‘I really miss my old life. I loved my job ... I miss working. I miss being pain free’

It should have been a routine Friday night for Valerie McAllorum Ryan. Walking to meet her husband at a pub in Sallins, Co Kildare, they would have a quiet drink before collecting a takeaway and getting home for The Late Late Show.

But as she crossed the canal bridge on that November evening in 2018, she vaguely recalls the roar of a car’s engine just as it smashed into her. It pinned her to the wall before reversing back off her mangled body and speeding from the scene.

Ms McAllorum Ryan (55) has fleeting memories of her husband rushing to her side. A stranger directed people’s immediate responses on the footpath; a paramedic calculated painkiller dosage; there was the blurry relief of an emergency department before she lost consciousness.

“Because of my injuries, he kind of knew probably that my pelvis was smashed, the paramedic made the decision to bring me straight to Tallaght [hospital],” she says.

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“I remember going through the doors and it was like nearly a relief; I knew I was safe and I don’t remember anything after that.”

Since the crash, Ms McAllorum Ryan’s experience has turned her into something of an accidental campaigner. The driver who hit her was 16 years old. As a minor, he received a three-year sentence, suspended for three years, for a range of offences including dangerous driving causing harm and hit and run.

[ How should Ireland treat children when it comes to criminal sentencing? ]

However, when he reoffended as an 18 year old, Ms McAllorum Ryan was told that due to the Children Act 2001, the initial suspended sentence relating to her case could not be reactivated to put him in custody.

In 2017, the Court of Appeal ruled there was no legal ability to suspend sentences of detention for children. Clearance was given by the last government to legislate for alternatives.

Ms McAllorum Ryan is pushing for such reform of children’s sentencing in more serious offences and has been assured by Ministers for Justice Helen McEntee and Simon Harris that efforts are under way to overhaul the system.

“I’m not into retribution,” she says – although initially satisfied with a suspended sentence, that changed when the driver showed a lack of genuine contrition and reoffended soon afterwards.

“But I do want justice and I’m starting to feel a little bit hard done by. They’ve all walked away. I can’t walk away.”

Ms McAllorum Ryan initially turned to the Finding Your Way guide produced by the Parc road safety awareness group, designed to assist those coping with death or serious injury in the aftermath of a crash.

She has struggled with the consequences of hers. The hit and run left her with a smashed pelvis, a life-threatening injury at the time because of internal bleeding.

The entire side of her right leg “was more or less gone” and doctors placed it in a special vac dressing to remove the dead tissue. On the left side, she had a fractured ankle, heel, fibula and three lumbar vertebrae.

She had eight surgeries as well as other procedures. Her knee was replaced; her hip will probably need to be too. Because she has permanent nerve damage, she walks with a stick but often falls.

“I did go into a very dark place, particularly when I was in James’s because I was so ill and I was so frightened,” she says.

“I suppose it would be grief more than depression I feel. I really miss my old life. I loved my job ... I miss working. I miss being pain free.”

Work is ongoing to amend legislation, aiming at broader sentencing options for minors and, according to Mr Harris, it will be progressed in the coming year. The Department of Justice said the number of cases where children are sentenced for serious offences is small but “appropriate provision” for such cases in legislation is considered important.

The Youth Justice Strategy 2021-2027 includes a number of amendments to the Children Act 2001 to allow for changes to sentencing as well as more alternatives to detention where it is considered appropriate.

Legislative amendments are being prepared to ensure “sufficient alternative” options to fully and partly suspended sentences.

“The amendments are intended to maximise the alternative sentencing options available in the 2001 Act, and to remove existing barriers to their use, particularly in relation to children who will turn 18 during the duration of their sentence,” a spokeswoman said.

The amendments also aim to strengthen provisions relating to deferment, detention and supervision orders and community sanctions. Amendments will take into account a 2020 report on suspended sentences by the Law Reform Commission.

“The Department of Justice is ... working towards progressing legislation in 2023 to ensure that the courts have a robust and effective framework to sentence children in such cases,” the spokeswoman said.

Ms McAllorum Ryan is due to address the Oireachtas Justice Committee on her experience after the summer recess. The committee will pay most attention to the potential role for restorative justice in such cases, where a victim and perpetrator have an opportunity to discuss the crime and its effects.

“She was lucky to survive, quite frankly,” says committee chair James Lawless, a Kildare TD who knew Ms McAllorum Ryan before the crash.

“I remember the night it happened and a lot of people were worried was she going to make it.”