Two children, traumatised when a violent fight broke out between prisoners while they visited their father in Mountjoy Prison, have been awarded €10,000 damages each.
Judge Alison Lindsay said in the Circuit Civil Court that the prison authorities ought to have had in place a system which would have prevented the fight spreading into the visiting box occupied by the children.
Barrister Conor Bowman, counsel for the nine-year-old girl and her 11-year-old brother, told the court the children had visited their father in prison with their mother on November 26th, 2006, and had suffered psychological injuries as a result of what they had seen.
Their mother told the court two prisoners had run through the room she and her children were in, fighting as they passed in a “bloody horror scene” pursued by prison officers. One was bleeding and she and the children were terrified.