the unanimous guilty verdicts after four hours of deliberating.

The couple, who are originally from north Africa, cannot be named to protect the anonymity of the child. They moved to Ireland around 2011 and in March 2019 their eldest daughters, including the victim, moved to Ireland to join them.

The jury heard evidence that at one stage the father told a detective that he carried out a ritual to get the “devil” to leave his child's body.

Two of the couple's other children testified that their parents regularly beat the little girl. On one occasion her mother forced her hand onto a hot stove as she screamed in pain, before binding her hands and feet and burning her with a hot knife, the court heard.

The couple have been in custody since August 2019 and their children were all taken into care.

Sentencing the couple on Monday March 7, Judge Martin Nolan said the child will be dependent on carers for the rest of her life as a result of the injuries inflicted upon her.

“What they did was savage,” the judge said. “To destroy their child in this way is, to put it at its mildest, grossly reprehensible.”

Judge Nolan said that the evidence that the parents thought their child was possessed by an evil spirit provided “no defence or excuse”.

“It wasn't the child who was possessed at the time. I think it was the parents,” he said.

He said that although only the child's mother was present in the home on the day she received the catastrophic brain injury, the jury found both parents guilty on the basis that it was a joint enterprise.

“The court is of the view that this was part of a pattern of what could be terms as pretty savage behaviour by both parents towards their child,” the judge said. He said that both parents were equally culpable.

The judge paid tribute to two of the girl's siblings who gave evidence at trial, describing them as “very impressive”, despite their tough start in life. He wished them and their siblings well in the future.

The mother bowed her head when the sentence was handed down. Her husband made no reaction.

A local detective told Anne Rowland SC, prosecuting, that on the day the catastrophic injuries were inflicted, the father went to work as normal. The victim's sister testified that she heard her mother beating her sister in the bathroom on the morning of July 2 after her mother said she wet the bed.

This girl saw her sister unconscious and naked at around 11.30am and her mother said she thought her sister was dead.

Her mother called the father at work at around 1.30pm and on this video call she said, “I told you I was going to kill her, why didn't you stop me?” The father arrived home from work shortly after 3pm, but only called an ambulance at 10pm.

He and his wife later lied to doctors and Gardaí, claiming that he had only arrived home that evening. They also claimed the girl's head injuries came from a fall from her bike days earlier and a fall in the shower that day. Medical experts refuted these claims at trial.

During the Garda investigation, the father told a detective that he wanted his daughter to be happy so he contacted a friend who was a ruqyah, or Islamic faith healer.

The father told this man his daughter was not sleeping or eating and that she was saying “that the djinn was inside her”, referring to the Islamic idea of a djinn or spirit. The parents also claimed the girl had psychological issues, that she self-harmed and pulled out her own hair.

A teacher who taught her briefly said she was a “lovely quiet girl” with no behavioural issues.

After she was hospitalised, the girl spent some weeks in ICU on life support. Doctors reported that every single part of her body was covered in injuries including deep burns, lacerations, bite marks and bruises. Her genitals were completely blackened.

The girl, who is now in a care centre, can no longer walk, talk or sit independently since the acquired brain injury, reports handed into court said. She has serious sight issues, has to be peg fed and has a significant cognitive impairment. She can move her right arm and rubs her nose to let staff know she is in pain.

“In the presence of her siblings, she becomes happy and smiles,” the report said. The now 12-year-old girl is at significant risk of respiratory tract infections, given the severity of her condition, and her life expectancy is likely to be shorter as a result, the court heard.

Ms Rowland told the court the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) placed the level of offending in the “exceptional category”.

She said the director viewed the “wanton cruelty” inflicted on the child, the sustained nature of the assaults, the fact that the girl was subjected to extreme abuse - including being burned and choked - merited a headline sentence of 15 years to life.

The girl's 14-year-old sister was in court for the sentencing and she gave an emotional victim impact statement in which she said her life would never be the same for her or her sister, whom she “adored”.

“They used to beat her and threaten that they would ruin her life, which they did,” the girl said of her parents. “They left her injured and in a bad condition. Thankfully she didn't die, but she isn't going to be the same again. She won't be able to achieve her dreams.”

The girl said she blames herself for not being able to stop the abuse.

A short victim impact statement handed into court by the girl's younger brother said: “I always told myself that the way my parents treated us, this was going to happen to one of us and it did.”

He thanked the jury for finding his parents guilty of all charges.

Defence counsel for the man and woman said they would find custody particularly difficult as they are foreign nationals. Neither of them have any previous convictions. The man's former employer described him as a pleasant and hardworking man.

