'She was the reason I lived in fear,' says daughter of Cork woman who admits child cruelty
On Wednesday, their mother repeated her apology to her daughters as she faced sentencing at Cork Circuit Criminal Court. Judge Dermot Sheehan said he would not give his decision on the sentence to be imposed on her for a fortnight.
Elizabeth O'Connell, defence senior counsel, said the defendant could not undo what she had done but that she had done what was within her power, namely complying with probation and showing remorse for the devastation caused to her daughters.
'She has put aside alcohol and cocaine and the completely toxic and violent relationships with people who should not have been brought to her home,' Ms O'Connell said, adding that the defendant was also a victim when it came to relationships with those men.
Graphic and deeply personal evidence was given of the impact that the cruelty meted out by the 41-year-old woman had on her two daughters when they were children.
Now in their early and mid-teens they have given evidence at the sentencing hearing for their mother at Cork Circuit Criminal who pleaded guilty to two charges of cruelty to a child contrary to the Children's Act whereby she ill-treated a child in her care in a manner likely to cause unnecessary suffering or injury to her health or seriously to affect her wellbeing.
The charge relating to the older child referred to a period of three years when she was aged from approximately 12 to 15 years and a shorter period in respect of the younger daughter.
The older girl testified: 'She picked and chose when I deserved any crumb of that treatment. Instead she was the reason I lived in constant fear. She was the reason I spent my entire childhood walking on eggshells, waiting for the next outburst or terrible thing to happen.
I don't think people understand what it's like to grow up in a house where you never feel safe. You don't know if the person who supposedly loves you will be kind one minute or cruel the next.
"My mother didn't just fail me, she betrayed me in ways no child should ever have to experience, she chose drugs over me, strange men over me and violence over me. She let her random hook-ups and one-week relationships into the house like they had a right to be there, like I was just some background noise in her life. She never once thought about me.'
In order to protect the identity of the victims the defendant cannot be identified in coverage of the case.
The older child recalled: 'The way she made me feel like I was the problem, like I was the one ruining her life when all I ever wanted was to be loved.'
She gave detailed evidence of how she devised different ways to harm herself physically, as 'a way to drown out the mental pain with physical, I was so desperate for any kind of relief… My skin remembers what my mind tries to forget. No amount of therapy can erase them. No amount of time can take away the damage she did.
'And believe me I've tried. I've spent years in therapy sitting in cold offices trying to put words to things that never should have happened. I've spent hours crying to strangers but I always had to hide about what was really going on.
Even now, even though I am out of that house, I'm still living with the effects of what she did to me.
Her younger sister also described the impact of her mother's cruelty on her, saying: 'One day she'd tell me how much she loved me, and the next day she'd say things that were the complete opposite. Because of this, I've always had a hard time trusting people who are kind to me. I was manipulated in so many ways while living with her, and I learned early on that if my mom wasn't happy, I wasn't allowed to be happy.
'All I really want is for my mom to get help, the kind of real help she needs. I want her to rehabilitate and become the person I know she could've been.'
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