A passenger on a bus to Galway rang Gardaí when she witnessed a drunken mother repeatedly assault and abuse her four-year-old son.
Gardaí were waiting and arrested the 26-year-old mother, who cannot be identified in order to protect the child’s identity, when the bus arrived at the bus station in Galway city.
The mother pleaded guilty before Galway District Court this week to assaulting her son at an unknown location on the Tuam Road, Galway on January 18, 2016, and received a five-month suspended sentence.
Sergeant Georgina Lohan, prosecuting, said a female passenger rang Gardaí to complain that she had witnessed the accused assaulting a child on the bus.
Gardaí went to Bus Aras at Forster Street and spoke to the passenger who witnessed the assault.
She said the child had been crying throughout the journey and the mother verbally and physically assaulted him. She was intoxicated and lapsed into unconsciousness for periods of the journey to Galway.
The mother was arrested in Galway and detained. She didn’t make any admissions and the matter was referred to the child protection agency, Tusla.
Defence solicitor, Sean Acton, said a subsequent report from Tusla recommended the mother go for alcohol treatment and she had done that. He said Tusla released her from its child protection plan some months later because of the progress she had since made.
See full court case in this week’s Connacht Tribune.
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