A Sligo man will be sentenced on Friday for the manslaughter of a 14-year-old girl.
Last May, a jury found Ronald McManus not guilty of murder but guilty of the manslaughter of Melissa Mahon.
It also found him not guilty of threatening to kill one of his daughters, Samantha Conroy, a key prosecution witness.
McManus (44), Rathbraughan Park, Sligo, also known as Ronnie Dunbar, had denied the murder and the threat to kill during a five-week trial.
Before a victim impact statement could be read out, Mr Justice Barry White asked prosecution counsel to outline the nature of the Mahon family's co-operation with gardaí when Melissa first disappeared in 2006.
Mr Justice White had already read the statement which he described as "disingenuous in the extreme" in his view.
The court heard that gardaí had asked the Mahon family to make statements on a number of occasions during the early stages of the investigation, but they refused because Melissa had been in the care of the HSE when she was missing.
However when gardaí built up trust, the family was “much more forthcoming,” the court heard.
The brief victim impact statement was read out by prosecution counsel Isobel Kennedy SC on behalf of Melissa’s mother, Mary Mahon.
“The whole thing had an emotional affect my entire family both in England and Ireland. My whole life is gone. She was my baby. My whole life has been torn apart for the loss of our baby Melissa.”
In the statement Ms Mahon said she was “very depressed from a very early stage” and “tried to commit suicide by taking an overdose of tablets”. She said her second youngest daughter Leanne who was closes in age to Melissa had tried to take an overdose a number of times and had slashed her arms a number of times. Another daughter Yvonne had also “slashed herself on the arms but did not attend a doctor,” the statement read.
Mr Justice White adjourned sentencing until this Friday to consider his sentencing options.
The jury had heard that Melissa had gone missing from the care of the Health Service Executive on September 14th, 2006. Her skeletal remains were recovered from the shore of Lough Gill in February 2008 after Samantha Conroy told gardaí that her father had killed the girl and dumped the body.