‘Evil bitch’ mother gets 24 years in the slammer

A 47-year old mother of eight has been handed a 24-year prison sentence after engaging in horrific torture rituals on her children.

The woman, who cannot be named to protect her victims, pleaded guilty to sample counts of assault, ill-treatment and neglect of her eight children at Galway Criminal Court and was punished with the lengthy sentence.

The woman, who was labelled an ‘evil bitch’ and a ‘sadist’ in a victim impact statement, engaged in a series of horrific torture acts on her six daughters and two sons between 2002 and 2009.

She is believed to have tied one of her daughters to a horse and whipped it so it would bolt and drag her daughter along with it, battered all of her children with sticks, blocks and even hammers and is also said to have beaten one of her sons so badly that he would appear disabled and thus be entitled to benefits.

Further examples of her monstrous cruelty include shaving the heads of her daughters and refusing to allow them get the dole so they wouldn’t run away, attaching a vice grips to one daughter’s ears, nose and lips and manually stitching together another daughter’s stab wound using a needle and thread without anaesthetic.

The children, who range in age from eight to 26, reportedly had to beg for food from neighbours, couldn’t read or write for the most part and are now living in various care and foster homes.

The woman, who is an alcoholic, had no psychiatric or psychological problems and denied suggestions that she had been sexually abused as a teenager.

In a victim impact statement, one of the woman’s daughters said: “She was not a mother to me. She was an evil bitch. If she was a proper mother she would not have done this to me. We never had a childhood.”

She added: “I do not hate myself but I hate what was done to me. I find it hard to talk to my sisters. I never want to go back to the life I had, it has destroyed my family.

“I would love to see my brothers and sisters but I can’t.”

Judge Raymond Groarke described the case as ‘a story of huge human tragedy’, said that it was incredible that such abuse was allowed to go on for so long with little or no intervention and added that the children were treated ‘like slaves’ by their mother.

“These children were kept as prisoners by their mother. What it is that can make a mother behave as this lady behaved?" he said.

“The woman is not ill and does not have any psychological illness and she knows the difference between right and wrong.

“She has no insight or remorse for what has happened."

In relation to the victim impact statement, Groarke added: “What is described is the devastation of these children at the hands of their mother and the children now have to get on their lives with the greatest of difficulty.”

Sentencing the woman to 24 years, Groarke backdated the sentence to December 2009 and suspended the final 16 years of the sentence.