'House of horrors' mother jailed for torturing her six children with years of incest and sex abuse



A mother who subjected her six children to years of incest and sexual abuse was jailed for seven years.

The 40-year-old alcoholic, from Roscommon, Ireland, admitted she was the worst mother in the world after she put her youngsters through a harrowing catalogue of neglect, including forcing her 13-year-old son to have sex with her.

She is the first woman in the history of the Irish state to be convicted of incest.

The woman, who cannot be named to protect her children, was sentenced to seven years after pleading guilty at Roscommon Circuit Court to 10 charges, including two of incest, two of sexual abuse and six of neglect and wilful ill-treatment and neglect of the children between 1998 and 2004.

Abuse: The six children lived in fifth with dead rats and mice, and were not fed properly (posed by model)

The court heard that social workers were called in as far back as 1996.

Health chiefs tried to take the children into care in 2000 but a group, described in court as a Catholic right-wing organisation, helped the mother financially and she won a High Court case blocking the care order.

The offences took place at the family's three-bedroom bungalow in Co Roscommon, which was dirty, strewn with rubbish, cold, damp and had dead rats and mice inside and out.

Judge Miriam Reynolds told the court that the children had been failed by everybody.

'Any possibility of them having a normal and proper life has been stolen from them by this woman who called herself their mother,' the judge said.

'They feel guilty. They feel they did something wrong. I can assure them that they did not.'

The judge has also suggested that new laws may be needed to deal with incest cases involving mothers.

'The children have to know that this is wrong and that their mother was punished for it. She must be punished for it,' she told the court.

Judge Reynolds imposed 10 sentences ranging from 18 months to seven years - the longest term for sexual assault - all of which will run concurrently.

The children were aged between six and 15 when the offences took place.

Shocking victim impact statements from the youngsters were read to the court, detailing how they were not fed properly, their clothes were not washed and the range which heated the home was only lit once a month.

The mother, who suffers from depression and asthma and has a drinking problem, would routinely go to a pub in the evening at around 6pm, leaving the children alone, only returning home when she was drunk in the early hours of the morning, one of her sons said.

He explained how he and a brother cared for the younger children and their mother would come home at between 3am and 4am, very drunk and arguing.

His sister, now aged 12, said the home was scary when her mother was drunk, she was bullied at school and other children called her smelly.

In an interview with Gardai in 2006, the mother admitted that her children were often blue with the cold, only had dinner twice a week and had lice crawling around their heads and bodies.

'It was a house of horrors... with bells on,' the mother said.