A mother facing child abduction proceedings has brought a High Court challenge to the Legal Aid Board’s refusal to fund the costs of her defence to those proceedings.
The father of two of the woman’s children has brought an action against her aimed at having those children returned from Ireland to Britain, where he lives.
The father’s proceedings have been brought in the High Court here under the Hague Convention on Child Abduction.
Yesterday, Mr Justice Seán Ryan was told the mother had applied to the Legal Aid Board to fund the costs of a solicitor and barrister to act on her behalf but had been refused.
Leave to bring the judicial review proceedings was granted on an ex-parte (one side only) basis by Mr Justice Ryan.
The matter has been adjourned to later this month.
Nine years in jail for oral rape in Donegal of student
A man has been given a nine-year sentence for the violent oral rape of a young foreign student at a house in Donegal. He was convicted by the jury last month of orally raping the girl and sexually assaulting her in October 2010.
Mark McAnaw (40), Harrow View, Harrow, Middlesex, England, denied the charges initially and claimed that he had simply hugged and comforted the 19-year-old student. He later told the jury during his 10-day trial at the Central Criminal Court in Dublin that the young woman had instigated sex and led him to her bedroom.
The court heard she had resisted so strongly that a radiator was pulled off her bedroom wall.
He has three previous convictions for public order
in Ireland and a number of convictions from England, which included a 1989 conviction for kidnapping.