A woman who left her four-year-old stepson with injuries that would typically be associated with car crashes or serious assaults has pleaded guilty to the child’s murder on the fourth day of her trial.
The woman, in her 30s, had pleaded not guilty to murder but guilty to manslaughter and was being tried at the Central Criminal Court.
After the evidence of a child witness was read into the record on Tuesday afternoon, Michael Lynn SC, defending, asked for time with his client.
The accused was later arraigned on the charge that she murdered the four-year-old boy at her home in March 2021. She pleaded guilty.
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Mr Justice Paul McDermott adjourned the case until December 1st when the defendant will face the mandatory sentence of life imprisonment.
The child’s mother, who had attended the trial, is to make a statement to the court before the sentence is passed.
The defendant cannot be named to protect the identity of the child witness whose evidence was read into the record on Tuesday afternoon.
In her opening speech, Anne Rowland SC, prosecuting, said the defendant had described to gardaí keeping her stepson in his room in the days prior to his death, where he had to sit on the floor and was only allowed out to go to the bathroom or for emergencies.
The defendant said the boy was a “bold, cheeky child” and often had to be grounded.
She told gardaí how on the day the boy suffered his fatal injuries, she “snapped” and recalled “shaking him and screaming at him to behave” before he fell on the floor
In November 2024, the child’s father was sentenced to seven years in prison having pleaded guilty to endangerment, neglect and impeding the apprehension or prosecution of the stepmother, knowing or believing she had murdered his son.
Passing sentence at the time, Mr Justice McDermott described his actions as “shameful” and said he bore a high level of criminal responsibility for failing to nurture and protect his son.
Authorities first became aware of the abuse against the child when his father called 999 on March 13th, 2021, claiming the boy had injured his head by falling off the top bunk of a bunk bed.
An advanced paramedic who was first on the scene said he met the child’s father halfway up the stairs. Inside an upstairs bedroom, he saw the child lying on his side on the floor in the foetal position with his head resting on a pillow.
The paramedic noted “yellowish” bruising, suggesting older injuries, and a bump or haematoma on the back of the head. When asked about the older bruises, the father said the child had previously run into a door.
The father also said the child had been “bold, acting up, behaving badly and was grounded and confined to his bedroom”, the paramedic said.
The paramedic said he did not want to waste time so he took the boy in his arms and carried him to the ambulance. The child’s pupils did not react to light, indicating a significant head injury, he said.
He also showed signs of “posturing”, whereby the limbs become extended and stiff, further suggesting a head injury and swelling or pressure on the brain.
The paramedic put a collar on the child to restrict spine movement and called ahead for the paediatric resuscitation room at a nearby hospital to be prepared.
A supervisor who was with the advanced paramedic said she also observed bruises to the boy’s eyes and face.
The child’s father told the paramedic that the boy had fallen from the top bunk of the bed about an hour earlier.
The father also said that the bruises on the child’s face were caused when he had been playing soccer earlier in the week.
He said the child “bruises easily” and when asked about bruising around the child’s eyes he said the boy “ran into a door the day before or two days before”.
Asked if the child’s mother could be contacted, the father said she was “not in our lives any more”.
Dr Stephen O’Riordan told the trial he was called in to review the child’s case after the boy had been brought to a second hospital by ambulance.
He described how the “whole theatre gasped” when they pulled back the drapes and saw the child covered in bruises.
He documented 17 areas of bruising or injury to both eyes, the ears, arms, legs and back. The “black eyes,” combined with bruises around both ears are “classic signs of physical abuse,” he said.
Dr O’Riordan said the child’s father had said the black eyes were the result of two falls over the previous two weeks.
“Any fall in a four-year-old child that I would see regularly would never have two black eyes. One or the other, but having two would more likely be from a head injury,” he said.
There were possible “grab marks” on one shoulder and to the left elbow and multiple bruises on the back and chest, suggesting the boy was “landing on his chest or back a lot, which is consistent with non-accidental injury”.
The most significant injury, he said, was a “hugely extensive injury” to the back of the head.
A laceration to the boy’s liver, Dr O’Riordan said, would have been caused by “extreme force” and would normally be associated with a car crash.
He said the number of unexplained injuries left him with a “significant concern” about physical or intentional abuse against the child.
A consultant intensive care doctor said the head injuries the boy suffered would usually be associated with a crash where a car hits a wall or a fall from a “very significant height”.
Dr Niamh Mitchell, a specialist in emergency medicine, said that when the child arrived in hospital he had the most serious type of head injury.
State Pathologist Dr Heidi Okkers told the trial the cause of death was a traumatic head injury in association with blunt force trauma to the abdomen.