During the trial, the younger brother, now aged nine, told Ms Rowland that when his two sisters arrived, his sister was initially happy, “but afterwards no”. He said this was “because my parents hit her”.

He said his mother used a leather belt and a phone charger to hit her and she would strike her on her arms, legs and back. He said his sister would cry and scream in pain.

He said his mother would hit his sister whenever she ate slowly and she would count down while his sister was eating. He said that on two occasions, his mother bit his sister on the arm.

He said he saw marks and red bruises on his sister's body. He said on one occasion, he saw his father pinning his sister up against a wall while he choked her with one hand.

He said his sister's feet were in the air pointing straight down and she was making a choking sound. He told the jury that his father then let go and his sister “dropped on the ground”.

He said she was laying on the ground. The child testified that his mother told him that his father is “teaching her a lesson”.

Ms Rowland asked the child if he ever heard anyone speak of demons and he said yes, adding “the whole demon thing was all planned”.

He said his sister was on her knees in the living room with a towel over her head and his father opened up the door to the apartment balcony “and said for something to be gone”.

Asked what the thing was, the boy replied “I dunno, some evil thing”. He said: “It was sort of planned, it's all fake” and said his father “was just trying to scare us”. He said that at the time, he was scared.

He described another incident when his mother put a hot knife on his sister's arm and his sister was screaming while his mother laughed. He said he smelt burning and he felt sorry for his sister.

On another occasion, his mother got a “weird spray” and sprayed it on his sister's “private” parts after making her take down her underpants, the boy testified.

He said that on the day the ambulance came for his sister, he saw his sister lying on the floor “with her eyes open, but she couldn't see”.

“My mum thought she was dead for a second. She was saying she might go to jail,” the boy testified. He said his mother got a pair of pliers and said to his sister, “If you don't wake up, I'm gonna pull you with these pliers in your private part.”

He said his mother then did this and afterwards began begging for his sister “to wake up”. He said there was “stuff that looked like foam” coming out of his sister's mouth.

The now 14-year-old sister of the victim told the trial that she and her sister were excited to come to Ireland, but that soon after their arrival her parents changed and “started to act different”.

She said her mother used to wake her sister up during the night and begin hitting her. She said her sister wasn't allowed to play outside because she had bruises all over her body.

She said these were bruises from her mother hitting her sister with a belt and sometimes a stick. She said her mother would hit the girl all over her body.

She said she hid the belt once “because I didn't want to see [her sister] get hurt”. She said when their mother found the belt she hit both girls with it.

She said her mother sometimes punched her in the stomach and once she punched her in the face and caused her lips to bleed. She said her mother would pull her sister's hair out, leaving bald spots on the girl's head.

The witness said that once she told her mother that her grandfather had told her it's illegal to hit children. She said her mother told her: “You’re my daughter and I can do anything I want with you and it's not illegal” before hitting her.

She said that her mother was “really mad” on an occasion when her sister wet herself and she forced the child's hand on to a red-hot cooking hob. She said her mother then cuffed the child's hands and her feet together using strong tape before using a hot knife to burn her sister's feet. She said her sister was screaming.

She said she saw her father choking her sister once by holding her up in the air with both hands. She said her sister passed out and their mother was slapping her saying “she's faking it”.

She said there were other times when her father punched and kicked the complainant. She said on one occasion she locked her into the dark attic for up to half an hour while her sister begged to be let out.

She said that after the final beating on July 2, her parents didn't want to call an ambulance.

When they did eventually call for an one, they coached the children on what to say before it arrived, the court heard. The mother hid the stick she used to hit the girl with and the tape she had used to bind her hands and feet.

“I thought it was normal - hitting us and all. I didn't think it was wrong. They told us if you want to come back with us, they said, not to tell, just say [my sister] fell in the shower, so I did,” she testified.

The conviction of intentionally or recklessly causing serious harm to the girl on July 2, 2019 related to the brain damage suffered as a result of a trauma to the head. The trial heard medical evidence that the brain injuries were a result of a combination of blunt force trauma and violent shaking of the head.

One medical expert said that bruising around the face were indicative of blows to the face such as caused by punching. He said the child suffered swelling of the brain and subdural haematoma, or bleeding between the skull and the brain surface, and had bleeding in both eyes.

The injuries to the head were the cause of the child losing consciousness and ultimately suffering permanent neurological damage.

The couple were also convicted of intentionally or recklessly causing serious disfigurement to the child, causing her serious harm, on occasions between June 28 and July 2, 2019. This charge related to multiple bruises, bite marks and burns found on the child after she was hospitalised.

Two of the neglect convictions related to each parent allowing the other to assault the child. The final conviction was one of willful neglect of the child by failing to provide adequate medical aid.